Patrick Mahomes deal has $477 million in “guarantee mechanisms”

[KC Wolf]

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More details are emerging regarding the Patrick Mahomes mega-deal. And they are confusing.

Mahomes’ agency, Steinberg Sports, has disclosed that the 10-year extension has a value of $503 million. The agency also says that the deal includes $477 million in “guarantee mechanisms and ability to have outs if guarantee mechanisms aren’t exercised.”

That last part amounts to new terminology as far as NFL contracts are concerned. It sounds like rolling guarantees that apply to each and every season, forcing the Chiefs to commit to Mahomes early in a given offseason, presumably in March. If they don’t want to make the commitment for the next season in any given offseason, they’d have to cut him and he’d become a free agent.

As to the claim that the 10-year extension has a value of $503 million, it’s far more likely that the $503 million refers to the 12-year value of the deal, including the amounts he already was due to earn this year and next year. Indeed, if the 10-year extension itself had a value of $503 million, it would have been leaked as such, since it would result in a new-money average of $50.3 million per year.

The bottom line is that, in order to determine the true bottom line of the deal, we need to get the full contract. Efforts are underway to eyeball every nook and cranny of the deal in order to best understand it, from the team’s perspective and from the player’s perspective.