One of the biggest trends in the NFL offseason has been the exploding salaries of wide receivers. The Buccaneers kicked off things by giving Mike Evans a two-year, $41 million contract extension in early March. It’s only, uh, escalated from there.
The Colts waited a week to give Michael Pittman Jr. a three-year, $70 million extension. The Browns traded for Jerry Jeudy a week later and promptly gifted him a three-year, $52.5 million extension. DeVonta Smith? Come on down, you get three-years, $75 mil from the Eagles! Eagles had another $96 mil over three years to give A.J. Brown too! Amon-Ra St. Brown? You get four-years, $120 mil from the Lions! Even the Texans thought enough of Nico Collins to give him three-years, $72.75 mil. Let it be known: it’s a good time to be a receiver.
Most recently, the Miami Dolphins signed Jaylen Waddle to a three-year, $84.75 million contract extension, kicking off a stir in Cincinnati. It’s no secret that Tee Higgins, who was slapped with the franchise tag (and isn’t happy about it), is looking for a new deal of his own. So far, the Bengals are being stingy. But why? Why are they hesitating when the rest of the league is going nuts with receiver-fever? What are they not getting?
The situation with Waddle and the Dolphins is similar to the situation between Higgins and the Bengals. When the Dolphins drafted Waddle in 2021, he was taking over as the top option in the Dolphins' receiving game as a rookie, a role for which he was ill-suited. Enter Tyreek Hill in 2022, and Waddle falls into place as one of the best #2 options in the league. Higgins had a similar trajectory. The Bengals drafted him to be their heir-apparent to A.J. Green in 2020, but they leapt at the opportunity to draft the dynamic Ja’Marr Chase in 2021. Chase didn’t take long to establish himself as Joe Burrow’s top target, and Higgins slotted nicely opposite Chase as one of best secondary options in the NFL – just like Waddle.
The Dolphins, clearly, thought enough of Waddle to make him a very wealthy man. So wealthy, in fact, that Waddle now sits just behind his teammate Hill in terms of his contract’s annual average value (good for fourth among all receivers). The Dolphins, not coincidentally, have one of the game’s most explosive offenses. The value of having two top receivers is clear – right?
I’m not so sure. It’s low-hanging fruit to point out that the Kansas City Chiefs just won two straight Super Bowls with a below-average receiving corps – but it’s worth mentioning all the same. The best team in the league has gotten by without even one receiver the caliber of Higgins or Waddle. Sure, Travis Kelce is a fantastic tight end with receiver-like ability, but the point still stands. A lack of top pass catchers hasn’t slowed down the Chiefs.
Of course, the Chiefs have Patrick Mahomes, and the list of quarterbacks who can do what he does begins and ends with him. Maybe the Chiefs shouldn’t be the measuring stick…
Then again, what if they’re on to something?
What if paying receivers is overrated? What if keeping a cheap receiver room is the NFL’s new market inefficiency? I’d bet that it is.
Obviously, it’s foolhardy to make any comparisons to Mahomes, but Burrow isn’t a bad starting point. He’s the only QB in the league to have any sustained success against Mahomes, and he’s the only QB other than Mahomes to reach the Super Bowl in the AFC in the last five seasons. Burrow might not be Mahomes’ equal, but he’s a hell of a lot closer to Mahomes than the Dolphins’ Tua Tagovailoa – and that’s the catch. The Dolphins need two great receivers to prop up their QB. The Bengals don’t.
Higgins is a great player, but at $30 million per year, he’s a luxury. The Bengals are already going to be paying Chase north of $30 million per year whenever he’s ready to extend – having two receivers taking up nearly a quarter of a team’s cap space (plus a QB taking up a quarter himself) is just bad business, especially when it’s totally unnecessary.
Make no mistake: Tee Higgins is a very good football player. But he had 656 receiving yards last year. His career-high is 1,091. He’s been hit with the injury bug a few times and most of his success has come with Chase taking an inordinate amount of attention from defenses. Does that sound like a player that the Bengals should be making the fourth- or fifth-highest paid wide receiver in the entire league? No way.
Save that kind of money for a game-breaking defensive tackle like Chris Jones ($31 mil per year from the Chiefs) or dominant offensive tackle like Penei Sewell ($28 mil per year from the Lions). Heck, for $30 million, the Bengals could afford to add another Trey Hendrickson and Sam Hubbard to their defense. Straight up, I’d probably give that $30 mil extension to Hendrickson over Higgins anyway.
Of course, the Bengals don’t have to choose between Hendrickson or Higgins. They can (and will) have them both on the roster this year. Higgins might not be happy about his franchise-tagged status, but he’s still making over $21 million guaranteed this year, and that $21 mil is more than he made in his first four years in the league combined. Besides, his leverage isn’t great in this situation: if he tries to force a trade by sitting out games and the Bengals refuse to budge, he won’t be seeing anywhere near $30 million per year when he’s a free agent. No, his best bet is to ball out, and then cash out.
That works quite nicely for the Bengals, who still need Higgins to perform at a high-level to reach their full potential this season. But moving forward, they shouldn’t fear his departure. The money they’ll save by letting him walk will be put to great use keeping Burrow protected and maintaining an underrated defense. Oh, and one more thing, have we all forgotten how good the Bengals have been at drafting and developing receivers?
Higgins and Chase come to mind, but don’t forget Trenton Irwin, who’s gone from undrafted nobody to sure-handed depth piece and one of Burrow’s (and backup QB Jake Browning’s) most-reliable targets. A.J. Green and Chad Johnson both turned in borderline-Hall of Fame careers after being drafted by the Bengals. T.J. Houshmandzadeh and Tyler Boyd both had wonderful careers too. Incredibly, if you look at the Bengals’ career-receiving-yards leaderboard, the top sixteen names on that list all began their careers in Cincinnati.
Tee Higgins is a good football player, but he’s not great, and the Bengals shouldn’t pay him like he’s great. The going rate for a marginal #1/top-of-the-line #2 is in the neighborhood of $25 million per year. If I’m the Bengals, I’m not going much higher than that number. It’s more than fair. The Chicago Bears just gave defensive end Montez Sweat a four-year, $98 million contract ($24.5 average annual value), and if you asked me, I’d take Sweat over Higgins right now and twice on Sunday. The Bengals won’t lose much if Higgins departs, but adding another top-tier pass rusher like Sweat could make a Super-Bowl-winning difference. If I’m the Bengals, that’s where I’d be putting my money.
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