The National Football League is taking a strong stance regarding vaccination. They're trying to mandate vaccination for all its players, with the NFLPA opposing. That's why they're likely to tighten up their protocols for the upcoming season.
The league has over 91.7% of vaccinated players and staff right now. Then again, some of the biggest names in the game are still unsure regarding the long-term effects of the vaccine, thus remain unvaccinated.
Nonetheless, the league has repeated that it won't hesitate to force teams to forfeit games due to Covid-19 outbreaks on unvaccinated players, and that it's unlikely that they'll postpone or reschedule games as they did last season.
Star Quarterbacks Could Cost Their Teams Millions This Season
So, with players like Kirk Cousins, Lamar Jackson, Josh Allen, and Cam Newton not willing to take the vaccine as of now, their teams face the risk of them being scratched at the eleventh hour due to positive tests.
Cousins and Allen are two of the highest-paid players in the league, while Jackson is expected to sign a contract extension that will grant him $40-$45 million per year. As for Newton, he could lose more than just money if he can't play with Mac Jones waiting in line.
But, how much money would their teams lose per every game they're not able to play? The league hasn't said anything about players forfeiting their pay due to positive tests, so the franchise would still have to pay them in full.
Star Quarterbacks Could Cost Their Teams $800K-$2M Per Game
If we take Josh Allen's $43 million a year contract plus Lamar Jackson's projected $45 million deal and Kirk Cousins' $35 million contract, we get an average of $41 million per year in contracts.
Most of the players get paid monthly. So we could say that they make roughly $3.4 million per month. Divide that into 4 weeks and that would give you an average of $850,000 per game they play.
Nonetheless, that would be inaccurate, as the NFL isn't a year-round league. Instead, we could divide their salary into the 17 games they're expected to play throughout the regular season. Should that be the case, then we'd find that each player makes around $2.4 million per game.
That means that if these players miss a game due to a positive Covid-19 test while unvaccinated, their team would lose from $850K to $2.4M plus the potential fine the league would enforce them.
Of course, we're not telling anybody what to do with their bodies. Taking the vaccine or not is a personal decision and we're not here to judge or point fingers at anybody, just to run some numbers. Also, teams would lose that money if they got hurt or missed time due to non-Covid illness.
