The NFL offseason decided it didn’t have any intention of waiting until the start of the legal tampering period Monday (noon ET) to kick into high gear. With a flood of trades, contract extensions, re-signings and additions of players who had been cap casualties, free agency seems like it’s showing up late to the party.
A few of the biggest names have already moved before the free agent market even opens, including offensive tackle Ronnie Stanley, wide receivers DK Metcalf and Davante Adams and linebackers Zack Baun, Nick Bolton and Jamien Sherwood.
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What has already happened can tell us a lot about the free agent moves to come. Let’s go through the most prominent moves from the weekend and figure out whether they’ll live up to expectations. It’s easy to be optimistic about adding (or retaining) star players and heartbroken about losing them in the middle of March. I’ll try to get a handle on how these decisions actually break down and what they’ll mean for 2025 and beyond.
Jump to a section:
Is DK Metcalf really worth this massive extension?
Is there really a winner in the Geno Smith trade?
Why did the Bills rip up Josh Allen’s contract?
Will Davante Adams be a star for the Rams?
Myles Garrett’s extension will have ripples
The biggest takeaway of the past two weeks
DK Metcalf goes to Pittsburgh
I’ll start with the big trade from Sunday night. Just four days after his trade request went public, Metcalf’s time with the Seahawks came to a sudden end. I’ll get to the other move the franchise made in a moment, but in the matter of a week, Metcalf went from being a cornerstone in Seattle to the new top receiver in Pittsburgh.
The price is about what I projected in the article I wrote about a potential Metcalf trade last week. The Steelers sent the No. 52 pick in April’s draft to the Seahawks as the focal point of the deal. The teams will also swap sixth- and seventh-round picks. There’s some vagueness about which picks are involved, given that the Steelers have several conditional pick swaps in those rounds. In all, the Seahawks should end up landing draft capital amounting to a pick in the late-40s.
Metcalf is also reportedly signing a five-year, $150 million deal as part of the trade, a move that was inevitable. It seems as if he’s inking a four-year, $132 million extension to go with the $18 million he’s owed for the final year of his current deal. That’s a new deal worth $33 million per year, right in line with the $32 million average I projected last week. No one should be shocked by the contract he got.
I’m more surprised by the team that made this deal. When the Steelers traded a first-round pick for Minkah Fitzpatrick in 2019, they were adding a second-year cornerback (whom they moved to free safety) in the middle of a rookie deal. They’ve traded up for young players in the draft before, but the last time they traded a top-100 pick for an established veteran was when they sent a second-round pick and a swap of third- and fourth-round picks to the Rams for Jerome Bettis in 1996, and even he was only three years into what would eventually become a Hall of Fame career. That move turned out pretty well for Pittsburgh in the long run.
In the big picture, this is a far different version of the Steelers from the draft-and-develop franchise that served as a league model for decades. For years, they have been content to go into the middle rounds of the draft and take swings on potential starters, trusting that coach Mike Tomlin’s growth machine would mold them into viable contributors. While they haven’t all been hits, the names speak for themselves: Pittsburgh has landed useful contributors and even eventual star wideouts in Emmanuel Sanders, Mike Wallace, Antonio Brown, Diontae Johnson and, most recently, George Pickens. The Steelers’ veteran wideouts over the past 20 years have typically been fliers on low-cost contracts, including Van Jefferson and Jerricho Cotchery. The addition of Metcalf is an attempt to hit a home run.
As ESPN’s Brooke Pryor noted, the Steelers set a franchise record for spending on an outside acquisition when they added linebacker Patrick Queen on a three-year, $41 million contract last offseason. Now, they’ve more than doubled that average per year for Metcalf. Factor in the surplus value of the picks sent to acquire the star wideout and they are paying about $40 million per season for Metcalf.
You’re probably already familiar with the idea of teams spending big at wide receiver and along their offensive line to help support a young quarterback on a rookie deal. Well, the Steelers are spending big to prop up a roster that has no starting quarterback at all. The only quarterback on the roster is former Dolphins backup Skylar Thompson, who is on a futures deal and isn’t expected to meaningfully figure into the starting picture in 2025. The Metcalf deal is a way to make that quarterback’s life easier, whomever it might be.
