Patrick Mahomes, Chiefs Restructure Contract, Reset QB Market

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Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs have restructured his contract. Now from 2023 to 2026, the quarterback will earn $210.6 million. That amount will be a new record for any player to earn in a four-year span in NFL history, as mentioned by Adam Schefter of ESPN. His earnings for all four years are now guaranteed.

A restructure puts Patrick Mahomes back at the top of the QB market. #ChiefsKingdom #FPC #NFL #NFLTwitter pic.twitter.com/WXDIWWxKQE

— Full Press NFL (@FullPressNFL) September 18, 2023

As for more information on the basics of the restructured deal, Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs will obviously revisit the deal after 2026. By moving up money in his deal, Kansas City can properly compensate Mahomes like the top QB that he is. Just this offseason alone, quarterbacks like Jalen Hurts, Lamar Jackson, Justin Herbert and Joe Burrow had all agreed to record-setting contracts. The ten-year agreement that Mahomes signed in 2020 gave him an average annual value of $45 million. With that AAV, he had slid to eighth among quarterbacks in average salary, due to the plethora of new quarterback deals. This new restructure places Patrick Mahomes back near the top of the quarterback market.

What other info is important to know following this new agreement? Plus, how will this currently affect the Kansas City Chiefs from a salary cap perspective going forward? Let’s kick it off.

Additional Contract Info

For those that may be wondering, Patrick Mahomes still has nine years left on his contract, in total. He and the team will still likely revisit his pay structure after 2026, as mentioned above. Though, the Chiefs essentially shifted money from the last five years of his contract to the first four years that are still left. Mahomes gets a well-deserved raise, from a yearly salary standpoint.

On the flip side, he is back near the top of the quarterback market with other passers, in terms of cash flow. We mentioned earlier that after the Burrow deal with the Cincinnati Bengals, Patrick Mahomes had slid to eighth among quarterbacks in average salary. His previous $45 million AAV placed him behind a fascinating group of QBs before this restructure took place. Here were the previous seven names at the top of the quarterback market, with their average salary per season:

• Joe Burrow- $55 million
• Justin Herbert- $52.5 million
• Lamar Jackson- $52 million
• Jalen Hurts- $51 million
• Russell Wilson– $48.517 million
• Kyler Murray– $46.1 million
• Deshaun Watson– $46 million

The bottom line is, Patrick Mahomes deserves to be paid as the top quarterback in the NFL, given his accomplishments so far. This also not only increases his own cash flow. In fact, this will continue to drive the quarterback market further, as more and more teams begin to look to lock up their signal caller long-term. NFL teams will continue to increase the payments and yearly salaries of their quarterbacks.

Chiefs Salary Cap Outlook

If you look at the business and growth that the NFL has continued to achieve, you know that the salary cap for spending has greatly increased. In 2017, the draft year of Patrick Mahomes, the NFL salary cap was set at $167 million. In the offseason in which the Chiefs quarterback signed his original 10-year deal, 2020, the salary cap had already risen to $198.2 million for that year. Now in 2023, the NFL set the salary cap at $224.8 million. With how sharply the salary cap has increased, it could grow to as much as $240 million for next year.

While Kansas City was near the bottom of the league in salary cap not too long ago, they should have a lot more breathing room next year. OverTheCap is currently projecting the Chiefs to have the 11th-most cap space in the NFL in 2024, around $45 million. While all of that room feels nice, there will still be many difficult decisions to make, on paper.

Patrick Mahomes and his deal was never going to be a sticky process, when it came to needing a restructure. However, it is vital that Kansas City got this out of the way now, early on in the 2023 season. With that taken care of, the Chiefs will be able to focus on other names who they may look to sign extensions with. This includes Chris Jones, L’Jarius Sneed, Creed Humphrey and Trey Smith. That is not to mention filling gaps at other positions with outside additions in free agency next year.

Be on the lookout for more FPC Chiefs articles and analysis throughout this week. For more great sports and NFL content, stay tuned to Full Press Coverage.

– Braden Holecek is the Kansas City Chiefs managing editor for Full Press Coverage. He covers the NFL. Like and follow on Follow @ebearcat9//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js Follow @FPC_Chiefs//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js and Facebook.