Though he signed a $134,000,000 contract with the Green Bay Packers in August of 2018 that guaranteed him $98 million, the portion of the deal Aaron Rodgers is due to be paid by participating in the 2020 season is not guaranteed.
That’s not the case for his backup Jordan Love, as, by virtue of being a first-round pick in 2020, he has a fully-guaranteed contract that will pay him $12,383,453 when all is said and done.
Though situations like this are not overly common as so few deals in the NFL are fully guaranteed — with first-round contracts and franchise tags being the major exceptions — they could become an issue as the NFL and NFLPA continue to work out the financials of playing pro football in a pandemic.
Under the terms of their deals, players with fully-guaranteed contracts are due to be paid their full salaries if the NFL season takes place, even if it is limited to just a single game. But, as part of negotiations, the NFL may ask the NFLPA to sign off on those salaries being pro-rated in case the season needs to be cut short.
As ProFootballTalk points out, players with non-guaranteed deals won’t necessarily stand in the way of that happening if it benefits them.
“It’s splitting the have’s and have-not’s,” one source told PFT. Another told the publication a “brawl could be coming between the star players with sizable guaranteed salaries and the players with non-guaranteed pay.”
No matter how the sides resolve the issue, there is “optimism” the NFL and NFLPA will reach an agreement in the coming days.
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