Given the personnel the Steelers are now projecting to line up at wide receiver in Metcalf and Pickens, the right call would seemingly be to go with Russell Wilson. For whatever issues he has this late in his career, the veteran QB remains one of the best deep-ball throwers. He had a 98.4 QBR on throws traveling 20 or more yards downfield last season, the second-best mark in the league. In addition to Pickens, those throws were also going to Calvin Austin, Mike Williams and Scotty Miller. Wilson’s ball placement on back-shoulder throws down the sideline and rainbow lobs over the top is still excellent.
Most of the chatter around the Pittsburgh job has suggested Justin Fields is the favorite to re-up as the starter, but that would be a much more curious fit given the receiving threats here. Fields posted a 57.4 QBR on those same throws, going 6-of-21 for 206 yards. Wilson posted a plus-19.4% completion percentage over expectation (CPOE) on deep passes; Fields came in at minus-12.6%. Fields is younger and offers much more potential impact as a runner and scrambler. He was also better on those throws during his time with the Bears in a larger sample, posting an 89.3 QBR on deep passes between 2021 and 2023, albeit with nearly as many interceptions (10) as touchdowns (11).
Metcalf can be a three-level threat as a receiver and doesn’t need to be pigeonholed into a Williams-esque role as a big body up the sideline, but that’s where the Steelers’ offense has seemed to take more shots than any other team over the past few years, even as they’ve changed offensive coordinators. The only team that has thrown more deep passes to either sideline since 2022 is the Eagles, who also have a pair of physical receivers who can win on contested catches in A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith. Maybe the Fields version of this offense in 2025 looks a lot like those Eagles offenses with Jalen Hurts, as teams are dared to bring a safety into the box for run support and leave their cornerbacks one-on-one against big receivers out wide. The Steelers have already been forcing opponents into those situations, but they might be more difficult for defenses to manage with Metcalf involved.
There’s also a possibility Metcalf is a replacement for Pickens as opposed to a complement. Pickens is entering the final year of his deal in 2025, and while just about every Pittsburgh season includes a stretch in which there’s chatter about a disgruntled offensive player or two, there were more significant frustrations expressed publicly toward Pickens than usual, with Tomlin telling the wideout he needed to “grow up” after drawing two unsportsmanlike conduct penalties in a game against the Bengals. Pickens then struggled with injuries and drops down the stretch.
It seems unlikely the Steelers would trade for Metcalf and then pay Pickens a similarly large contract. The Eagles have paid both Brown, Hurts and Smith, but they’re spending much less on defense than Pittsburgh and have been much more aggressive and creative with their cap management. It would be more of a surprise if Pickens were still in this organization in 2026 than it would be if the fourth-year pro was traded away to another organization this season. Whether it comes via a trade this offseason or through free agency next year, Pickens’ future is likely away from Pittsburgh.
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Pickens’ presence might also influence whether Metcalf looks like he’s worth the investment. I’m an unabashed fan of his talents, but this isn’t exactly an offense built to generate huge receiving totals for a wide receiver. Metcalf is playing for offensive coordinator Arthur Smith, who leaned heavily into the run and often marginalized top-10 picks such as Drake London and Kyle Pitts in the passing game when he coached the Falcons to create opportunities for Olamide Zaccheaus and Jonnu Smith. The Steelers ran the ball at the league’s 19th-highest rate on early downs in neutral game scripts while Fields was the starter last season, which isn’t unreasonable by any means but also doesn’t seem likely to change much if Fields returns.
If Pickens gets traded, Metcalf should have a clear path, at least on paper, to a significant target share. If the younger wideout remains on the roster in 2025, it’s tough to see Metcalf getting more than 115 targets, which would require him to be incredibly efficient to rack up Pro Bowl-level production. With the surplus value of the picks traded to acquire him included, he’s the league’s highest-paid wide receiver. He hasn’t come close to Ja’Marr Chase– or Justin Jefferson-level production in several years, and that’s not likely to start now.
There’s another question that could change all that, though. Jefferson’s quarterback in Minnesota last season was the guy who led all passers in QBR on deep throws, and he’s also a free agent. Sam Darnold would be a major investment at quarterback and a much bigger swing than the Steelers’ reported interest in bringing back Fields or Wilson, but they should have the financial flexibility to make that sort of move if they can come to terms with him. The only guys on the Pittsburgh offense off rookie deals and making meaningful money with cap hits over $5 million are Metcalf, tight end Pat Freiermuth and guard Isaac Seumalo.
