Entering a contract year, Indianapolis Colts All-Pro offensive guard Quenton Nelson is solely focused on winning more football games this season, and is admittedly ‘all-ball’ right now.
Specifically, he’s rightfully deferring to his agent representation regarding any lucrative, ongoing contract negotiations with the only professional football team he’s ever played for (via The Athletic’s James Boyd):
Having turned 30-years-old this past March, the 6x NFL All-Pro and 8x NFL Pro Bowler now finds himself as the elder statesman of the Colts offensive line room—especially after fellow Indianapolis offensive line pillars such as Ryan Kelly and Braden Smith have since departed the organization in consecutive offseasons respectively.
In fact, Nelson quipped that he’s now become one of the ‘grown ass men’ with the salt-and-pepper beards. Something that wasn’t the case when he entered the league back in 2018 as the 6th overall pick, when he actually revered the grizzled veterans at that time for their seemingly gray beards. (Adam Vinatieri immediately comes to mind from his timeline!).
With a $24.2 million cap hit in the last year of his current contract, Nelson is projected to command anywhere between $27.5 million to $29 million annually on his next contract and ‘set the offensive guard market’ yet again—which he already did back in 2022 when he signed a 4-year, $80 million contract extension.
While Spotrac projects his current market value at $23.2 million per year, that seems low given the current frenzied market and inflation of modern NFL free agency. Rather, that number should be closer to $30 million per year, and the Colts may do well to lock up Nelson for the rest of his clearly Canton-bound career.
