Joe Flacco just signed a contract to become the highest-paid player in NFL history, and the Baltimore Ravens quarterback decided a McDonalds drive-thru was the perfect place to celebrate.
Just a few hours after Flacco signed a six-year contract extension that made him the highest paid player by average annual value in the history of the league, he was seen getting a 10-piece chicken McNuggets meal and an unsweetened iced tea for $6.99, ESPN reported.
Flacco made headlines in the offseason for insisting that he was an elite quarterback despite numbers that are closer to the middle of the pack than to passing leaders like Aaron Rodgers and Tom Brady. But Flacco proved himself throughout the Ravens unlikely Super Bowl run, and Baltimore shelled out the money to prove that he is indeed elite.
The signing remained big news, even as offseason moves started to heat up with teams placing franchise tags on players, SportsXchange noted.
“It wasn’t necessarily about the money,” Flacco said at his news conference announcing the signing. “It was, at that point, about earning that respect and feeling like I was respected around here. The fact that they have made me that definitely makes me feel good about how I played and how they feel about me.”
In his trip to the McDonald’s in Aberdeen, Maryland, Flacco was spotted by a diehard Ravens fan, Sherry Norman.
“I kept saying to the people I work with, ‘Doesn’t that look like Joe Flacco?,’ ” Norman said. “And then he turned towards the window and it was him.”
Norman got up the nerve to ask the customer, who confirmed that he was indeed Joe Flacco. The quarterback posed for a picture as he waited in the drive-thru line.
The Ravens quarterback’s new contract gives him a $29 million signing bonus and a total of $52 million guaranteed over the life of the deal. In total, the deal is worth $120.6 million.
That should buy Joe Flacco a lot of McDonald’s chicken nuggets.