INDIANAPOLIS — Large men wearing hats and jackets representing different NFL clubs sit around tables eating lunch and drinking beer in groups of two or three or four. One man stands in front of the group and gestures emphatically, spreading his arms wide and counting on his fingers. Another walks around the room passing out pens and sheets of paper. Then the man in front says something that prompts many of the gathered to raise their hands.
The black shades facing the street are drawn. No one walking by could see a thing. Curious onlookers inside the bustling restaurant crane their necks to look through a panel of glass windows, but they can’t overhear the spirited conversation going on inside this private room.
“I think it’s a group of scouts,” says a visitor in town for a collegiate swim meet. Another outsider at the table turns his chair around to get a better view, then catches a glimpse of a reporter’s credential nearby. “Do you know what’s going on in there?”
These men are NFL coaches. Position coaches, to be more precise. Offensive line coaches, to be exact. The sheets of paper make up a secret, unofficial annual salary survey organized independently by these coaches.
NFL coaching contracts are not public information, unlike those for NFL players. In college football, public university employees’ salary information is public record, but that transparency doesn’t apply to the NFL, where each club is a private business. Surveys like the one organized by the offensive line coaches, which are replicated by other position group coaches around the league, empower them with information they couldn’t get elsewhere.
“The survey is for me to see where I rack and stack on the pay scale and then just to be able to have that information as you negotiate,” one NFL running backs coach said. “The GMs and the owners have this information, it’s just that we don’t as coaches. I mean, you know what players make, players know what other players make.”
NFL coaches are management, but position coaches are about as middle management as it gets. Some have agents to handle their contracts, but many negotiate on their own. And unlike player contracts, there’s no salary cap on a coaching staff.
When Frank Reich was hired in Carolina last winter, he said he pitched Panthers owner David Tepper on the exact staff he wanted, and Tepper was willing to spend to get those coaches. “We were able to compete against other teams who were vying for similar candidates where we came out on top because of that backing,” Reich said.
That Panthers staff didn’t even survive a full season, but in a league structured to create parity, paying coaches is one potential avenue for competitive advantages.
“There’s some teams that don’t pay a lot, and they’re not bashful about it,” the running backs coach said. “That’s just what they believe in.”
Each coach surveyed in the private room at the Indianapolis restaurant received two sheets of paper: one to write down their job title (sans personal or team identifiers), years of experience and salary information for 2024, 2025 and 2026; the other to write down personal contact information to receive the results later. The two-sheet method gives the coaches taking part plausible deniability.
One offensive line coach said the salary survey process wasn’t always so secretive, but that has changed in recent years. Another line coach said that when he negotiates a contract, he’s usually instructed by the team not to announce his salary, so the rest of the coaches on the staff don’t know what he makes. The Athletic granted coaches quoted in this story anonymity to protect from potential retaliation.