Aaron Rodgers Earned A Hilariously Modest Performance Bonus For The Four Snaps He Played Last Season

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The Jets headed into last season with clear eyes, full hearts, and a can’t-lose attitude after signing Aaron Rodgers only to see him sidelined for year after tearing his ACL on his first drive in his new uniform—which was still enough to earn a very modest performance bonus.

Aaron Rodgers took a pay cut when he signed a two-year contract worth $75 million with the New York Jets, as he was slated to make $110 million over the course of the same span courtesy of the deal he’d inked with the Green Bay Packers before he requested a trade.

All of that money was guaranteed, although Rodgers did have the opportunity to earn some extra cash courtesy of the “performance-based pay” stipulation that’s existed since the NFL and NFLPA agreed to a new collective bargaining agreement in 2002.

The mechanics of that particular system are a bit too complex to easily unpack (you can read a full explanation here), but it’s essentially designed to give guys who are receiving a comparatively small salary a chance to earn some extra compensation when they end up outperforming small contracts (for example, Brock Purdy received $739,795 this year on top of the $985,000 he made in the second-year of a rookie deal the 49ers have taken full advantage of).

The nature of performance-based pay means a player who is, say, a quarterback who’s racked up four MVP awards and a Super Bowl ring while playing for close to two decades typically isn’t going to get a massive windfall. With that said, well-compensated veterans like Rodgers are still eligible for a bonus after the season wraps up.

That’s apparently the case even if you played a grand total of four snaps before succumbing to a season-ending injury, as Adam Schefter noted Rodgers is slated to received a grand total of $81.14 for his contributions last year.

Must be nice.