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New Orleans Saints starting center Connor McGovern is in the ninth season of his impressive NFL career.
McGovern has made 102 career appearances, including 91 starts, most of which came with the Denver Broncos and New York Jets.
According to Spotrac, McGovern has made over $34 million in his NFL career. But McGovern isn’t in it for the money. He’s in it for the love of the game. As it turns out, the 31-year-old is the heir to a potato fortune worth over $500 million.
Alex Schiffer of Front Office Sports reports McGovern’s grandfather, Ron Offutt, is the owner of the largest commercial potato producer in the United States.
Offut’s company, which is based in North Dakota, is the primary provider of potatoes for McDonald’s french fries, and the company is valued at north of $500m.
“You realize that you’re walking away from more money [in] the family business in comparison to going to the NFL,” Offut told McGovern prior to the 2016 NFL Draft.
But McGovern’s wealth also worked against him.
“All the scouts are telling me the biggest knock is you came from money,” McGovern said that his agent told him prior to the NFL Draft.
Connor McGovern Has Proven Himself In NFL Despite Massive Potato Fortune
The concern was that McGovern would lack the work ethic and hard-nosed attitude necessary to make it in the NFL. Nine years later, those concerns are long gone.
“I always say I come from blue-collar farm money, and that’s a little different,” he told Schiffer. “We have good years and bad years. It takes a lot of work to pull money out of the ground and make it grow, and most of the stuff you deal with is out of your control, like weather and all that kind of stuff. So it’s a little different than having oil money that comes out of the ground. It’s not watching the stock market move up and down.
“Growing cash and having liquid gold are two very different things.”
McGovern also had to work to earn the respect of the other players in the locker room.
“Some guys really respected it,” he said. “Some were like, ‘Man, what are you doing? This game is so hard. Why are you here if you can be making good money just by going home and farming?’”
Life as a lineman is hard. McGovern has dealt with injuries throughout his career. And he began the 2024 season on the New York Jets practice squad.
But McGovern stuck with it.
The New Orleans Saints signed him to their NFL roster shortly thereafter, and it doesn’t appear McGovern has plans of getting into the family business anytime soon.