BroBible
The 2026 NFL Playoffs kick off with a full slate of Wild Card Weekend games. Two teams will have byes this week, the Denver Broncos and Seattle Seahawks, with the other 12 teams in action.
After a flurry of NFL head coaches losing their jobs this week, now is as good of a time as any to look at the other side of the coin: the highest paid NFL coaches and their salaries.
There is a huge range in how much the 14 coaches in the 2026 NFL Playoffs are getting paid. At the top is Denver Broncos head coach Sean Payton who is earning anywhere from 9x to 3.5x more than the lowest paid head coach in the Playoffs.
Here we rank all 14 NFL Playoffs head coaches, from least to highest paid. Starting with the Carolina Panthers.
Coming in at 14th is Carolina Panthers head coach Dave Canales. He signed a six-year contract with the Panthers in 2024 and while details of his contract have never been made public, it is believed he earns somewhere between $2 to $5 million annually.
At the bottom end of that estimation, this would make him the lowest paid coach in the NFL. Surely that could change if the Panthers manage to make it out of Wild Card Weekend and run deep in the Playoffs.
Houston Texans head coach DeMeco Ryans signed a six-year contract with the team back in 2023. FOS reports Ryans’ annual salary at $8 million while others have reported it as low as $4.6 million which seems to be just a wild guess from some outlets.
At #12 is Green Bay Packers head coach Matt LaFleur who is reported to earn between $8M and $9 million annually following a 2022 contract extension. He was previously believed to be earning around $5.5 million back in 2019 prior to the extension.
Buffalo Bills head coach Sean McDermott could break through this year. He is a perennial Playoffs head coach and is said to earn $8 million annually with some estimates putting him up to $11 million.
McDermott signed a contract extension with the Bills back in June 2023 that keeps him under contract with the team through the 2027 season. Presumably, if Sean McDermott and the Bills win it all before then he will become one of the highest paid coaches in the league.
Seattle Seahawks head coach Mike Macdonald earns an estimated $9 million annually. Macdonald signed a 6-year contract with the Seahawks back in February 2024.
Despite considerable success with the Seahawks, he still earns a lot less than some league veterans and that is sure to change as he...
