Jerry Jeudy didn’t exactly live up to expectations after the Denver Broncos took him No. 15 overall in 2020. But he still got paid like he did, earning a four-year, $15.1 million rookie deal. Unfortunately, he never reached the 1,000-yard plateau during his four seasons in Denver. That probably had something to do with the fact that the team started seven different QBs during that span.
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He was traded for peanuts to the Cleveland Browns last spring, and shortly after, he signed a big-boy deal. His three-year, $52.5 million contract more than quadrupled the salary from his rookie deal. He’d made it. And this time, he played up to his price tag, posting 90 receptions for 1,229 yards and four TDs. He even earned his first Pro Bowl nod despite yet another year with a shaky QB situation.
Jeudy knows all about working hard for his money. He’s just 26 years old, but to hear him tell it, he’s been doing that for two decades already. Back in 2023, Jeudy told a story about how he used to sweep up the barber shop when his dad would go in to get a trim. The barber would give him a few bucks for his trouble, which meant he had his first job.
“I was born in Fort Lauderdale, Florida… My dad used to go get his haircut, and I would just sweep around. The barber would give me like 2-3 dollars just for sweeping, when I was like around like seven or six years old. So I count that as a job, because I was getting paid for the work, I was putting the time in,” Jeudy told GQ Sports.
No doubt, Jeudy prefers both the work and the pay at his newest job a lot more than his oldest. But you gotta start somewhere. The Browns wideout says that while his family wasn’t poor growing up, they weren’t exactly well off either. So why not try to pitch in with a few bucks here and there?
“I wouldn’t say we had a lot of money and I wouldn’t say we didn’t have no money. I would say we were in between. My mom had a few different jobs. She once worked at a factory, she worked at a retirement home before. My dad, he always been a chef ever since he moved down here to Florida. He worked for an Italian restaurant called Mario’s in Boca Raton.”
His parents both working jobs likely instilled that hard-working attitude in Jeudy. That’s what pushed him to pick up a broom at the barbershop, and later on, pick up a football with serious intentions of changing his—and his family’s—lives forever. Just five years into his NFL career, the Alabama alumnus has certainly done that.
During the same interview, Jeudy broke down how he spent the first million he got from that first rookie contract. He received an $8.6 million signing bonus, so there was a lot more to come afterwards. But he said that with that first million, he made sure to spend nearly half on his parents.
He bought his mom a new house for around $300k, bought her a new beamer for another $80k, bought his father a truck for another $50k (“My dad’s not really into cars like that“), and then spent another $60k on a family shopping spree in New York City.
Those values and lessons Jerry Jeudy learned all those years ago at the barbershop seem to be paying dividends for him and his parents.
