NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Mason Kinsey was very conscious of the time on Tuesday.
“I was checking my phone all day, like “Please, please, please, please,” he said. “Then I was with my fiance and I was like, ‘Hey, check your phone, what time is it? And she said, “4:03” and I was like, ‘We made it!’”
When a player is on an NFL roster at Tuesday 4 p.m. CT, it ensures he is paid for the week.
But this week for Kinsey, it was more important than that.
It meant he was on the 53-man roster for a third game, and three games make for a credited season. Three credited seasons with five years of service make him fully vested. Fully vested NFL veterans get a wide array of benefits.
Life-changing benefits for an undrafted rookie who came out of Berry College in 2020, was released from New England's practice squad twice and has been waived by the Titans on seven different occasions.
“It’s awesome,” he said. “Now I have the pension plan, which goes from being nothing to a decent amount of money per month when I turn 55 which is damn near a mortgage for a house, you know what I mean? With the health benefits and insurance, I recently just got engaged, and being able to put my future wife on insurance that will last after football, that’s an expense I won’t necessarily have to worry about. You’re eligible for severance pay, so there is some money to be given out the first year that you’re done with football.
“From my perspective, I think about getting a game check (for the weeks I’ve been active, currently about $55,000), just from being a p-squad guy a lot of my career. The money that you see in the long run, is 10-fold or more the amount of a game-check so it’s more of a long-game goal that I’ve really focused on and hoped for, ‘Man, I really want to get this.’ To finally be able to get it, it’s definitely a blessing.”
Here is Kinsey with details of the puzzle that makes him vested when on the Titans' roster passed out Thursday he’s listed as a second-year player:
"My rookie year was Covid, so you only needed one game to get a credited season, and I got cut. I was in New England, didn’t get a game, they released me around Thanksgiving. They were out of playoff contention a week or two later and they called a bunch of guys up to get a credited season. So technically I was one game short my rookie year.
"My second year, I played in two games, so I was one short my second year.
"My third year I played in two games, so I was one game short my third year.
"Then last year I played six.
"Then this will be three this year.
"So I got my credited seasons from last year and this year. And they’re going to go back and count 2022 as credited, which gives me the pension, the 401k, all the health insurance, the severance pay, all that stuff.
They give me 2022, because technically one of the rules is to become fully vested you have to have three credited seasons or five years of service, and when you have five years of service – just because the average NFL career is what, two years, two and a half years, whatever it is – once you get to that five years of service they go back and give you one of your practice squad years and count it as a credited season.
"I don’t know necessarily why, I just know that’s a rule and I’m glad that it is one. They will give you back your latest practice squad year.
"And they go back and they match your 401k, which is probably the biggest part, because they match it two-to-one. If you’re a practice squad guy or a rookie they only match two to one up to $1,500, the max you can get is 
three grand. If you get a credited season, they two-to-one match it to the max.
"From 2021, 22, 23, 24 I’ve maxed it out every year so they’ve got to go back and give me all that.
"In 2022, I want to say the max you could put in there was $19,000 or 20,000 so I maxed it out then, so they owe me $40,000, they already put $3,000 in there so technically they owe me $37,000.
"My first two years I was just struggling to stay in it, but around 2022 I became aware of all of this.
"Now I need to find something else to chase. I played six games last year, hopefully I can play these last few this year. Next year shoot to play the whole year. And an explosive return, punt return touchdown. We want to go get this one for Cally (Brian Callahan) and Colt (Anderson)."
