Sports · Wednesday, 19 August 2026

01 · Briefing · what happened

Sport learned how to keep old bodies going. It never learned when to stop paying for them.

Sports 6 min 24 sources

A record dozen NFL linemen aged 35 or over started a game last season, and Aaron Donald is weighing a comeback at 35. Meanwhile the year's most criticised contracts belong almost entirely to players on the far side of their peak.

NFL linemen aged 35+ who started a game

first double-digit total since 2002

$9.34bn

average NFL club value

up 31 percent in a year

2.14bn pounds

Premier League summer spending so far

with over two weeks of the window left

3-4 years

average NFL career

shortest of the major leagues, per the players' union

At a glance

Twelve NFL linemen aged 35 or over started a game last season - the first double-digit total since 2002.
Clubs are spending heavily to get there: a 95 million dollar Patriots training centre, 9 million dollars on 49ers recovery kit.
Aaron Donald, retired since 2024, has been training with the Rams at 35 as rosters cut to 53 on 30 August.
The NFL's most-criticised contracts are nearly all players just past peak: Chris Godwin at 30, Marlon Humphrey past 30, Jonathan Greenard at 29.
The market does reprice, but late - Bradley Beal, once a maximum-salary guard, re-signed at 33 for 13.2 million dollars over two years.
Football prices age openly: fees climb to the early twenties and, for central midfielders, start falling after 25.
Newcastle sold the 28-year-old Bruno Guimaraes for 75 million pounds and called it a record for a player of his age and position.
Premier League clubs have spent 2.14 billion pounds this summer, more than Italy, Spain, Germany and France combined.

Forces in play

Bodies lasting longer Building↑

Trent Williams is playing left tackle at 38 and Lane Johnson at 36, helped by recovery programmes clubs now fund in the millions.

Paying for last season High→

The NFL's most-criticised deals belong to players at 29 and 30, signed on the evidence of a season that has already gone.

Transfer money High↑

English clubs have spent 2.14 billion pounds this summer and eleven of twenty have broken their own record during 2026.

Selling on time Building↑

Aston Villa turned 65 million pounds of signings into about 235 million in sales; Arsenal are criticised for holding players until the value drains.

Late corrections Easing↑

The market does eventually reprice age - Bradley Beal, once on a maximum salary, re-signed at 33 for 13.2 million dollars over two years.

In play Morgan Moses — Patriots tackle who started all 21 games at 34 on a tailored workload plan Aaron Donald — retired in 2024, training with the Rams again at 35 Bruno Guimaraes — sold at 28 for 75 million pounds, a fee Newcastle framed as an age record Bradley Beal — former maximum-salary guard, re-signed at 33 for 13.2 million dollars Buster Posey — Giants president who committed over half a billion dollars to a veteran core

How it unfolded

2001-05 an average of 10.2 NFL linemen a season start at 35 or over
2006-19 clubs switch to cheap rookies over pricier veterans; the average falls to 3.1
Last 5 years recovery facilities upgraded league-wide; the number climbs back to 12
13 Aug The Athletic maps the record transfer fee at every age; fees fall after 25
18 Aug the NFL's most-overpaid list lands, dominated by players at 29 and 30
30 Aug every NFL club cuts from 90 players to 53

Where this points

Watch what Aaron Donald decides before the 30 August cut, and whether any club pays a 35-year-old like one. A big guaranteed deal at that age would mean the money has finally followed the medicine rather than the highlight reel.

Full briefing

The old man started every game

Morgan Moses was 34 last season, in his twelfth year, on his fourth team. He started all 21 games the New England Patriots played on their Super Bowl run [1]. The reason was not luck. Coach Mike Vrabel’s staff built him a programme of less practice and a great deal of off-field treatment, aimed at preserving him for Sundays rather than Wednesdays [1].

It is working across the league. Last season 12 NFL linemen aged 35 or over started at least one game, six on offence and six on defence [1]. That is the first time the number has reached double figures since 2002 [1]. Trent Williams is 38 and still playing left tackle for San Francisco. Lane Johnson is 36, a two-time All-Pro, and has said this will be his last year [1].

The money followed the bodies. New England’s new training centre cost 95 million dollars [1]. In March the 49ers’ general manager John Lynch said his club was spending 9 million dollars on rehabilitation and recovery, mostly hydrotherapy [1].

The sharpest test arrives on 30 August, when every NFL club must cut from 90 players to 53 [2]. Aaron Donald was three times the league’s Defensive Player of the Year before retiring in 2024. He has been working out with the Los Angeles Rams this month, at 35 [2] [3]. Rams coach Sean McVay says there is no “invisible deadline” [2].

Who the money actually went to

The same week, CBS Sports published its annual list of the NFL’s most overpaid players. Read it as a list of ages and it tells a single story.

