Do NFL Players Get Bonuses For Touchdowns?

The salaries of NFL players are based on signing bonuses, a series of different payments, bonuses, and base salaries.

Do NFL player get bonuses for touchdowns?

The answer is yes, they do. How much they get though depends on the number of touchdowns they achieve.

NFL players who throw 18 touchdown passes get $250,000. That is the amount Ryan Tannehill got. A total of $500,00 is paid for at least 20 touchdown passes and if a player reaches 23 touchdowns, a total of $750,000 is waiting. If they hit 25, a total of $1 million is at stake.

NFL players are among the professional athletes who make and get paid at a higher rate.

It’s a process that sees them earning weekly pay from their basic salary aside from their roster bonus, signing bonus, and other payments they will receive from playing in the entire regular season from the first game of the year until week 17 including the bye week. If you continue reading, you can find out more about how much NFL player get paid, how often and how they are motivated by even more money.

What do players get paid during playoffs?

Due to the current CBA or Collective Bargaining Agreement between players and the owners, their earnings or salaries from playing in the regular season is at an entirely new rate that’s away from the contract of each player.

If they are in a Wild Card team, every player on a team who played during playoffs makes $27,000-$28,000 and if the wild card team wins in the division, players will have $31,000 each.

For an organization or NFL team that reaches the conference championship round, the rate is increased from $54,000 to $56,000.

The maximum amount that a player can gain or receive for the pay in the post-season is that a wild card winning division team that wins the final game or Super Bowl is $123,800 to $124,000 each and for the losing team who played in the Super Bowl, each player will have $56,000.

It must be noted that franchises that earned a first-round bye will not receive any payment in the post-season wild-card round.

The video below is from J.T.O`Sullivan, professional football player who has some interesting things to share about money in the NFL in general.

NFL Contract Bonuses

There are bonuses added on their contract so that each player will earn more behind their strong play exerted on the field. These are the bonuses they will receive:

Signing Bonus

This is the money they earned when a player signs into a contract or deal with a team and it’s fully guaranteed.

This is usually paid to them within the first 12 to 18 months after contract is being inked and being prorated to the salary cap having a peak of five years for the entire duration of the contract.

The team has the option of paying the player the entire amount at once or they can allocate the signing bonus payments over the life of the contract to reserve cap spaces.

Roster Bonus

This is paid out  for being an active roster player during the year or being part in the roster at a particular date or specific designated date.

The most popular form is to specify a roster player on a specific date as this will protect players from being discharged before that date unless the team is willing to pay it out. Teams can also give this bonus on a per-game basis to every player.

Workout Bonus

It is the money agreed upon for every player accompanying an agreed amount or a stipulated percentage of off-season workouts paid at a flat rate.

Option Bonus

This bonus is like the signing bonus but this can be activated at a future date. This is insured money later in the contract of a player and this can be prorated over the contract length up to five years.

How do Incentives work?

Teams pay NFL players incentives when they hit certain goals establish in the agreement like receiving or passing yards. These incentives are added to the deal to motivate players in performing well.

There are two categories of incentives that a team can give for them to earn incentives, these are Likely to be Earned incentives or LTBE or Not Likely to be Earned incentives or NTLBE.

An example of LTBE is if a player had the same amount in the prior year like an incentive of $500,000 for rushing for 1,000 yards, that player will have a $500,000 incentive if he performed the same in the next season.

However, if the incentive goal is not one that is reached before, then it is viewed as NLTBE. LTBE incentives are counted towards the salary cap of a team set in the season while in NLTBE, the team pays the player around February or the month of March after the season wherein they are met.

Guarantees

The base salary of NFL players can be guaranteed or non-guaranteed depending on various conditions and clauses. There are three different types of guarantee money that a team can use in a contract of a player and these are skill, injury, and cap.

Injury Guarantee

This guaranteed money will be activated when a player cuts from the team and is unable to pass a physical or to play ball. He is entitled to the money stated in his contract that protects him against any injury.

Skill and Cap Guarantee

These two guarantees go hand in hand.

A skill guarantee protects the player from being cut in cases when the team feels that the skills or performance of the player don’t meet the need of the group or team. A cap guarantee will protect the player from being discharged so that the team can re-sign another player or get cap space to endorse an available or free agent

How Often Do They Get Paid?

Every NFL player that is under in a contract or signed agreement gets paid weekly beginning from the outset of the season up to the day it will end. Game cheques are deposited into the bank account of the player every Monday morning, even if the precise day of the week for them to get paid also varies every week.

Each game cheque corresponds to the portion of the yearly salary of the player but it does not include the amount they earned from any bonuses.