Kansas City Chiefs starting quarterback Alex Smith is $2 million richer today due to a bonus related to showing up at training camp.
Two million dollars in a single day. Think about that total. Regardless of how much money you make in your job, you’re likely not going to make that much by showing up to work today—unless your name is Alex Smith.
Chiefs QB Alex Smith will collect a $2M reporting bonus for showing up to training camp today, by far the largest such bonus in the NFL.
— Field Yates (@FieldYates) July 27, 2017
If you’re the agent for Alex Smith, you’re likely also kicking back today knowing you’ve earned a percentage of such a silly bonus. The starting quarterback for the Kansas City Chiefs certainly deserves to be paid a hefty amount in 2017 given the going rate for quarterbacks (and how thankful we are that we’re not staring at choices of Cody Kessler and Brock Osweiler). That said, this bonus taken on its own does sound silly.
In sum total, however, Smith comes with a cap hit of $16.9 million for the current season as he continues to play out a four-year, $68 million contract signed in 2014. While he’s the second highest paid player on the Chiefs this year in terms of cap hit, he ranks at No. 16 overall for quarterbacks, meaning that the total on the hook for the Chiefs puts them squarely in the middle of the league. With Patrick Mahomes coming into view in the future, the Chiefs will be going down quite a bit in terms of quarterback cap hit as the league’s ceiling for a quality starter could raise to as much as $30 million for the Matthew Staffords of the world.
It should be noted that Spotrac has a different date on the Alex Smith bonus than Field Yates reports above. Instead, Spotrac says that Smith’s $2 million bonus is due on March 11 and that another such bonus for 2018 is due on the third day of the league year, which would also be in March.