Sports Illustrated study reveals how much money Trevor Lawrence lost playing at Clemson

Trevor Lawrence will come out nicely as the No. 1 pick in the draft, but there’s no denying the money he lost playing three years at Clemson.

On Thursday night, the time of anointing will be over. Trevor Lawrence will be the No. 1 pick in the NFL Draft, to the Jacksonville Jaguars. With that will come a nice contract, and money most people can only dream of via his salary and endorsements.

But the delay of his entrance into the NFL, and the timing of the NCAA starting to have to bend on athletes being able to capitalize on their success, impacted Lawrence more than any other prospect in this year’s draft class. Going forward a few years, it’s easy to predict no college athlete will have lost more due to timing that’s out of their control.

Andrew Brandt of Sports Illustrated recently authored a long piece about Lawrence’s missed potential earnings while in college.

How much did Trevor Lawrence lose playing at Clemson?

The 2011 collective bargaining agreement between the NFL and the NFLPA greatly reduced rookie contracts. The first overall picks in 2009 and 2010, Matthew Stafford and Sam Bradford, signed deals for $72 and $76 million respectively with $42 and $50 million guaranteed respectively.

By comparison, via Brandt’s estimate, Lawrence’s first contract will come in at something like $35 million in total. Or almost $70 million less than his deal could have been under the pre-2011 CBA, adjusting for a 3 percent annual increase estimated by Brandt.

The pandemic-induced lower salary cap for 2021 also hurts Lawrence. Last year’s No. 1 pick, Joe Burrow, signed a four-year, $36 million deal. Lawrence would typically get a small percentage raise from that. Instead, his first contract will come in lower. Having to play college football for three years, which is an NFL rule, has cost Lawrence to this point.

If the NCAA allowed athletes to profit off their name/image and likeness (NIL) during his career at Clemson, Lawrence would have cashed in more than any other college athlete. Brandt credited the platform Opendorse with an estimate that Lawrence could have been making $15,000 per post on Instagram, where he has close to 800,000 followers, over the last couple years. That means he, conservatively in Brandt’s opinion, lost between $3 and $5 million of NIL earnings during his three-year run at Clemson.

All told, and again probably conservatively with other paths to NIL earnings, Lawrence is estimated by Brandt to have lost $150 million in possible earnings during his time in college. That’s money he can and will start to get back as a pro. But that’s an awful lot of unrealized money, based almost strictly on timing and rules that don’t benefit players.