Regardless of what the Steelers do at quarterback, the move to trade for Metcalf suggests they recognize they need to do something different to escape their status quo. Nine or 10 wins and a playoff berth most years is one thing if a team occasionally makes a deep playoff run or wins a Super Bowl, but the Steelers haven’t won a single playoff game since pass rusher T.J. Watt entered the league in 2017. Watt will be 31 in October. Defensive end Cameron Heyward will be 36 this year. Without a clear path to a solution at quarterback, the Steelers were going to be in the same boat they were a year ago if they didn’t make a major change. We’ll see if that move actually pays off, but it’s not hard to understand where they’re coming from.
Is there really a winner in Geno Smith‘s trade to the Raiders?
Seahawks fans might have a harder time figuring out what their team is doing with this move. Trading Metcalf would have been shocking enough for one weekend, but it wasn’t even the first stunning move of the weekend for general manager John Schneider. On Saturday night, the Seahawks decided to cut ties with their incumbent starting quarterback by trading Smith to the Raiders for a third-round pick. Over the past week, the Seahawks have traded Smith and Metcalf and released franchise legend Tyler Lockett.
I compared the Seahawks to the Steelers in my piece on Metcalf as two teams stuck in the middle between competing for a title and rebuilding their roster, and Schneider might have agreed. Over the past four years, Seattle has gone 35-33 and made one playoff appearance. It has traded quarterback Russell Wilson, fired coach Pete Carroll and cycled through multiple offensive and defensive coordinators. Pittsburgh responded to that no man’s land by trying to ramp up and win. The Seahawks appear to be responding by taking a step backward and starting over.
They were pleasantly surprised by Smith when he beat out Drew Lock and won the starting job in 2022, and as recently as last month, it appeared Schneider and coach Mike Macdonald were all-in on Smith as their starting quarterback for the foreseeable future. According to ESPN’s Adam Schefter, it wasn’t until contract extension talks with Smith hit an impasse that the organization decided to open itself up to talks and eventually trade Smith.
I’d argue that the Seahawks likely were never as enamored with Smith as was perceived. After they traded Wilson in March 2022, ESPN’s Brady Henderson reported that the Seahawks made a deal with the Broncos because Schneider wanted Lock as part of the trade. After serving as the backup to Wilson the prior season, the Seahawks let Smith linger on the open market until April 19 before signing him to a one-year deal for $3.5 million. It’s to their credit and to Carroll’s emphasis on competition that they had an open battle in camp and awarded the job to Smith, but this team clearly didn’t see him as a starting quarterback until he got on the field and played like one.
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Fowler: Geno Smith wanted to go to a team that would pay him long-term
Jeremy Fowler explains why the Raiders traded for Geno Smith and why a long-term deal is on the horizon.
And since then, make no mistake: Smith has been a very solid starting quarterback. His 58.9 Total QBR over the past three seasons ranks 13th in the league, just behind the 61.9 QBR mark of Matthew Stafford. Smith is second in completion percentage over expectation (CPOE) and leads the league in off-target pass rate over that stretch. If Smith isn’t the league’s most accurate passer, he isn’t far off. He also continued to play solid football in 2024 despite spending the season behind an offensive line that was both riddled with injuries on the right side and not very good for the vast majority of the campaign.
To the Seahawks, though, Smith just might not have been good enough. His previous deal averaged $25 million per season, which was about as modest as it gets for starting quarterbacks who aren’t on rookie deals. The organization refused to give him a new contract last offseason, and it didn’t appear interested in giving him a contract that would bring him north of $40 million per season. The only other veteran starting quarterbacks below that mark on multiyear contracts are Derek Carr and Baker Mayfield.
Smith also could be older than you might think. At 34, the only signal-caller with a clear path to a starting job who is older than Smith is Stafford. Wilson, Kirk Cousins and Aaron Rodgers started last season, but they’re not guaranteed opportunities in 2025. And while the line issues were a factor, Smith’s performance as a starter has steadily declined, as he went from seventh in QBR in 2022 to 14th in 2023 to 21st in 2024.
