Kyler Murray ain’t going nowhere, and the Arizona Cardinals backed up a Brinks truck to make it so.
The NFL team’s star quarterback just signed a contract extension worth $230.5 million over five years, USA Today reports. The money puts him not only among his highest-paid contemporaries but among football’s most well-compensated players in history.
Where, exactly, you put Murray on that list, though, all depends on how you count the money since in the NFL, the true value of the contract often depends on the fine print. Murray’s deal includes $160 million in ‘guaranteed money’, which, without getting into the minutia of how even that term can be misleading, is the minimum amount Murray should expect to pocket should he play out the full term of his contract barring injury.
Considering the face value of his contract, Murray becomes the NFL’s second-highest paid player on an annual basis, at $46.1 million annually. The Green Bay Packers’ Aaron Rogers is first, with a deal that pays him some $50.3 million a year over the next three years. Deshaun Watson comes in third at $46 million over five years—although his contract with the Cleveland Browns has its own built-in quirks to account for the fact he may be suspended for a good chunk of the upcoming season.
Still, by another measure, Watson has holds the NFL’s most valuable deal in history, since the entire $230 million of his contract is ‘fully guaranteed’.
However you slice it, it’s not a bad deal for Murray, who just a few months ago was eyed as a potential trade target.