Professional sports contracts are a unique thing. Think about it: Unless you actively tell someone, no one knows your salary or hourly wage except your employer. But if you’re a pro athlete or a coach? That number is typically public knowledge. Anyone could type a player’s name + “salary” into a search engine and see that, say, Ryan Tannehill has a base salary of $27 million this year.
Yet, even with salary information out there in the open, it’s only part of the story of how much players owe in terms of extra costs like agent fees, union dues, 401(k) deposits, and taxes.
San Francisco 49ers defensive end Arik Armstead is attempting to shed a little light on the situation. He posted a series of videos on TikTok breaking down his paycheck.
Ezra Shaw/Getty Images
As background, Armstead recently restructured his contract with the Niners in a way that converted a huge chunk of his $16 million base salary into a signing bonus, in order to make cap space.
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In his video, Armstead is very transparent about the different elements of the paycheck. The first number he looks at is his takeaway pay, which is the actual amount of money hitting his account. Then, he says, “If you want to make yourself a little sad,” you look at the number up top to see the gross pay.
On a per-game basis, Armstead grosses $393,055.55 between his salary and signing bonus. Fun fact: That’s more than a third of what his teammate, quarterback Brock Purdy, will make before taxes this entire season.
A whopping 49.3% of Armstead’s money, $194,045.25, goes to taxes. That number includes $40,979.80 in California state taxes. NFL players experience a “jock tax,” which means they’re taxed in each state they play a game in, as opposed to only the state they live in. Armstead plays half of his games in California, but his game check might look slightly different when he plays in another state.
When it’s all said and done, at the end of the day, Armstead earns $198,210.92 per home game (or a road game that’s also in California, like a matchup against the Los Angeles Rams or Los Angeles Chargers). That’s still a huge amount of money, and Armstead even admits he’s been blessed to play football for a career. But it’s pretty eye-opening that players don’t always make as much as it appears on the surface level.
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