As Salaries Boom, It’s a Good Time to Be an NFL Coach

No matter what happened on Super Bowl Sunday, Kansas Chiefs Coach Andy Reid is still money. He is the highest-paid coach in the N.F.L., earning $20 million a year. And his Falstaffian turns alongside his star quarterback, Patrick Mahomes, in those ubiquitous State Farm commercials have made him instantly recognizable, even to nonfootball fans.

Reid’s record suggests he is a bargain: three Super Bowl championships in five trips to the game with the Chiefs. He has also helped transform his small-market team into the league’s star attraction. Nearly 128 million people tuned in to see if the Chiefs could become the first team in N.F.L. history to win a third consecutive Super Bowl. Instead they watched Philadelphia demolish Kansas City, 40-22.

On Tuesday, the New Orleans Saints named the Eagles’ offensive coordinator, Kellen Moore, their new head coach, officially closing the hiring cycle for head coaches this year. Moore, 36, was the seventh coach hired since the end of the regular season, and in each case a team has handed over millions of dollars to the person who it hopes can do for the franchise what Reid has done for Kansas City.

Over the past three decades, the value of N.F.L. franchises has skyrocketed. In 1989, Jerry Jones bought the Dallas Cowboys for $140 million. In 2023, the Washington Commanders fetched $6 billion. With the advent of the player salary cap in the mid-1990s, coaches became assets, like practice facilities and team planes, and their average salaries have risen from $300,000 to $6 million a year, according to data compiled by Sportico and Pro Football Reference.

And each off-season, a handful of teams seem ready to empty their pockets in pursuit of the next genius coach.

Last month, the Chicago Bears hired the Detroit Lions’ offensive coordinator, Ben Johnson, 38, for a reported $13 million a year. He was suddenly the seventh-highest-paid N.F.L. coach — $1 million ahead of Baltimore’s John Harbaugh, who has won a Super Bowl, and $1 million behind the 49ers’ Kyle Shanahan, whose team has played for the title twice. According to ESPN, Moore’s annual salary with the Saints would more than double the roughly $2.5 million he was making in Philadelphia.