With all due respect to ESPN grading guru Seth Walder, it feels like the right grade for what the Seahawks did this weekend, at least right now, is “Incomplete.” With no obvious replacement for Smith on the roster beyond former Commanders starter Sam Howell, what the Seahawks do to replace Smith will heavily inform how we end up feeling about the decision to dump their former starter. Moving on because they don’t want to be trapped around .500 and pay a guy who might project to be a league-average quarterback $85 million for his age-35 and age-36 seasons is defensible.
Seattle just needs to have a short-term and a long-term vision for replacing Smith, though, and that’s where the incomplete grade comes in. It’s unclear what the franchise actually intends to do with the money it has saved on Smith and Metcalf and the draft picks it has accrued in those swaps. The Seahawks now have five top-100 selections, but their first one doesn’t come until No. 18, and this isn’t a draft teeming with quarterback options. There will be candidates such as Jaxson Dart and Jalen Milroe they can take as projects in the second or third round, but is Schneider really confident enough in any of the draft’s non-Cam Ward quarterbacks to tie Seattle’s future to one of them?
There have been reports linking Darnold to Seattle, and again, there’s logic to the move. If the Seahawks actually have a deal in place with him for about what they would have paid Smith, choosing to pay a 27-year-old over a 34-year-old makes some sense, especially when Darnold outplayed Smith a year ago. They’re not the same kind of quarterback by any stretch of the imagination, with Darnold’s athleticism and ability to extend out of structure playing up when he’s at his best. Smith, though, has a higher floor and doesn’t miss as many throws.
Since the Smith trade and amid the Darnold speculation, I’ve read many smart people rightly point out that the Darnold who excelled with the Vikings in 2024 wouldn’t have been anywhere near as good behind the Seattle offensive line and in the Ryan Grubb offense that Seattle ran. They’re right, but I’m not sure it’s germane to the discussion. Grubb is gone, and in his place, the Seahawks have replaced him with former Saints coordinator Klint Kubiak, who ran a somewhat-modernized version of the play-action-heavy scheme his dad helped make famous with the Shanahan family in Denver and Houston. That offense appeared to make Carr into a superstar with the Saints for two weeks last season before the offensive line started to battle injuries. Kubiak had his quarterback, top two playmakers (Alvin Kamara and Chris Olave) and top offensive lineman (Erik McCoy) on the field for a total of two snaps together from Week 3 onward.
Darnold had plenty of success attacking downfield in Kevin O’Connell’s scheme, in which the Vikings used play-action at the league’s fifth-highest rate. But Schneider can’t take the money he has saved by trading Metcalf and keep it for a rainy day. He has to prioritize upgrading the offensive line, a place the Seahawks have been loathe to spend in the past and where the top options (Ronnie Stanley and Trey Smith) are already off the market.
The Seahawks rank 31st in offensive line cash spent in 2025, a figure that will drop to 32nd when Stanley’s contract with the Ravens is finalized. Seattle already has cut George Fant, is likely to let Laken Tomlinson leave in free agency and might be risking Darnold’s health if it’s willing to give significant playing time to Anthony Bradford, Sataoa Laumea and Stone Forsythe again in 2025. Christian Haynes, a third-round pick a year ago, wasn’t able to get on the field down the stretch. If Schneider can find a viable quarterback and swap out Metcalf’s would-be salary for multiple starters up front, this is fine. If not? This could be the sort of disastrous weekend that compounds for years to come.
From the Raiders’ side of things, it’s an easier sell. Las Vegas already had decided to cut Gardner Minshew, and the guys who drafted Aidan O’Connell were two front offices ago. New coach Carroll and general manager John Spytek are in, and Carroll already is quite familiar with what Smith can do from the 2022 and 2023 seasons in Seattle. The Raiders had more than $86 million in cap space before making the Smith deal, and they will have no trouble affording a potential extension for him. They didn’t have a quarterback, and now they have one. Easy enough.
It’s also fair to ask the follow-up question: What are the Raiders hoping to accomplish? At 4-13 a year ago, they certainly don’t look like they’re a 34-year-old quarterback away from anything. They’re trapped in a division with three teams that made it to the playoffs last season.
