New Headline: Bradford Boasts Major Boost as Seahawks Earn $1 Million Performance Bonus in 2025
Drake Thomas also earned one of the largest performance based pay bonuses in the NFL, but it’s much less inflammatory to put his name in the title.
LANDOVER, MD - NOVEMBER 02: Anthony Bradford #75 of the Seattle Seahawks lines up against the Washington Commanders during the second half of the NFL game at Northwest Stadium on November 02, 2025 in Landover, Maryland. (Photo by Scott Taetsch/Getty Images) | Getty Images The Seattle Seahawks are the reigning Super Bowl champions, having handily defeated the New England Patriots 29-13 in the home stadium of the NFC West rival San Francisco 49ers. With the victory comes bragging rights for the entirety of the offseason, along with the difficulty in keeping together a championship roster as free agents earn big paydays with other teams across the league.
To that end, the Seahawks have already seen several key members of the roster depart for more money elsewhere, including Ken Walker, Boye Mafe, Coby Bryant and Tariq Woolen. However, a pair of Seahawks starters turned their on field performance during the 2025 season into large performance performance bonuses are right guard Anthony Bradford and linebacker Drake Thomas. NFL players will receive more than $542 million in Performance-Based Pay for their performance during the 2025 season.
The Performance-Based Pay program is a collectively bargained benefit that compensates all players based upon their playing time and salary levels. Top 25 here pic. twitter.
com/1YkTTPD9RZ — Brian McCarthy (@NFLprguy) March 16, 2026 For those unfamiliar with the performance based pay system under the current collective bargaining agreement, there is a pool of performance based pay that is split among the players based on an equation that takes into account the player’s salary and their snaps played. That means that lower paid players who play a large number of snaps have an opportunity to earn a significant pay increase as a result of their playing time, and for 2025 there was $542M that was split among the players. In the case of Bradford and Thomas, as third year players during the 2025 season, each earned a base salary of $1.