It's progress for the superstars and the owners (who are making a fortune) but not for the average player and especially not for the fans who are paying the freight for all of it with high ticket prices and more and more ads on TV- "...“League Distribution.” This is the amount each of the 32 teams receives annually from the NFL from shared revenue, primarily broadcast deals and national licensing. The amount of that check this year was staggering: $226.4 million, an eye-popping 17% increase from last year’s distribution of $187.7 million. In other words, before any team in the NFL turns the lights on, it knows it has $226 million to work with. Putting that number in perspective, the team salary cap for 2014 was $133 million, meaning that if teams on average spent to the cap, they had almost $100 million left over after player costs to use for operations and, of course, profit. And, most importantly, that number is only going up." And that's before adding the profit from selling tickets, parking spaces, hot dogs or beer. http://mmqb.si.com/mmqb/2015/07/29/tom-brady-appeal-packers-financial-report-nfl-prosperity
Salary cap was increasing at near 7% each year - which means, the size doubled roughly every ten years. [It's between 7~9%] So, at conservative estimation [7%], Montana's salary is comparable to roughly equivalent to about 15M/year in today's figure. If you take higher increase rate in salary cap, his salary increases too. Sure - 2.54 mil figure looks like chump change compared to what Peyton Manning or Tom Brady makes, but also you must realize that the salary cap increased dramatically during that period as well. In that context, Montana still made similar share of the chunk with respect to what they had to spend. Quarterback has always been, and always will be the prime position.
