Does Amit Patel’s $22 Million Embezzlement Scam Reveal a Broader NFL Wage Crisis?

Amit Patel is not a familiar name in the NFL circuit. But soon, he will be. The former Jacksonville Jaguars employee has been accused of laundering over $22 million during his time as a financial manager with the franchise, in a seven-page report filed at the local district court. But is the league to be blamed to any extent behind this embezzlement?

The NFL, on a personal level, has no control over such incidents, as they can’t predict an untrustworthy employee. But are they taking care of things where they have the utmost control? Probably not, as the growing wage gap issue in the league continues to get concerning. Especially when an employee steals more money than the team’s highest earner.

The Jaguars lost more money than their highest-paid player

No, it’s not Trevor Lawrence. At 6-foot-6, 335 pounds, Cam Robinson is not only the biggest player at the Jacksonville Jaguars but also the biggest earner. The gigantic defensive tackle earns around $18.5 million a year. His base salary is $10 million, added with a $5 million signing bonus, a roster bonus of $617.6k, and a workout bonus of $500k.

But his earnings fade in comparison to the $22 million Patel has reportedly escaped with. The ex-employee had access to the team’s Virtual Credit Card (VCC) and misused it over a period of 5 years. The franchise terminated his contract in February 2023, but by that time he had already paid for luxury watches, chartered flights, multiple cryptocurrency investments, and even a Tesla from the team’s budget. He additionally inflated the sums and added fake transactions in financial statements, as per the report.

Read More: Ex-Jaguars Employee Who Allegedly Swindled $22 Million Reportedly Used It to Buy Tesla & Hire Private Jets

It is indeed a big deal when an employee can get his hands on more money than the best talents of the team will ever will. The incident directly hits the NFL’s growing wage issue because a higher budget allows employees like Patel to have more money to work with and also leaves a bigger effect on the team’s financial stability.

But the growing wage is not the only issue the fans are often concerned with. The unequal wage distribution and the salary gap are two niggling factors they have frequently been pointed out.

The need to put a hold on the increasing wage gap at the NFL

The NFL salary cap for the ongoing season is $224.8 million, an increase of $16.6 million from the past season. Parallelly, the teams’ highest-paid players also continue to get higher and higher amounts, but that’s where things get interesting. A limited budget cap means the team has to balance somewhere else for cashing out big on a single player, and that creates a rather unacceptable wage gap inside the team.

Take the Bengals for example. Quarterback Joe Burrow is the team’s as well as the league’s highest earner, adding $55 million to his bank account every year. But keeping the $208 million budget cap in front, the average wage for the rest of the 74-man squad becomes just over $2 million each. A few more players, such as the wide receivers getting larger averages at $2.8 million in the league, further widen the difference.

These altogether leave even lesser cap space for the notoriously underpaid running backs, who for all their hard work, earn around $1.8 million on average, and in most cases, less than the special teams’ players. That being said, the clear takeaway becomes the large amount of money that’s associated with the franchises, which is growing by nearly 10% every year.

So can the NFL predict and prevent a re happening of the Jaguars scandal? Likely not, and they can’t be blamed for it as well. But, can the league impose better control on the roster expenditure? Yes, they can and they should.

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