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I’m not going to be mad at a team that trades a third-round pick for a guy who is going to be their starting quarterback. But the reality with the Raiders remains the same: This team simply doesn’t have enough young talent to compete at the highest level consistently. Landing Brock Bowers in Round 1 of last year’s draft was a coup, but during the Jon Gruden and Josh McDaniels eras, the Raiders had 14 first- and second-round picks, two of which went to the Packers in the trade for Davante Adams.
With some of those players out of the league, hitting free agency or mostly riding pine, just one of those 14 picks produced a guy who projects to start for Las Vegas in 2025: Left tackle Kolton Miller, who also happened to be the first of those selections and will turn 30 this season. The Raiders obviously should be thrilled about finding a Day 3 superstar in edge rusher Maxx Crosby, and they fielded the league’s third-youngest roster by snap-weighted age a season ago, but many of those players were on the field because there weren’t credible alternatives in their prime ahead of them. Cornerback Decamerion Richardson and offensive lineman DJ Glaze wouldn’t be starting for better teams. This team doesn’t have an entire generation of players who should be starting in their prime or making impacts on rookie deals. They’re not going to have any hope of thriving until that changes.
Can the Raiders address that with the new regime while Smith holds the fort down as the starter? Yes, of course. The decision to trade for him shouldn’t preclude them from considering a quarterback on Day 2, although they’re now down the extra third-round pick they got from the Jets in the Adams deal. In 2012, Carroll famously signed Matt Flynn in free agency, used a third-round pick on Wilson and then benched Flynn before he’d ever started for the Seahawks when Wilson outplayed Flynn in camp. I don’t think that’s about to happen with Smith in Las Vegas, but trading for Smith shouldn’t stop the Raiders from considering other signal-callers. (After what happened with the Falcons last year, we can’t even rule out a QB for the Raiders at No. 6 overall.)
Raiders fans looking at the 2023 Texans and 2024 Commanders as guides for what they can be with Smith in 2025 are likely to be disappointed. This is the opposite sort of roster construction. Those teams had a young quarterback on a rookie deal, which allowed them to spend significant money on players around their roster to make that signal-caller’s life easier. The Raiders have a market-value quarterback in his mid-30s and a young team around that passer.
Smith will raise the floor now, and in the short term the Raiders should be better quickly. They posted a minus-16 turnover margin last season, the league’s worst mark, and recovered a league-low 24% of their fumbles. Both of those numbers will improve in 2025, and they’ll produce a better record in the process. Carroll should be a significant upgrade on the overmatched Antonio Pierce, although Carroll’s game management wasn’t exactly up to modern standards during his final days with Seattle. I wouldn’t be surprised if Las Vegas doubled its 2024 win total.
If the goal is to win eight games, the Raiders should be happy with their decision. If the goal is to win a Super Bowl? To be great? To aspire to something more than a 10-win season when a series of breaks and one-score games go their way like they did in 2021? I’m not sure that acquiring Smith gets them there, but until this organization finally admits to itself that it’s done taking shortcuts and applying Band-Aid fixes, nothing will.
Josh Allen signs a new deal — and takes less money — with the Bills
One guy who isn’t going anywhere, thankfully for Bills fans, is Allen. With four years and $131.1 million to go on the six-year extension he signed in 2021, his deal wasn’t in the front of anyone’s mind this offseason. The Bills were doing very Brandon Beane things over the past couple of weeks, as the general manager re-signed former draftees Khalil Shakir and Greg Rousseau to four-year extensions.
What changed? Both sides — Allen and the Bills — appear to have done something that doesn’t often happen in the NFL. The full contract details of Allen’s new deal haven’t been revealed, but it appears the Bills have ripped up the final four years on his contract and given him a brand-new deal. Teams will occasionally void future years as part of a restructure, as the Texans did with wideout Stefon Diggs last year, but it’s almost unprecedented to see a team hand out a new deal with four years remaining and not use those years as runway for cap purposes. The Dolphins did something similar with three years left on cornerback Xavien Howard‘s contract in 2022, but that’s the only recent comp I can come up with, and it wasn’t anywhere near as significant of a deal.
In return, Allen has clearly taken a smaller salary than his performance and the quarterback market would suggest. At six years and $330 million, his new deal will average $55 million per season. That’s below the top of the market, where Dak Prescott‘s $60 million average resides after his deal with the Cowboys last September.
