Salary Rankings for Early Pro Bowl Voting

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The NFL has released the early results for the Pro Bowl. While the Pro Bowl is often just a popularity contest and sometimes over-represented by successful teams with very passionate fanbases, I thought it would be a fun exercise to see where the current vote leaders rank in terms of salary. For this I’ll just look at offense and defense and Im also eliminating the Fullback position simply because I don’t rank players in that role right now.

Offense

PositionName

Estimated APY Rank

Estimated APY

QBP. Manning

4

$19,200,000

QBD. Brees

5

$20,000,000

RBJ. Charles

12

$5,400,000

RBM. Lynch

7

$7,500,000

WRC. Johnson

1

$16,207,143

WRA. Green

32

$4,922,025

TEJ. Graham

47

$824,535

TEJ. Thomas

118

$420,750

TB. Albert

6

$9,828,000

TJ. Staley

12

$7,200,000

GZ. Beadles

53

$1,080,250

GJ. Allen

51

$1,160,956

CM. Unger

3

$6,458,750

CM. Ramirez

40

$1,575,000

The first thing that jumped out to me is that only one player is actually the highest paid at his position- Calvin Johnson of the Detroit Lions. In my contract database I have 14 non-QB’s whose contracts average $10 million or more a year. Only Johnson is on the current squad. Four players rank in the top 5 and six rank top 10. The Guard positions and Tight End positions see the least spending, though I tend to think if Rob Gronkowski had been healthy he would have been in the top two at the position.

Overall the median rank was 12 and median salary $5.9 million. The averages jump up to 28, primarily because of the Thomas numbers while the average APY moves to just under $7.3 million, pumped up by the Manning/Brees/Johnson numbers.

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Defense

PositionName

Estimated APY Rank

Estimated APY

DEJ. Watt

16

$2,809,375

DEM. Williams

1

$16,000,000

DTD. Poe

25

$2,830,002

DTJ. Hatcher

40

$2,000,000

OLBT. Hali

3

$11,500,000

OLBT. Suggs

5

$10,416,667

ILBK. Alonso

41

$1,075,100

ILBS. Lee

12

$7,000,000

CBR. Sherman

156

$555,606

CBP. Peterson

29

$4,607,375

SK. Chancellor

7

$7,000,502

SE. Berry

2

$8,340,833

SE. Thomas

21

$3,660,000

SE. Reid

34

$2,120,189

Like the offense, only one player on defense is the highest paid at his position, Mario Williams of the Buffalo Bills. Four players rank in the top 5 and five in the top 10 of their respective positions. There is also a great deal of rookie contract representation here as well with 7 players playing under their rookie contracts, further illustrating the importance of drafting well. My estimated have 23 defensive players earning $10 million plus a year. Just 3 of them are at the front of the pack of the voting. I’m not sure that’s an indication of money well spent.

For defense the median rank was 18.5 and the median salary a touch above $4.1 million. Please note that the ranks for JJ Watt is as a 34 Defensive End not a 43 Defensive End. The averages are 28 and $5.7 million.

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