Syracuse Football: Riley Dixon now among highest paid punters in NFL

Former Syracuse football punter Riley Dixon is now among the highest-paid punters in the NFL. Here are all the details and what it all means.

Last week former Syracuse football stud Riley Dixon inked a long term deal with the New York Giants. Now we know exactly how much moolah he got in his bank account.

Dixon signed a three-year deal worth $8.7 million which includes $3.05 million guaranteed and features a half a million-dollar signing bonus.

Here’s how it breaks down over the next three seasons:

• 2020: $2.7 million cap hit
  • $850K salary
  • $1.7 million roster bonus
  • $50K workout bonus
• 2021: $2.9 million cap hit
  • $2.75 million salary
  • $50K workout bonus
• 2022: $2.9 million cap hit
  • $2.5 million salary
  • $250K roster bonus
  • $50K workout bonus

After 2020 the New York Giants could move on from Dixon and they’d only eat $250K in dead money, per Dan Duggan of The Athletic.

Riley can earn his yearly workout bonus by participating in at least 90 percent of the team’s offseason programs.

Dixon’s new yearly average salary puts him at ($2.9 per season) which ranks just outside the top-five highest-paid punters in the National Football League, per Spotrac.

That ranks him behind:

• Thomas Morstead, New Orleans Saints
  • $3.9 million per season, the highest-paid punter in football.
• Johnny Hekker, Los Angeles Rams
  • $3.7 million per season, the second-highest-paid punter in football.
• Sam Martin, Detroit Lions
  • $3.4 million per season, the third highest-paid punter in football.
• Sam Koch, Baltimore Ravens
  • $3.2 million per season, the fourth highest-paid punter in football.
• Brett Kern, Tennessee Titans
  • $3.1 million per season, the fifth highest-paid punter in football.

With the New York Giants having limited cap space in 2019, they got creative with the structure of the contract. They handed Dixon a much smaller signing bonus but maximized a guaranteed roster bonus so they could layer it out into the future.

It says a lot about Big Blue that they did whatever it took to lock in Riley Dixon long term. This will keep the former Orange stud with the G-Men until he’s approaching 30 (he’ll be 29 when the deal is set to expire in 2023).