Chris Godwin is 30. Tampa Bay pay him 66 million dollars over three years, 44 million of it guaranteed, and last season he caught 33 passes for 360 yards, career lows [4]. Baltimore cornerback Marlon Humphrey, also past 30, is on 97.5 million dollars over five years and graded 103rd of 112 qualifying cornerbacks last year [4]. Philadelphia edge rusher Jonathan Greenard, 29, signed for 98 million dollars over four years; his sack count has gone 12.5, then 12.0, then 3.0 [4]. Cleveland still owes Deshaun Watson the balance of a fully guaranteed 230 million dollars [4].

None of those deals was stupid when it was signed. Each was signed on the evidence of a very good season.

The market does correct, only late. Bradley Beal was once a maximum-salary guard. He is 33 now, and averaged a career-low 8.2 points in six games before hip surgery. This month he re-signed with the Los Angeles Clippers for 13.2 million dollars over two years [5]. In San Francisco, Buster Posey has committed more than half a billion dollars to a veteran core; the Giants are 50-71 and heading for a fifth straight losing season [6].

A transfer fee is a bet on an age

Football prices age more openly than any other sport. The Athletic went through the record fee paid for every age and position. The shape is consistent. Fees start climbing around 20 and peak in the early twenties, and for central midfielders they “generally start to decline after age 25” [7]. For centre-backs the curve holds longer and settles around 33, when pace goes [7].

That is what makes Newcastle’s statement on selling Bruno Guimaraes so revealing. Announcing his 75-million-pound move to Arsenal, the club led with the money. It called the fee “a record fee for a player of his age and position combined” [7]. Newcastle also placed it in the top 10 ever received for a player aged 28 or over [7]. You only cut a record that finely when age is the thing you are arguing about.

Premier League clubs have now spent 2.14 billion pounds this summer with more than a fortnight left, more than Serie A, La Liga, the Bundesliga and Ligue 1 combined [8]. Eleven of the 20 clubs have broken their own transfer record during 2026 [8]. Manchester United say Bruno Fernandes, 31, is not for sale at any price, having turned away interest worth about 42.7 million pounds from Galatasaray [9]. His 57-million-pound release clause has expired and he has one year left on his deal, with no extension agreed [9]. Chelsea, meanwhile, value the 26-year-old Pedro Neto at close to 100 million pounds [10].

Selling well is now its own skill, and it is mostly about timing. The Athletic’s club-by-club review found Aston Villa have raised about 235 million pounds from players they bought for 65 million [11]. Arsenal, by contrast, are criticised for “holding on to players too long” and letting value drain on the bench [11]. In the NHL, an Athletic projection of Winnipeg’s roster three years out is built explicitly on “aging curves considered for and against” its best players [12].

Everything above the players got dearer too

Club values are climbing faster than wages. Sportico put the average NFL franchise at 9.34 billion dollars, up 31 percent in a year and the biggest jump since it began the exercise in 2020 [13]. The league’s least valuable club, Cincinnati, is worth 7.4 billion dollars, and all 32 sit inside the world’s 40 most valuable teams [13]. The Los Angeles Lakers changed hands this month at 12.5 billion dollars, up from 10 billion a year earlier [24].

Broadcast money is doing the same. NBA in-game advertising hit a record 2.11 billion dollars in the first season of the league’s 76-billion-dollar rights deal, a 38 percent rise [14]. The NFL’s attempt to rewrite its own contracts early has stalled. Fox’s Lachlan Murdoch says he will wait for the 2029 opt-out rather than pay for an early extension [15].

Not every deal is getting bigger. Sky Sports has not renewed its contract with the Baller League, whose chief executive Felix Starck says more than 90 percent of its audience watches online anyway [17]. CBS is also without its 180-million-dollar lead NFL analyst. Tony Romo, 46, is on indefinite leave after a drink-driving arrest, with a court date on 21 September [16]. JJ Watt has been promoted to the top booth [16].

Elsewhere

San Antonio’s city council voted 6-5 to reject a public vote on the city’s 489 million dollar share of a 1.3 billion dollar Spurs arena [18]. Bexar County approved 311 million dollars in venue taxes last November with 52.1 percent of the vote [18]. The Championship’s wage bill hit a record 903 million pounds in 2024-25 against revenues of 942 million, and net debt of 1.4 billion [19]. West Ham, newly relegated, broke the EFL transfer record to sign 22-year-old Arne Engels from Celtic for 22 million pounds [20]. In US college sport, agents in the name-image-likeness market face no certification and no governing body [21]. They can charge far more than the 3 percent the NFL players’ union permits [21]. Australia’s gambling advertising bill is set to pass after a deal between the two main parties, with independent senator David Pocock calling it a “betrayal of all Australians” [22]. And the Premier League will let broadcasters air live audio of players talking to referees for the first time [23].

