It was announced that Flynn was cut by the Oakland Raiders on Monday, thanks to another fabulous performance from Terrelle Pryor, who outplayed Flynn in the preseason to earn the starting job. A much similar thing happened to Flynn the year before when he lost out to Russell Wilson, which led to him being traded to Oakland last offseason.
Now Flynn sits on the free agency market, wondering how it all went wrong. But when you look at it in a life-after-football perspective, Flynn has done pretty good for himself. According to Pro Football Talk, Flynn has made $14.5 million for doing basically nothing at all since his 480-yard performance for Green Bay in Week 17 of the 2011-12 NFL season.
Flynn made a total of $8 million sitting on the bench behind Russell Wilson last season with the Seahawks. The deal was for $2 million guaranteed with a $6 million signing bonus.
The next offseason, which was just this previous offseason, he was traded to the Raiders looking to be their quarterback of the future. Of course, as just aforementioned, he was beat out by Pryor. He just fit better for that atrocious offensive line. With the Raiders, Flynn had $3.5 million guaranteed with a $3.5 million signing bonus.
Put that all together, and Flynn sits at nearly $15 million made in the past two years from playing under expectations. Then again, it shouldn't have been surprising that Flynn was going to be released. He wasn't worth it with his contract.
He had a chance to prove himself last week when filling in for an injured Pryor, but he failed. He was also moved to third-string on the Raiders depth chart, so he was basically useless at this point.
But I applaud Flynn for sticking with it despite the criticism, because the dude now has got cash. Obviously, he's going to get picked up soon by a team. I wouldn't be surprised if the Buffalo Bills, Cleveland Browns, Jacksonville Jaguars or maybe even the Houston Texans pick him up off of waivers.
But yeah, this is how Matt Flynn made $14.5 million from doing absolutely nothing. Jim Sorgi must be jealous.
This article was written by Josh Dhani. Follow him on Twitter here and read more of his work here.
