Aaron Rodgers. (Getty)
Both the AFC and NFC conference championships games are now set, and the National Football League’s version of the Final Four for the 2016-17 season is ready for action.
NFL player annual salaries are paid in 17 weekly installments during the regular season, meaning the only paychecks that the players for the Atlanta Falcons, Green Bay Packers, New England Patriots and Pittsburgh Steelers have received since the regular season ended have been checks from the league that are based on a pre-determined structure.
In the Wild Card round, each player gets a paycheck for $27,000 if his team won its respective division. That check drops to $24,000 if the team is a true Wild Card participant in the playoffs. In either case, whether a player’s team wins or loses the game has no effect on the player’s paycheck.
In the divisional round, each player gets $27,000, again regardless of whether his team wins or loses the game. All players on teams who qualify for the conference championship game get paid $49,000.
Green Bay and Pittsburgh both also played in the Wild Card round, while Atlanta and New England had first-round byes, meaning that the Packers and Steelers got paychecks for that round while the Falcons and Patriots did not.
After next week’s conference championship games are over, here’s what the players on each participating team will have made this postseason regardless of whether the team advanced to Super Bowl LI.
Atlanta Falcons: $76,000
Green Bay Packers: $103,000
New England Patriots: $76,000
Pittsburgh Steelers: $103,000
While that looks like a hefty payday for a mere two or three weeks of work to most people, context is necessary to accurately understand this situation. This pay schedule makes it so that the backup quarterback makes as much as the starter.
Additionally for a lot of players, this is actually a pay cut in comparison to their regular season paychecks. For instance, Falcons quarterback Matt Ryan makes around $470,000 per week in the regular season. That makes the average of what he’s made in two weeks combined so far this postseason about a 92 percent pay cut for Ryan.
Playoff Money for NFL Conference Championship Games