Three months after his controversial commencement speech, Harrison Butker is now the highest-paid kicker in the NFL.
Butker, 29, signed a new four-year, $26.5 million contract extension with the Kansas City Chiefs on Monday, August 5, according to ESPN’s Adam Schefter.
The contract comes with $17.75 million guaranteed and keeps Butker, who had one year remaining on his current deal, in Kansas City through the end of the 2028 season.
Butker — who represented and negotiated the deal himself, according to Schefter — celebrated the news on social media.
“There’s no place I’d rather be than with the Chiefs,” he wrote via X, “excited to finalize a 4 year extension. To the Heights!”
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The contract puts Butker ahead of the Philadelphia Eagles’ Jake Moody and the Baltimore Ravens’ Justin Tucker, who both make an average of $6 million yearly on their current deals.
Butker’s extension comes roughly three months after his commencement speech at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas ruffled feathers.
During his address, Butker called on women to embrace the role of “homemaker” and equated Pride Month to “deadly sin,” among other controversial and hateful comments.
After the speech, an online petition to dismiss Butker from the Chiefs received more than 238,000 signatures.
Weeks after the speech, at a charity gala on May 24, Butker broke his silence on the tidal wave of animosity that had come his way.
“At the outset, many people expressed a shocking level of hate, but as the days went on — even those who disagreed with my viewpoints — shared their support for my freedom of religion,” Butker said. “In my seven years of being in the NFL, I’ve become familiar with the positive and negative comments, but the majority of them revolve around my performance on the field.”
He continued, “The more I talked about what I value most, which is my Catholic faith, the more polarizing I’ve become,” he said. “It’s a decision I’ve consciously made and one I do not regret at all. If we have truth and charity, we should trust the Lord’s providence and let the Holy Ghost do the rest of the work.”