Allen’s $55 million average ties him for the league’s second-largest figure with Joe Burrow, Jordan Love and Trevor Lawrence. The difference is that those players signed their contracts in smaller cap environments. Burrow’s deal came in 2023, when the cap was at $224.8 million. Love and Lawrence signed in 2024, with the cap then up to $255.4 million. The cap is now at $279.2 million in 2025, meaning it has risen by nearly 24% between the time Burrow signed his pact and Allen inked his.
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Why did the Bills do Josh Allen’s $330M deal now?
Adam Schefter reports on the Bills and Josh Allen agreeing to a new six-year, $330 million contract.
Put another way, that $55 million represents 19.7% of the current cap. That figure ranks 13th among active quarterbacks on multiyear veteran deals in terms of extension average annual value. It’s closer to Derek Carr (who signed for 16.7% of the cap as a free agent) than Prescott (23.5%). Allen could have credibly asked for $70 million a year on a new deal. He could have waited two more years and signed for even more, albeit while making less over that time frame.
Tom Brady (and Drew Brees, to a lesser extent toward the end of his career) was renowned for taking less money than the top of the market for most of his career to allow the Patriots to help build a winner around him. Though there’s some truth to that statement, it was mostly over a four-year span late in his career, with the Patriots using some creative accounting to help keep his cap hits low at other points. Allen is doing this much earlier in his career than Brady.
Now, of course, Allen will be just fine. Think of the most inflated big-money contracts around the NFL as deals whose guarantees are masked by big unguaranteed salary figures at the end of their pacts — such as Davante Adams‘ deal with the Raiders and Alvin Kamara‘s previous contract with the Saints — and Allen’s deal goes in the opposite direction. This contract has a lower average than what virtually anybody would have expected, but I would suspect the deal has a player-friendly guarantee structure and makes it likely he will see most, if not all, of the money he’s promised on paper over the next four years. He would then get another chance to sign an extension after turning 32, which should still be young enough for him to get another mega-pact.
We won’t know how the deal will impact the cap for the Bills until we see the specific terms, but it should directly affect two other players. One is Brock Purdy, whose negotiations on a new deal with the 49ers are going to be fascinating. When I wrote about the Purdy deal last summer, I argued that he could credibly ask for $65 million per year, which would be an upgrade on what Prescott signed with lesser numbers. Nobody has been more underpaid over the past three years than Purdy. Now that Allen just took a team discount on the average salary of his deal, will there be more pressure on Purdy to do the same?
The other player this deal affects is Allen’s biggest rival. Patrick Mahomes‘ 10-year, $450 million deal felt like a juggernaut of a contract when it was signed in 2020, but within a few years, his average salary was in the same ballpark as Daniel Jones and Kirk Cousins. The Chiefs have already moved money around and created additional guarantees for him. He is technically owed just over $45 million per year over the next seven years, but that’s really $53.2 million per year over the next three seasons before the price drops for years that he will never see on this current pact.
Will Mahomes also ask for a new deal? You don’t need me to tell you he should be the highest-paid quarterback in football, and there’s no number the three-time Super Bowl champion could throw at the Chiefs that would get laughed away. Is he worth $70 million a year? $80 million? $100 million? Would he also be willing to take a salary below market value? Or will he continue to play out this current deal for another year or two before the Chiefs do something more substantial?
The Rams sign Davante Adams to an eye-opening deal
Rams fans worried about what the organization would do to replace expected cap casualty Cooper Kupp have to be thrilled after what they saw Sunday. After Tee Higgins was franchise-tagged, Adams, 32, was the best wide receiver left in free agency. The Rams seemed like the most appealing fit for him. ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler reported he wanted to play on the West Coast.
On Sunday, that combination came together. The Rams gave Adams a two-year deal worth $44 million. Adams will make $20 million guaranteed in 2025 and have an additional $6 million guaranteed in March 2026, making this a one-year, $26 million pact with an option for $18 million next year.
Though Adams will replace Kupp, he won’t play the same role on the field. Along with Puka Nacua and Tutu Atwell, Kupp was often in motion at the snap to create communication issues for the defense. Nacua, Atwell and Kupp were the league’s top three receivers in receptions after being in motion at the snap.
