Cowboys' Demarcus Lawrence Tops List of NFL Salaries Paid to Injured Players

FRISCO - The real pain of NFL injuries, of course, belong to the players who are suffering them.

But to the teams "paying the cap'' to players who have the misfortune of falling to injury? That's a pain, too.

In the case of DeMarcus Lawrence? Yes, 2021 was doubly painful.

The NFL is, at times, a sport of attrition. Many times a game comes down to which team is the healthiest at the time of the contest, especially late in a season.

Injuries always have been, and always will be a part of not just the game, but the business of football. That's why depth on rosters is so important and discussed so often. With the massive salaries that players are commanding in this era of the NFL, NFL front offices are challenged with how to deal with paying injured players and how that affects the rest of the roster.

Demarcus Lawrence

Michael Gallup

Randy Gregory

From sprained ankles to broken bones to torn ACLs, a recent report has revealed the true price of injuries for each team, and which players cost the most.

The report was based on how many games a player missed and that player's average salary per game. While the Dallas Cowboys came in at No. 9 as a team, spending a whopping $18,072,631 on injured players in 2021 in 204 missed games, they claim the individual list's top player.

The Dallas Cowboys splashed the cash on their defensive end, Lawrence, this year, paying out a massive $9,444,444 in salary while he was injured for 10 games throughout the season. This saw Lawrence earn more than half his annual salary during his recovery.

Demarcus Lawrence and Amari Cooper

Blake Jarwin

Tyron Smith

The New York Jets topped the list with their injured players costing them an astonishing $28,670,537 throughout the 2021 season. Safety Marcus Maye, on his own, cost the Jets $6.2 million over the course of the season having missed 10 out of 17 games the Jets played – more than the entire injury salary costs of the Philadelphia Eagles ($4,988,413) and the Buffalo Bills ($4,867,233), who are Nos. 31 and 32 respectively.

This is nobody's "fault.'' But it's part of the bookkeeping of the NFL - painful to the player, mostly, but a pain to the team trying to balance its checkbook as well.