NFL Contract Notes: OL Award, Olympics, Rookie Bonuses, Collusion

The NFL is creating a new end-of-year award for offensive lineman called Protector of the Year, according to ESPN’s Brooke Pryor.

Troy Vincent, the league’s executive vice president of football operations, said that current Bills left tackle Dion Dawkins and former Rams and Bengals left tackle Andrew Whitworth were key advocates for establishing the new honor.

Protector of the Year will be a welcome addition to the NFL’s annual awards season, which has largely focused on quarterbacks for Most Valuable Player and skill positions for Offensive and Defensive Players of the Year. Offensive linemen typically have to settle for for Pro Bowl or All-Pro nods, as they almost never contend for the main awards slate despite their impact on the field.

It’s unclear if Protector of the Year will have any more value for its recipients than league-wide recognition. The NFL’s collective bargaining agreement only allows specific awards to be used as player incentives in contracts, as noted by OverTheCap’s Nick Korte. The new award is not listed in the current CBA and could only be added if the NFLPA agrees.

• The NFLPA will also have to navigate player participation in flag football at the 2028 Olympics, which owners unanimously approved earlier this week. “We look forward to working with the league, IFAF, and Olympic authorities on the terms of their participation to ensure players who compete will do so with protections to their health, safety, and job,” said NFLPA executive director Lloyd Howell in a statement (via Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio). Those protections will be central to negotiations between the league and its players, who want to play in the Olympics without losing the financial security of their contracts.
• NFL rookies are receiving significantly larger signing bonuses in 2025 compared to previous years, according to CBS Sports’ Joel Corry. For example, No. 3 pick Abdul Carter received a $29.5MM signing bonus from the Giants, more than Caleb Williams got from the Bears as the first overall pick last year. Fourth and fifth overall picks Will Campbell and Mason Graham are also expected to surpass Williams’ signing bonus when they put pen to paper on their first pro contracts. The league’s undrafted rookie reservation – each team’s pool of signing bonus money for UDFAs – went up to $206k this year, a more-than 25% increase from 2024, per Corry. Teams have rarely used up all of their UDFA bonus money, instead preferring to guarantee base salary with offsets if a player is waived and signed by another team, according to OverTheCap’s Jason Fitzgerald.
• The NFLPA’s collusion grievance against the NFL regarding fully-guaranteed contracts for quarterbacks has been resolved, according to Florio. An arbitrator found that the league “encouraged teams not to do guaranteed contracts,” but that did not result in a significant impact on players – namely, Lamar Jackson, Russell Wilson, and Kyler Murray. In short, the ruling indicates that the NFL did engage in collusion to avoid fully-guaranteed contracts, but those efforts did not hurt players enough to trigger damages.