The Raiders negotiated the contract on Monday. It’s now been officially signed.
The team [announced the transaction](https://www.raiders.com/news/raiders-sign-center-tyler-linderbaum-nfl-2026-free-agency-transactions) on Thursday morning.
The Raiders will pay Linderbaum $81 million over three years. The structure of the deal makes every penny fully guaranteed as a practical matter. (The only way to avoid a $21 million salary for 2028 is to cut him after one season and $30 million paid, with the next $30 million fully guaranteed.)
The last hurdle was the physical. He could have failed it. He didn’t.
The 50-percent increase in the center market makes the Linderbaum contract the most stunning of the current cycle. The Raiders grossly overpaid; we’ve yet to identify any team that was willing to go above $22 million per year.
Whatever the reason (a “dysfunction tax” is the most obvious) they still undoubtedly and unquestionably overpaid. And they agreed to a three-year deal that puts him back on the open market in 2029, ditching a fourth or a fifth year that would have been non-guaranteed and that would have given the Raiders the ability to keep him around without having to potentially give him another raise.
The Raiders agreed to the Linderbaum contract before knowing Maxx Crosby’s contract would end up back on the books. There could have been a temptation to find something, anything, to help them avoid (or at least to rework) the deal, like they did with Jimmy Garoppolo in 2023 and Rodger Saffold in 2014.
That’s not the case. Linderbaum will cash in — and he has raised the bar with a deal that will help all other high-end centers who will be in line for new contracts.
Sure, the rest of the league may not like it. Owner Mark Davis could get a cold shoulder and/or a side eye or two at the annual meeting later this month. Regardless, the market is the market. And the market for centers has now skyrocketed from $18 million per year to $27 million per year.