Demarcus Robinson, on the other hand, didn’t have a reception after going in motion last season. That will be Adams’ role. Adams had just nine catches after being motion at the snap last season. That’s not the veteran’s game. Adams is an elite technician off the line of scrimmage, where he wins against defensive backs with his footwork and route running. Adams will move around the formation and into reduced splits, but he will be a receiver designated to win on his own.
That X receiver role is one the Rams have repeatedly tried to fill with different players who never lived up to expectations. Brandin Cooks had one great season in Los Angeles before the team traded him. Odell Beckham Jr. produced middling numbers during the 2021 regular season, seemed to grow into the role during the postseason then tore his ACL in the Super Bowl. Allen Robinson was a disaster after the Rams acquired him at the last minute from the Eagles, while Demarcus Robinson has been just fine as an alternative on a lower-cost contract.
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I would be concerned that this could go very wrong for the Rams. The Robinson signing is a reminder that even some of the smartest people in the industry can dramatically misjudge what works best for their roster. They just unloaded guard Jonah Jackson‘s contract after one season. They paid him $16.5 million for four games and were lucky to get off the deal without adding $8.5 million more. McVay is an offensive genius and a future Hall of Famer, but plugging successful veterans into his scheme has been an adventure.
It is also tough to gauge where Adams is at in his career. After an All-Pro season with the Raiders as a 30-year-old in 2022, his numbers fell precipitously in 2023 and stayed there for most of 2024 before he racked up 510 receiving yards and five touchdowns over the final five games. He was averaging 1.7 yards per route run before that span and 2.9 yards per route run over that final five-week stretch, with the latter figure ranking 10th in the league. That run came with Aaron Rodgers at the helm, though, and Adams will have to start anew with Matthew Stafford under center.
By ESPN’s receiver score, Adams has fallen from 24th to 41st to 70th over the past three years, but that’s less concerning than it seems. Adams ranked 15th in open score last season, but his catch score was 153rd. His catch score has usually lagged behind his other metrics, but not by that much, and he was credited with only three drops a year ago. I would expect his catch score to improve in 2025.
My projection for the most likely scenario with Adams isn’t exciting. He won’t get the same target share he had in Green Bay or Las Vegas with Nacua on the field, and that will limit his ceiling. He’ll be a clear upgrade over Robinson and can be a weapon in man coverage for Stafford, who ranked 21st in QBR against man-to-man defense a year ago. Adams won’t be the same player he was in Green Bay or New York, though.
Between Adams and Atwell, who signed a one-year deal for a guaranteed $10 million last week, the Rams are committing $36 million to their second and third wideouts in 2025. It’s not easy to expect to land the next Nacua at the end of the fifth round, but would they have been better off committing that money to defensive help while using the draft to find playmakers for Stafford on offense?
Myles Garrett becomes the highest-paid non-QB in NFL history
As it turns out, Garrett was willing to negotiate an extension with the Browns after all. With the prospect of a standoff looming between Garrett and the organization about his future in Cleveland and the future Hall of Famer’s trade request being ignored, Garrett blinked. Giving in doesn’t have to hurt, though: He agreed to a four-year, $160 million extension with the Browns, making him the highest-paid non-quarterback in league history by a considerable margin. He’s also staying in Ohio for years to come.
At a position where just one player (Nick Bosa) has an average annual salary north of $30 million per season, Garrett will now make $40 million per annum, at least on paper. It remains to be seen whether that number is inflated by some unguaranteed money at the end of the contract, a possibility that is made more likely by the fact that his new deal jumps the prior record for a non-quarterback by a full $5 million from receiver Justin Jefferson‘s contract. And frankly, given that Garrett insisted he didn’t want to sign a new deal and was intent on leaving, getting a deal starting with a four could be a way to distract from the fact that the star pass rusher didn’t get the trade he supposedly wanted.
Even if there’s some inflation on the average salary, there’s no doubt Garrett is going to get paid a handsome sum. The record for three-year compensation for an edge rusher is Josh Hines-Allen‘ $92.8 million. It would hardly be a surprise if Garrett took that figure to $100 million. He also has a no-trade clause, which should keep him in town, if so inclined, for years to come.
