How can anyone ask whether Chiefs QB Patrick Mahomes cheated himself signing a 10 yr/$503M extension?

Patrick Mahomes is a Super Bowl Champion, Super Bowl MVP, and now the highest paid player in American professional sports.

“Did Patrick Mahomes leave money on the table in signing this contract?” asked Mike Greenberg this morning on ESPN’s Get Up.

The contract Mahomes signed is a 10-year extension worth a minimum of $140,000,000 and a maximum of just over half a billion dollars to play quarterback for the Kansas City Chiefs, and Greenberg has the temerity to ask if he left money on the table?

At some point, the question of how much money a man needs should be asked.  Not to sound like a socialist, but if people are questioning Mahomes wisdom in signing this level of mega deal at the age of 24, who are we as a society?

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Would Greenberg be more content if Mahomes’ contract was worth $600-million?  700-million?  A billion?  What’s the number if a half a billion does not suffice?

I don’t begrudge Mahomes his cash.  He is the best player in the NFL and also has the brightest future, but he is one play away from never taking another snap.  The Chiefs will sink or swim based upon Mahomes, and he should be paid like it – and he will be – but at some point enough is enough.

Greenberg’s position, and one echoed by everyone else on the show, is that contracts have tripled over the last five years, and Mahomes might be grossly “underpaid” by the time he gets to the latter years of his deal.  If $45-million per ever winds up qualifying as underpaid for a professional athlete while teachers and police earn $60K, America is in big trouble.

Mahomes is a huge star at age 24, and will be the face of the NFL until his health balks or he decides to walk away and cruise around the world forever on the yacht he buys – because with a minimum of $140M coming his way, why wouldn’t he buy a sick yacht and cruise the oceans?

This is a great deal for Mahomes, guaranteeing the financial future of his family for generations never-ending, and also a likely great deal for the Chiefs who will have a chance to remain competitive by not overpaying for the most important player in the NFL.

As a comparison, this season the Colts will pay roughly $57-million to the quarterbacks they have under contract.  Granted, the Colts are covering six QBs with that cash – including Andrew Luck’s $6.4M – but the Chiefs will likely never reach that level of expense for QBs during Mahomes contract.  They will retain the opportunity to remain competitive despite the biggest extension in American sports history.

There are two ways this deal goes south – if Mahomes gets hurt early in the contract, or if the NFL suffers some unforeseeable financial reversal that cause the salary cap to regress.  I’m not really sure what might cause that regression.  If fans en masse suddenly decide tickets are too expensive, gamblers start investing elsewhere, and fantasy football owners decide gardening is a better investment of their energy, maybe the NFL takes a step back.

Otherwise, the NFL is the freight train that will continue to print cash.

The odds of the contract being a win-win for Mahomes and the Chiefs are way too good for media types to criticize.

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