Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers among top 5 in NFL player career contract earnings
NFL players, especially quarterbacks, have the opportunity to earn a lot of money during their careers. They usually have several different streams of income, including their NFL contracts, endorsements, investments, and businesses.
While their player contracts are not always necessarily their largest source of income, they are the only stream where the exact amount earned is known by the public.
Here are the five highest-earning NFL players of all time, based only on the total amount of money they have accumulated from all of their NFL team contracts, up to and including the 2022 NFL season.
Here are five NFL players who have earned the most career money from their team contracts:
#5 - Drew Brees - $273,873,000
When Drew Brees retired at the conclusion of the 2020 NFL season, he was the highest earning player of all time. Now that he has been away from football for more than a year, he has been surpassed by four current players in career earnings.
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Drew Brees comeback 🔜? https://t.co/8VfNiW5u4C
There have been rumors that have surfaced lately that Brees could be considering coming out of retirement and making a return to the field. He recently stated on Twitter that it's a possibility, though it's unclear how serious he is about it. If he were to return, he could join a rare group of players who have exceeded 300 million dollars in career contract earnings.
#4 - Matt Ryan - $291,758,823
Matt Ryan had spent his entire career with the Atlanta Falcons. After winning an MVP award and helping the Falcons win an NFC Championship, they have regularly made him one of the highest-paid players in the league.
After one of the most successful careers in Falcons history, Ryan was traded to the Indianapolis Colts during the 2022 offseason. Now he will play for a different team for the first time in his career.