They say being a backup behind a durable NFL starting quarterback is one of the best jobs in the world. You get paid millions of dollars and have a sideline view of every game without having to put your body on the line.
That balance is certainly tough to beat, but from a purely monetary perspective, it's better to be a starting quarterback, particularly if you become injury-prone or unavailable entirely. You can earn significantly more for only marginally more work than a backup who never plays.
The NFL quarterbacks below would almost certainly prefer to be on the field every Sunday, but instead, they find themselves earning big pay for little play, based on the average annual values (AAV) of their contracts.
Aaron Rodgers
2023 Per-Game Salary: $37.5 million
Even with the pay cut he took prior to the season, Rodgers is set to make a per-minute 2023 salary that would make even Elon Musk blush. Rodgers was scheduled to make $50.3 million in 2023 based on his contract with the Packers, but his reworked deal with the Jets dropped that salary to $37.5 million. The Jets' first drive of the Rodgers era began at the 12:30 mark of the first quarter. Zach Wilson checked in for Rodgers at the 10:56 mark, so a grand total of 1:34 ran off the clock between Rodgers' Jets debut and the end of his 2023 campaign.
A $37.5 million payday for 94 seconds of play works out to $1.44 billion per hour. At that rate, it would take Rodgers just under 175 hours to eclipse Musk ($251.3 billion) as the world's richest man. With 224 regular-season starts under his belt, Rodgers would be well above that total if every second of his NFL game action was compensated -- not to mention his 94 seconds with the Jets. In fairness, this formula ignores countless hours put in during practice, training camp, team meetings and the preseason, but ultimately, highly-compensated quarterbacks like Rodgers get the big bucks for what they do in games that count.
Deshaun Watson
2021-22 Per-Game Salary: $13.1 million
Watson ($46 million AAV) has a higher average salary than Patrick Mahomes ($45 million AAV), and Mahomes is even more of a bargain when you consider all the "overtime" he puts in with deep playoff runs year in and year out. That's a foreign concept to both Watson -- who owns a 1-2 career playoff record since being drafted in 2017 -- and the Browns, who are 1-2 in the postseason since rejoining the NFL in 1999. In addition to being fully guaranteed, Watson's contract with Cleveland was specifically structured to minimize his lost income in the event of a suspension, so only $690,000 of his five-year, $230 million deal was lost during his 11-game suspension in 2022. The NFL did levy a $5 million fine to slightly cut into the QB's profits.
Watson also earned $10.5 million from the Texans without playing a game during the 2021 season. Per ESPN.com, Watson's total earnings between the summer of 2020 and the end of the 2022 league year worked out to $78.8 million for a period in which he played just six games. If you normalize Rodgers' salary to a per-game rate, his $37.5 million per game in 2023 is at least on the same order of magnitude as Watson's $13.1 million per game across 2021 and 2022. Adjusting for inflation, Rodgers is only making about 2.5 times more per game, so he would become a bargain relative to Watson's previous two seasons if Rodgers returns as intended in 2024 and plays just two additional games. For the sake of consistency, using the AAV calculation for Watson would put him at $56.5 million for six games in 2021-22 -- an average of $9.4 million per game.
Kyler Murray
Per-Game Salary Since Start of 2022: $5.2 million
The five-year, $230.5 million extension Murray signed last July made him the league's second highest paid player at the time with a $46.1 million AAV, though he has since dropped out of the top five with numerous big-name quarterbacks subsequently signing lucrative extensions. Murray's onerous contract will make it tough for the Cardinals to trade him if they finish in position to start fresh with a top rookie quarterback from the promising 2024 NFL Draft class, and the team has not gotten much value out of the deal so far. Murray went 3-8 before tearing his ACL last season, earning $4.2 million per appearance and $15.4 million per win. He begins the 2023 season on the active/PUP list, which means he is guaranteed to miss at least the first four games. After Week 4, Murray will have earned $5.2 million per game played since signing his deal in the summer of 2022, and his absence could very well stretch further into the season with Arizona seemingly in no rush to compete.
Matthew Stafford
2022 Per-Game Salary: $3.0 million
As far as most Rams fans are concerned, the Stafford trade and money spent on the veteran quarterback have already been well worth it considering he led the team to the Super Bowl LVI title. The four-year, $160 million extension that kicked in this season for the 35-year-old quarterback may not age well, though he is healthy to begin the year and threw for over 300 yards in a Week 1 win over Seattle. Stafford's 2021 championship run and eight-game absence due to a neck injury in 2022 both came during the duration of the five-year, $135 million deal ($27 million AAV) he signed with the Lions. During the 2022 season, Stafford was paid $3 million per game for his nine appearances. He played a full 17-game season plus four postseason games in 2021, though, so Stafford's per-game salary drops to a more reasonable $1.8 million when viewing the entirety of his first two seasons in LA.
Lamar Jackson
2022 Per-Game Salary: $1.9 million
Jackson's big new contract didn't kick in until this season, so we can't retroactively apply his current $52 million AAV to his missed time over the past two seasons, especially since his five absences in 2021 came while he was making under $2.5 million. He brought in a respectable $23 million in 2022 while missing five of 17 regular season games plus Baltimore's playoff loss. Jackson earned $1.9 million per appearance in 2022, and if he were to miss five games for a third consecutive season in 2023, that number would balloon to $4.3 million.
Tua Tagovailoa
2022 Per-Game Salary: $600,000 per game
Given Tagovailoa's unfortunate injury history, the Dolphins will have a difficult decision to make when weighing whether or not to extend him, but his per-game cost has actually been quite reasonable thus far. Miami has already picked up his $23.2 million fifth-year option for 2024, but a productive and relatively healthy 2023 season could earn Tagovailoa a far more lucrative extension that would make each absence much costlier. The 2020 first-round draft pick has been a nice value despite missing 14 games over the first three seasons of his four-year rookie deal, averaging under $1 million per start. Narrowing the focus to 2022, Tua earned $600,000 per game for his 13 appearances.
