Highest-Paid NFL Kickers: Full Breakdown & Salary Rankings

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NFL kickers play one of the sport’s most uniquely valuable positions. A great kicker gives a team a massive advantage, allowing them to score from longer distances and reliably put points on the board, even in tough conditions. On the other hand, a struggling kicker can cost a team from winning games it should.
In the early days of the NFL, the league did not have kicking specialists and other players instead handled kicking duties. Benjamin Agajanian is believed to have been the league’s first kicking specialist in 1945, and now 80 years later, kickers have since become highly skilled, able to hit field goals from 60 yards out or beyond. As such, they’ve become the latest NFL position that can earn multi-millions on an annual basis.
Here’s a look at the paid kickers in the NFL, ranked by annual salary.
Who is the NFL’s highest paid kicker?
On Monday, Cowboys kicker Brandon Aubrey supplanted Texans kicker Ka’imi Fairbairn for the title of highest-paid kicker in the NFL. Per Ian Rapoport of NFL Network, Aubrey has re-signed with the Cowboys on a four-year, $28 million deal with $20 million in guarantees. He is now the first kicker making a salary of $7 million, surpassing the $6.5 million salary Fairbairn earned when re-signed with the Texans on a two-year, $13 million deal. He has also become the first kicker to surpass Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker in total contract value and guaranteed money. Butker’s deal, which he signed in 2024, included $17.75 million guaranteed and a total value of $25.6 million.
Top 15 highest-paid kickers
Kicker | Team | Annual Salary | Total Contract Value |
|---|---|---|---|
Brandon Aubrey | Cowboys | $7 million | $28 million |
Ka’imi Fairbairn | Texans | $6.5 million | $13 million |
Harrison Butker | Chiefs | $6.4 million | $25.6 million |
Jake Elliott | Eagles | $6 million | $24 million |
Cameron Dicker | Chargers | $5.501 million | $22.004 million |
Graham Gano | Giants | $5.5 million | $16.5 million |
Evan McPherson | Bengals | $5.5 million | $16.5 million |
Will Lutz | Broncos | $5.37 million | $16.1 million |
Jason Myers | Seahawks | $5.275 million | $21.1 million |
Brandon McManus | Packers | $5.1 million | $15.3 million |
Tyler Bass | Bills | $5.1 million | $20.4 million |
Chris Boswell | Steelers | $5 million | $20 million |
Daniel Carlson | Raiders | $4.6 million | $18.4 million |
Eddy Piñeiro | 49ers | $4.25 million | $17 million |
Chase McLaughlin | Buccaneers | $4.1 million | $12.3 million |
After Aubrey and Fairbairn, Butker and the Eagles’ Jake Elliott are the third and fourth-highest paid kicker in the league. Both Butker and Elliott have similarly seen their accuracy wane over the past couple years, but they’ve been key members of the Chiefs’ and Eagles’ Super Bowl teams over the past decade.
Chargers kicker Cameron Dicker certainly merits his spot as a top-five highest-paid kicker. Dicker, who re-signed with Los Angeles in 2024, became the most accurate kicker in NFL history last season with a 93.5 career field goal percentage.
While the kickers on the list above are primarily earning in the $4–7 million per year range, the majority of kickers outside the top 15 are earning between $800,000 and $1.3 million. This is for a variety of reasons, often because they are kickers who are either on rookie deals, short-term contracts, or have struggled with consistency and are on a second or third chance.
Another kicker that could jump into the top-15 in the future is Jaguars’ Cam Little, who is currently on his rookie contract. He did miss some kicks earlier in the year, but made every kick over the final 10 weeks of the regular season, including hitting an NFL record 68-yard field goal, the longest in league history.
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Eva Geitheim is an NFL writer at Sports Illustrated. Prior to joining SI in December 2024, she wrote for Newsweek, Gymnastics Now and Dodgers Nation. A Bay Area native, she has a bachelor’s in communications from UCLA. When not writing, she can be found baking or rewatching Gilmore Girls.