Is an Average NFL Quarterback Worth $50 Million a Year?

The salary cap for an NFL team is $301.2 million per year. So err...if they'd come with a reasonable offer I certainly consider it.

Is an Average NFL Quarterback Worth $50 Million a Year?

Baker Mayfield wants a contract extension that puts him in the upper echelon of earners, leaving his team, the Buccaneers, with a difficult choice

By Andrew Beaton, WSJ

Aug. 10, 2026 7:00 am ET

Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Baker Mayfield expressed disappointment after offseason contract negotiations failed to land him a new deal.

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When Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Baker Mayfield arrived at training camp, he didn’t hide his displeasure with his bosses after offseason contract negotiations failed to land him a new deal.

“It’s disappointing in that regard, to feel disrespected a little bit,” he said. “That’s really the disappointing part—to feel undervalued after thinking you’ve earned it.”

Mayfield just has to look around the rest of the NFL to understand how other teams are valuing their franchise quarterbacks. These days, the going rate is over $50 million a year. And that makes Mayfield an embodiment of an uncomfortable decision teams around the league face about what to do with quarterbacks who are a cut below the game’s elite.

There are now 12 quarterbacks—or more than a third of the league’s starters—with deals worth more than $50 million annually, and the teams lucky enough to boast the best passers are thrilled to pay every penny. The Kansas City Chiefs recently gave Patrick Mahomes an extension worth $64 million a year to make him the game’s highest paid player, while the Buffalo Bills’ Josh Allen comes in at $55 million. It’s a hefty price, but with someone of that caliber at the most important position in the sport, it means beginning every season with a shot at the Super Bowl.

The Kansas City Chiefs recently gave Patrick Mahomes an extension worth $64 million a year.

For the next tier of quarterbacks, though, it isn’t nearly as simple—and that’s precisely where Mayfield and the Buccaneers stand. Not paying Mayfield would be a risk because whoever they find to replace him may turn out to be considerably worse. Yet giving him top dollar creates another problem: It limits what the front office can spend on the rest of a roster that Mayfield might not be quite good enough to carry.

“Baker, as we all know here, is a very fiery competitor that is not afraid to speak his mind,” Buccaneers general manager Jason Licht said. “I know he was disappointed, frustrated, and we were too.”

A former No. 1 overall pick by the Cleveland Browns in 2018, Mayfield bounced around from the Carolina Panthers to the Los Angeles Rams before landing with Tampa Bay in 2023, when he was tasked with filling the shoes of a certain future Hall of Famer named Tom Brady. In his three seasons with the Buccaneers, Mayfield has led them to two playoff appearances and a 27-24 record while ranking between 12th and 18th in total quarterback rating in each of those years. In other words, that puts him squarely in the middle of the pack among starters.

Now, though, the 31-year-old Mayfield is in the final season of a contract that pays him $33 million a year, which makes him one of the NFL’s rare middle-class quarterbacks. While there are a dozen passers above the $50 million a year threshold, Mayfield is just one of four making between $30 million and $50 million. More often than not, teams view the decision as binary. Either the franchise views the player as a cornerstone and pays him at an upper-echelon rate, or it moves on. Mayfield himself has gone through that when Cleveland shipped him away rather than locking him up long term.

It’s a difficult calculation for teams, especially because the last couple of years have shown that the costliest financial mistake in all of football is handing out one of those megadeals to the wrong quarterback. The Miami Dolphins inked Tua Tagovailoa to an extension worth $53 million annually in 2024, and they came to regret it so much that they released him earlier this year even though he’ll eat up nearly $100 million of the team’s salary cap over the next two seasons.

Yet the salary cap also explains why teams are increasingly willing to give out deals that were previously unfathomable. Adjusting for how much teams are allowed to spend, $50 million isn’t actually that much. It comes out to just 16.6% of the $301.2 million cap per team this season. Back when Peyton Manning signed a then-record $14 million per year extension in 2004, it accounted for an even bigger chunk at 17.5% of the cap.

It’s Mayfield’s belief that he should be part of the club of passers earning at that level, but he doesn’t plan to resolve the impasse anytime soon. He set a deadline for the start of training camp, and now that it has begun he said he wants the focus to be “all ball.” Now it’s his mission to squeeze his employers even more with every touchdown pass he throws.

“If you’ve waited this long to take care of your franchise quarterback, that’s too bad because it’s only going to get worse from here,” Mayfield said. “I’m going to have a really good year.”