J.J. Watt will get $30.87 million in real guaranteed money

There are two levels to the coverage of big-time NFL contracts: the first level when everyone reports the numbers as stated by the team for official purposes, and the second level when someone gets a look at the fine print and reveals the true details.

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Often the true details are much less impressive than the reported details. For instance, when Colin Kaepernick supposedly signed a contract with $61 million in guaranteed money, everyone lost their minds.

Then we found out that, once you dug through the contract language to the real information, the true guaranteed money in the deal was only about $12 million.

Oh.

Same thing with J.J. Watt’s new contract extension, though the discrepancy between reported guarantees and true guarantees is not so dramatic as with Kaepernick, whose contract is loaded with de-escalators.

In Watt’s case, the reported guarantee is $51.8 million, but the actual guarantee is “just” $30.87 million.

Watt has a chance to earn the full guaranteed money only if he remains on the roster after two years. As with every NFL deal these days, the team has built a ton of security into the contract.

The Texans get to keep control of J.J. Watt for the next six years, but they’re covered in case J.J. Watt gets hurt or takes a huge dip in production. They’ve also made it easier for themselves to deal with Jadeveon Clowney’s contract in a few years, assuming Clowney works out.

Again we are taught a vital lesson about NFL contracts: don’t be dazzled by the pyrotechnics at the start. Wait for the smoke to clear before you decide how much to be impressed and/or outraged.

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