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Myles Garrett agrees to record contract extension with Browns
Jeremy Fowler joins “SportsCenter” to break down Myles Garrett’s record-breaking contract extension with the Browns.
The Browns have now become the first team in NFL history to have two players making $40 million or more per season, as Garrett joins Deshaun Watson. We don’t yet know how Garrett’s cap hold will break out, but because he was on the books for only $19.7 million before the extension, it’s difficult to imagine general manager Andrew Berry will be able to reduce that figure by much as part of a new contract. The Browns already restructured Watson’s contract to create cap space this offseason, an inevitable move given his $46 million base salary.
Garrett’s decision to sign a new deal will reverberate around the league. It might somehow help and hurt the Bengals. With Garrett and Maxx Crosby both signing new contracts, there are fewer veteran edge rushers potentially available for trade to help drive down the cost of Cincinnati’s Trey Hendrickson, who was allowed to talk to potential trade partners last week. If the Bengals really intend to trade their top edge rusher, there isn’t an alternative of similar caliber available on the market or in free agency, with all due respect to Josh Sweat and Joey Bosa. I would still be surprised if the Bengals landed a first-round pick for Hendrickson, but organizations that would have been in on Garrett will have to look toward Hendrickson instead.
On the other hand, extending Ja’Marr Chase‘s contract might have just become more expensive for the Bengals. Jefferson’s deal both topped the wide receiver market and made the Vikings star the league’s highest-paid non-quarterback at $35 million per year. Crosby topped that and briefly gained that title at $35.5 million. Now, at least on paper, Garrett is all the way up to $40 million per season.
If Chase’s camp is willing to settle for being the highest-paid wide receiver, $37 million per year should be enough to get the deal done. If Chase wants to follow in Jefferson’ footsteps and become the highest-paid non-quarterback, though, that price is now all the way up to $40.5 million per year. If the Bengals could have signed Chase for $35.5 million after the Jefferson deal last offseason, waiting until 2025 to sign their star wideout might cost them $5 million per season more.
As ESPN’s Mike Tannenbaum noted, the same story should be true for Micah Parsons, who now has a direct target to top in Garrett. With Nick Bosa topping the edge market a year ago at $34 million, the Cowboys could have gotten a record-setting deal done last year in the $35 million range. Now, with Parsons entering his fifth-year option and the top of the non-quarterback market up at $40 million, Dallas will be paying millions of dollars more for the joy of having waited a year to sign a deal it was always going to make.
The biggest takeaway from the past two weeks
If there’s one thing I can feel confident saying about the league as a whole and what we’re going to see in the next few days, it’s that the vast majority of teams do not like what they’re seeing in the free agent market. The top guys will get paid — and I suspect we’ll see players on the line of scrimmage get plenty of money — but there just aren’t many plug-and-play starters available in this market.
Instead, we’ve seen teams get aggressive in absorbing salaries in trades. In other years, the 49ers wouldn’t have been able to get a draft pick for an obvious cut candidate in Deebo Samuel, but the Commanders were more interested in the bruising wideout than the free agent class. The Texans traded a seventh-round pick and paid $16 million to Christian Kirk to avoid competing with other teams for the former Jags slot wideout. The Rams would have needed to eat some money to save anything on what they owed Jonah Jackson, but not only were they able to unload all of what they owed Jackson, they even landed a draft pick in return from the Bears.
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We’ve also seen teams really get aggressive in bringing back their own players, even at what might qualify as higher-than-expected costs. Does anyone think Tutu Atwell, who has 1,363 receiving yards in four years with the Rams, is a $10 million-per-year player? Is Osa Odighizuwa, who has never topped five sacks in a season, really a $20 million-per-year defensive tackle? Linebacker Derrick Barnes missed the entire season with the Lions and still landed a three-year, $25.5 million contract. Tight end Mike Gesicki, who was bouncing around the league and struggling to get regular snaps for the Patriots in 2023, signed that same deal with the Bengals.
There’s nothing wrong with teams trading for players or re-signing their own free agents, but it tells us league decision-makers aren’t enthused about paying a premium to sign guys they don’t really like all that much in free agency. Defensive tackle Milton Williams is going to get paid. Safety Jevon Holland will land a nice deal. The best pass rushers and pass blockers will get their money. After that, though? There are going to be some bargains among older players and the middle class of the market.
