Harrison Butker’s new contract doubles his 2024 earnings, but reduces his cap hit

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The details for the the Kansas City placekicker’s new contract extension are good for both parties.

Earlier this week, it was reported that the Kansas City Chiefs had signed placekicker Harrison Butker to a four-year contract extension worth $25.6 million, including $17.8 million guaranteed.


We now have the details for that contract, which Butker negotiated himself.


According to the salary-cap site Spotrac, Butker’s 2024 compensation includes a $7 million signing bonus and a $50,000 workout bonus on top of his $1.2 million base salary. Since his previous contract (which extended through 2024) carried a prorated cap charge of $729,000 for a contract restructure that opened cap space in 2022, that means his total cap hit for this season is $3.4 million.


Under his previous contract — which has been superceded by this extension — Butker carried a cap hit of $4.8 million on a base salary of $3.9 million, per-game roster bonuses totaling $100,000 and a workout bonus of $50,000.


So Butker will be paid a total of $8.3 million in 2024 — just over twice what he was set to be paid this season under his previous contract — while his 2024 cap hit will be reduced by $1.4 million.


This gives the team an estimated $15.5 million in total cap space.


Butker’s base salaries for 2024, 2025 ($3.7 million) and 2026 ($5.8 million) were all guaranteed at signing. In both 2027 and 2028 (when he’s 33 years old) he’ll also earn $5.8 million. From 2025 through 2028, his yearly workout bonus will be $100,000.


The team could cut him in 2027, which would save $4.4 million against the cap. But if he continues to be one of the league’s best placekickers, it’s more likely that he’ll again be a candidate for an extension during the 2028 offseason.


This contract was originally reported to make Butker the league’s highest-paid kicker by AAV (average annual value). That might not be exactly true.


While it’s accurate to say that the four-year extension worth $25.6 million gives Butker an AAV of $6.4 million over those four years (which exceeds the $6.0 million AAV that the Philadelphia Eagles’ Jake Elliott and Baltimore Ravens’ Justin Tucker both earn, per Spotrac), it really should be figured as $29.7 million over five years, since the final year of Butker’s previous contract was superceded. That’s $5.9 million AAV, which would rank third in the league — assuming that the figures for Elliott and Tucker were figured the same way. (Hint: they weren’t).


So it’s just a lot easier to figure AAV as the new money divided by the new years of the contract. On that basis, Butker is the league’s highest-paid placekicker.


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