Alright, so today I’m gonna walk you through my little side project where I was trying to figure out who the highest-paid kicker in the NFL is. It sounds simple, right? But trust me, it got a little messy.
First off, I started with the obvious: Google. I typed in “highest paid kicker nfl” and got a bunch of lists from different sports websites. The problem? They all seemed to be slightly different, and some were definitely outdated. Like, mentioning guys who retired years ago.
So, I decided I needed to go straight to the source. I figured the NFL Player’s Association (NFLPA) might have some kind of public database. After a bunch of digging on their site, I struck out. It’s like they’re actively trying to hide this info. Figures.
Next, I thought about team websites. I went to a few team sites, hoping they’d have player salary info listed. Nope. They have rosters, sure, but nothing about how much these guys are banking. Shocker.
At this point, I was getting a little frustrated. I remembered reading somewhere about a website called *. It’s a site dedicated to tracking NFL team salary caps and player contracts. I went there, and bingo! They had a whole section dedicated to player contracts, including kickers.
Okay, great! I found the info. But it wasn’t just handed to me on a silver platter. The site had a TON of data, and it was organized in a way that made it kind of hard to quickly see who was making the most. So, I decided to get my hands dirty with some data manipulation.
I copied the relevant table from * and pasted it into a Google Sheet. Now I could sort and filter the data. I started by sorting the “Avg/Year” column, which showed the average annual value of each player’s contract. That quickly showed me who the top earners were.
But wait, there’s more! I noticed that some of the contracts were structured differently. Some kickers had huge signing bonuses that skewed the average annual value. So, I decided to look at “Guaranteed Money” as well. This gave me a better sense of the overall commitment the team had made to each player.
After messing around with the data for a while, I finally had a pretty good idea of who the highest-paid kickers were based on both average annual value and guaranteed money. There were some slight differences depending on which metric I used, but the top few guys were pretty consistent.
The whole process took way longer than I expected. It wasn’t just a simple Google search. It involved a bunch of digging, data manipulation, and critical thinking. But hey, that’s what makes it fun, right?
- Step 1: Initial Google Search (failed)
- Step 2: NFLPA website search (failed)
- Step 3: Team website searches (failed)
- Step 4: Found * (success!)
- Step 5: Copied data into Google Sheets
- Step 6: Sorted and filtered by Avg/Year and Guaranteed Money
- Step 7: Analyzed the data and identified the highest-paid kickers
What I Learned
So, what did I learn from all this? Firstly, official sources aren’t always the easiest to find or use. Sometimes you have to dig around a bit. Secondly, data can be misleading if you don’t look at it from different angles. Average annual value is important, but so is guaranteed money. Finally, sometimes the most interesting projects are the ones that seem simple on the surface.
That’s my story. Hope you found it helpful or at least mildly entertaining.
