Derek Wolfe signed a big contract and only got better

Four years, 36.7 Million dollars. Those are the specs of the massive contract that 25-year old Derek Wolfe just inked with the Denver Broncos. At 9.175 mil a year, money like that could go to a guy’s head. With 17.5 million of that guaranteed, a guy could easily tone it back a gear, it happens all the time.

Not Derek Wolfe, definitely not Derek Wolfe. After bringing in the big bucks, Derek pot together one of the biggest games of his career. Six tackles, four hurries, one sack and one tackle-for-loss were the official markings of it, and even that might not capture the impact Wolfe had in the Broncos AFC Championship-clinching win.

What makes No. 95 different from the guys who are affected by the money?

“For me, it was a weight lifted off of my shoulders,” he said of signing the contract. “I could get to just playing football instead of thinking about all of the business. It was a huge stress relief — the stress levels of worrying about your security and worrying about your future — whenever that’s taken care of you can worry about just playing football.”

Wolfe went out there and showed the world that he deserved that money, something that he already knew.

“Yeah, I think I earned it, I very much so think I earned it,” he said. “I wasn’t exactly worried about whether I was going to be in Denver, I kind of knew that I was going to be there, it was just getting it down so it was out of the back of my mind, that was important.”

Some players get paid and the money changes them,  that won’t be the case for Derek Wolfe, it’s still the same old Derek, just with a little more ice on the wrist. . . and around the neck.