I have said this for years, but the announced value of football contracts rarely mean anything:

Last winter, the Tennessee Titans’ braintrust was faced with an odd contract clause that required the team to pay Steve McNair either $1 million or $50 million on the eve of free agency. Titans’ managers scratched their heads, drummed on the table, gazed off into the distance, took long walks and finally decided that they would rather pay $1 million than $50 million. Attention Bank of Sweden! Maybe the Titans’ front office should be nominated for the Nobel Prize in Economics. This puzzling clause was part of the fictional contract that enabled McNair’s agent to announce, in 2004, that he had signed his client to a breathtaking “six-year, $100 million contract.” In order for those numbers to be realized, Tennessee had to opt to pay him $50 million instead of $1 million in winter 2006 — which was never terribly likely, was it?

Seriously. To reiterate – football contracts are mostly non-guaranteed, which means they often change after being signed. Baseball and basketball, however, are fully guaranteed. If you ever wonder why a star two-sport athelete chooses baseball over football, this definitely has a little something to do with it