Jets wide receiver Brandon Marshall gets a pay raise

Wide receiver Brandon Marshall hasn’t even completed one NFL season with the New York Jets, but they’ve already given him a raise.

The Jets acquired veteran receiver Brandon Marshall in the offseason and they obviously want to keep him happy, as they’ve just given him a raise, according to a story by Pro Football Talk. What they’ve essentially done is retooled his contract, giving him a higher base salary that is all guaranteed while eliminating his workout bonus. The result is a maximum earnings amount of $26 million over three years instead of the old $24.3 million. His base salary is now $9 million and fully guaranteed, vs his old one of $7.5 and a $200,000 workout bonus.

The Jets didn’t have to do that. They had, after all, assumed Marshall’s contract on from the Bears, but they obviously want to make Marshall happy and show him that they want him to be a Jet. Besides his new base salary for 2015, he also has another raise in 2016 to a $9.5 million base salary. However, he did take a cut in his 2017 salary, from $8.3 million to $7.5 million, which likely rides on the assumption that Marshall will be slowing down by then, having reached his mid-30s. There’s a total of $1.3 million in additional guaranteed money in the new contract.

This is a pretty good deal for Marshall and a nice gesture by the Jets who could have obviously let him play out his old contract. However, it frontloads his contract, giving him more money to make in the next couple of years, with more money overall, and then a concession from both sides in 2017. You don’t always see contracts that look to work out nicely for both sides like this.

When he was traded back in March, the Jets did actually promise Marshall that they’d redo his contract, according to ESPN, but they knew they had to wait until after May 22 to meet a league rule that keeps players from having their contracts redone more than once in a 12-month span. Marshall had last finalized a contract with the Bears on May 22 of last year. So that explains why the Jets are doing it now. At the time, the Jets figured that they were in competition for Marshall’s services with other teams. The Bears had given Marshall permission to talk to other teams and more than one were interested, which gave Marshall some leverage.

The Jets have also done this before, having previously given Thomas Jones and Kris Jenkins new contracts after acquiring them via a trade. It’s been a busy offseason for the Jets, who also picked up Ryan Fitzpatrick, Zac Stacy and Darrelle Revis among others.

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