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Shedeur Sanders may not have had a spotless rookie season on the field for the Cleveland Browns.
Off of it, though, he could hardly have done better.
Sanders shattered Tom Brady's record for one-year payments received from the NFLPA for royalties and player marketing, according to Front Office Sports and Pro Football Talk.
The rookie QB received $17.7 million in payments between May 2025 and February 2026, with the money going to Sanders' SS2 Legendary LLC.
Brady held the previous record at just more than half of that, $9.5 million in 2021.
PFT reports the official figure as being $17,712,015.
PFT's Mike Florio explained where this money came from:
"Most player royalty through the NFLPA come from group licensing deals, which compensate players for jersey sales, trading cards, video games, and other collectibles. As one source suggested, the $9.24 million payment to Sanders in May 2025 may have reflected his individual trading-card guarantee — something that likely would have been negotiated before he slipped from round one to round five in the 2025 draft."
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The royalty payments are certainly a huge boon for Sanders, and they speak to his overall popularity and notoriety.
His rookie contract from being a fifth-round pick is worth $4.6 million over four seasons, so these payments blow that out of the water.
Florio also points out that Sanders is changing his jersey number this season from 12 to 2, which could spark plenty more purchases that contribute to his royalty earnings.
And if Sanders happens to figure out his QB play a bit better on the field, that will only grow his marketability even more.
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