02 · Lesson · why it matters

Why the biggest cheque always arrives a season too late

Ability rises, flattens, then slowly falls - and the proof of how good someone is only exists once the best of it has already happened.

How it works

Output rises fast, plateaus, then declines slowly
The best seasons come near the top of that curve
Contracts are awarded on evidence of best seasons
The evidence arrives only after the peak
So the biggest payments buy the falling half

The twist

The largest sums in sport are systematically spent on the falling half of a career. It is not that clubs are fooled - the proof they need only exists after the moment they needed it.

Where you've seen this

Company pay

a raise rewards the year you already had, then locks in for the years after

Fund investing

money floods into a fund after its best run, which is when the run tends to end

Hiring

the strongest candidate on paper is the one whose best work is furthest behind them

Reputations

a person becomes famous for a thing roughly when they stop doing it best

The catch

The curve is not one shape. Goalkeepers, kickers and centre-backs decline far later than sprinters, and better training has genuinely pushed it back. A club overpaying an older star may also be buying shirt sales or a dressing room the curve never measured.

Full lesson

The old man who started every game

Morgan Moses was 34, in his twelfth season, and he started every one of his team’s 21 games. That is not what a 34-year-old lineman is supposed to do. It happened because the club stopped treating him like everyone else: less practice, more treatment, whole days off. Sport has got remarkably good at keeping older bodies working. It has got no better at knowing when to pay for one.

Those two facts sit side by side this week. A record dozen linemen aged 35 or over started a game last season. And the list of the year’s worst contracts is, read another way, a list of ages: 29, 30, past 30.

A career has a shape, and it is not a cliff

The convenient story is that athletes are brilliant and then, one day, finished. The real shape is duller and stranger. Output climbs steeply through the early twenties. It plateaus for a few years. Then it falls away gradually, over seasons, with good days scattered through the decline that look exactly like the old form.

Football prices this shape openly, because it puts a number on every player. Transfer fees climb toward the early twenties and, for a central midfielder, start sliding after 25. For a centre-back they hold on into the thirties, because what a centre-back sells is partly knowing where to stand. The curve is real, and it is different for every job on the pitch.

Why the money lands on the wrong side of it

Here is the trap, and it is not stupidity.

A club decides what a player is worth using the only evidence that exists: the seasons already played. The biggest contract therefore arrives after the best run. But the best run is, by definition, near the top of the curve. So the largest sums in sport are handed over at almost exactly the moment the line turns down.

Read the overpaid list with that in mind and it stops looking like a set of blunders. A receiver signs for 66 million dollars after his best years and posts career lows at 30. An edge rusher goes from 12.5 sacks to 12 to three, on a 98 million dollar deal signed in between. Nobody was fooled. The information they needed simply did not exist yet when they needed it.

The market does correct. It just corrects late. A guard who once commanded a maximum salary re-signed this month at 33 for a fraction of it. That is the curve catching up, several years after the money did.

Two neighbouring ideas this is not

It looks like being promoted past your competence, and it is not. That is about a person moving into a different job they cannot do. This is the same job, unchanged, getting harder as the body changes.

It also looks like the birthday effect that sorts children in academies, and it is not that either. That one is a mirage - older children in a year group only look better. This one is the opposite. The ability is completely real. It is the timing of the evidence that misleads.

The arrangement underneath

None of this would matter much if you could pay by the month. You cannot, and that is a choice somebody made.

Contracts run for fixed years. Guarantees lock in money before the seasons are played. Transfer windows open twice and shut. Rosters must be cut to a fixed number on a fixed date. Each rule exists for good reasons. A player needs security; a league needs certainty. And each of them turns a gradual, private decline into one large forward bet.

Change the rules and you move the cost, you do not delete it. Shorter deals hand the risk to the player, who ages either way and now has no floor. That is the trade the guarantee was invented to prevent.

Everyone is somewhere on a curve

The pattern is not about athletes. It is about any system that rewards proven peak performance with a long forward commitment.

A pay rise arrives for the year you already had. Money floods into a fund after its best run. The strongest CV in the pile often belongs to the person whose finest work is furthest behind them. A reputation forms roughly when the thing it was built on has stopped.

We do this to each other constantly, and mostly we do it while feeling well informed. That is the uncomfortable part. The clubs in these stories had every number, every scan, every analyst. They still bought the falling half, because the evidence of a peak is the news that it is over.

There is no seat in this that sees the whole thing. The club sees last season. The player feels this morning. The rest of us see a highlight and a fee and decide someone was a fool. Nobody is standing where the curve can be read while it still matters.

03 · Lab · your turn

Sign The Season

Rehearse buying a player on last season's evidence, then watch which half of the career you actually paid for.

04 · Hope · carry this

Twelve linemen played past 35 last season, a number nobody had seen since 2002. What we call a natural limit turned out to move, once someone decided to look after people properly.