What Is NFL’s Performance Pay-Based Structure & How Does It Work?

Brock Purdy operates on a surprisingly low salary. But there are a couple of upsides to his situation. What he loses out in salary, he makes up in incentives. There’s something called Performance Based Pay (PBP) that helps players like Brock Purdy make more money besides his paycheck. The supplemental compensation works in mysterious ways, and we are here to simplify it.

Jonas Shaffer, a Maryland-based journalist shed light on the situation and tried to put the PBP system as simply as possible for people to understand. He pointed out some of the players that have flourished through the system and explained how the payout works. The silver lining about PBP is that it is independent of salary caps.

As soon as the players play the official first down of the season, they become eligible for the Performance Based Pay. The higher the playtime, the more the bonus. Also, having a lower salary also aids in a higher bonus. Essentially, we can calculate the PBP by computing the player Index.

The Index is calculated by PBP Playtime (total plays on offense, defense, and special teams) divided by PBP Compensation (regular salary, plus prorated bonus, plus earned incentives). This index is compared to other team members to determine the PBP. But, it’s a bit more complicated than it sounds and comes with conditions.

If a player has played for more than 7 seasons and is getting a salary lesser than what CBA says, the player will be assigned more salary to balance things out. That minimum salary for 2023 season was about $1.165 million. This salary is “directed” to high performing veterans and if they make more than $1.16 million, they are bound to get more incentives. However, the player’s salary still has to be “not among the highest in the league” as the condition.

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“The imputation of this salary is solely for the purpose of calculating distributions from the pool and does not affect the actual salary paid to the player under his contract, wrote Shaffer in his post on X. Based on this data, let us take a look at the players who benefitted from the last year’s PBP.

Who are the players making the most out of Performance Based Pay?

Shaffer pointed out that the Baltimore Ravens LG John Simpson led the PBP last year as he earned more than $900k. Surprisingly, the Ravens Cornerback Brandon Stephens is on 13 place with his PBP earnings last year, getting about $805,253. The fact that the CB is at 13 place with this amount of pay means that the average PBP pay-out is pretty high usually.

“Former Ravens LG John Simpson led the NFL in performance-based pay this past year ($974,613). CB Brandon Stephens was 13th ($805,253). This is a supplemental form of player compensation based on a comparison of playing time to salary and does *not* count against the cap.” Said Shaffer’s post on X.

He explained it later and we found out that lower the salary of the player, the higher his PBP pay-out is usually. It’s a bit complicated to understand how the PBP works, but Shaffer simplified it. It remains to be seen who will top the list this time and how will the amount shape for the NFL players.

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