Some contracts get exaggerated this time of year. Then there’s the contract signed by new Chiefs receiver JuJu Smith Schuster.
It was spoon fed both to ESPN and NFL Media as a one-year, $10.75 million deal. The truth is lower than that.
A lot lower.
The deal has a base value of only $3.25 million, per a source with knowledge of the deal. Of that amount, only $2.49 million is fully guaranteed at signing.
He gets a signing bonus of $1.455 million and a fully-guaranteed base salary of $1.035 million. The rest of the base package comes from a workout bonus ($250,000) and per-game roster bonuses ($30,000 per game, or up to $510,000).
The deal includes $7.5 million in incentives, at least $2 million of which hinge on the Chiefs at least getting to the AFC Championship. We’ll post the full details of the incentive package when we have them.
For now, here’s the truth. The reports of $10.75 million on a one-year deal are the opposite of truth, with the fluff representing more than twice the true base amount of the deal.