The NFL each year announces the top 25 players in performance-based earnings. A trio of 49ers were represented in this year’s group.
Performance-based pay is a program put together by the NFL where players receive money from a pool of $336 million. The goal is to compensate players who dramatically over-perform their salaries.
Under the Performance-Based Pay program, a fund is created and used as a supplemental form of player compensation based on a comparison of playing time to salary. Players become eligible to receive a bonus distribution in any regular season in which they play at least one official down. In general, players with higher playtime percentages and lower salaries benefit most from the pool.
For the 49ers, a team that thrived in part last season to late-round picks and a couple of out-of-nowhere veteran starters, the payouts were sizable for a handful of players.
Safety Tashaun Gipson earned an additional $708,106 after signing before the last week of the preseason for $1,120,000 and then starting all 17 games at free safety for San Francisco. He also led the team in interceptions. His performance-based earnings were the 12th-highest in the league.
The other 49ers’ safety, Talanoa Hufanga, also landed among the top-25 performance-based earners. The 2022 fifth-round pick in his first season as a full-time starter snagged Pro Bowl and First-Team All-Pro nods. He checked in at $703,926 in performance-based pay, which ranked No. 16 in the NFL.
Center Jake Brendel snuck into the top 25 at No. 23 with $643,691 in additional earnings. He entered the 2022 season with only three starts in his career, but took over as the 49ers’ starting center and played well enough to hold onto the job for the entire season. San Francisco gave him a one-year contract with a $990,000 base salary before the start of last season. He played well enough to earn some additional cash, and then earned a four-year deal worth up to $20 million with the 49ers this offseason.
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