I was curious about how much teams were paying their players and found a couple of interesting things:
- Last year the World Champion Giants had a total payroll of $75,755,388, compared to this year (getting booted in their first playoff game, losing 3 out of their last 4 regular season games) their payroll was $115,816,180, that is almost a 53% increase
- The Arizona Cardinals went from $98,694,817 last year to $122,110,110 this year, they didn’t have a spectacular year, but they are in the playoffs and hosting the NFC Championship Game so I guess we could say that their money appears to be well spent thus far. (Go EAGLES!)
- The Dallas Cowboys have the second highest total payroll in the NFL this season, (behind the Oakland Raiders?? what the heck is up with that?) at $146,401,600, up from $107,376,072 last year, or a 36% increase.
- Of the four teams in the NFC East the Eagles spent the least in salary at $109,557,398
So what does it all mean? I guess pretty much nothing, you can have very talented players that get large paychecks but if the team as a whole does not perform having one, two or several “star” players in most cases will not carry you through a season. There are some notable exceptions to this, but as a general rule of thumb if you are going to be dominant, everyone on the team needs to play well and as a team.
Salary Source USA Today
