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Ben Baby, ESPN Staff Writer
Former Texas Longhorns wide receiver Xavier Worthy turned heads in March when he broke the scouting combine’s 40-yard dash record with a time of 4.21 seconds. One team, in particular, saw a perfect fit.
The Kansas City Chiefs originally held the 32nd pick in this year’s draft, but they traded up with the Buffalo Bills to acquire Worthy at No. 28. They paired him with MVP quarterback Patrick Mahomes, who has seen his receiving corps go from featuring one of the league’s best and highest-paid receivers in Tyreek Hill to one who was significantly cheaper.
“The vision for [Worthy] is we have him for five years now, and that’s a big deal for us as we try to keep this thing together and add pieces,” Chiefs general manager Brett Veach said shortly after the draft. “Those playmakers are hard to come by, and they’re expensive in the offseason.”
The move underscored a split in the NFL in terms of investing in wide receivers. While some teams like the Minnesota Vikings, Dallas Cowboys and Miami Dolphins have set records with WR contracts this year, others like the Chiefs prefer cost-friendly options. Data indicates the big spenders often don’t realize their desired return on investment.
Since 2017, only two teams have invested a top-five salary cap charge in their wide receiver corps and made a conference championship — the 2020 AFC finalists, Kansas City and Buffalo.
“It’s completely out of whack,” one NFC executive told ESPN. “I think the reason why teams [spend big] is because you draft and develop a player who becomes great, and he’s got chemistry with his quarterback.
“But you can find a lot of good receivers every year in the draft.”
Consider: Seven receivers were taken in the first round this year, tied with 2004 for the most ever. Arizona Cardinals rookie Marvin Harrison Jr. is tied with the Vikings’ Justin Jefferson and New York Jets‘ Allen Lazard for the third-most TD receptions in the league with four, while New York Giants rookie Malik Nabers leads the NFL with 35 receptions.
And three of the top 11 players on Mel Kiper Jr.’s Big Board for 2025 are wide receivers (Colorado’s Travis Hunter also plays cornerback).
Jefferson set the record for the richest NFL contract ever by a non-quarterback when he signed a four-year extension worth $140 million, including $110 million in potential guarantees. Dallas’ CeeDee Lamb signed a deal for the same length for $136 million.
The 10 most expensive WR deals are worth a grand total of $1.06 billion. Other than Jefferson and Lamb, four other receivers signed deals for at least $30 million per year, including the Philadelphia Eagles‘ A.J. Brown ($32 million), Detroit Lions‘ Amon-Ra St. Brown ($30.002 million), San Francisco 49ers‘ Brandon Aiyuk ($30 million) and Hill ($30 million).
The Cincinnati Bengals’ Ja’Marr Chase saw the market explode and hoped to top Jefferson’s mark. A contentious negotiation for a contract extension made it unclear heading into the season whether Chase would play this year, but he ultimately chose to play days before the opener. His rookie deal, which expires after the 2025 season, will pay him $9.8 million this year.
Chase has no plans to negotiate a long-term deal during the season, league sources told ESPN’s Adam Schefter. He also has taken out a $50 million insurance policy on himself for this season to safeguard against injury and any potential lost earnings.
The Chiefs have experienced success on both sides of the equation, largely due to having a three-time MVP in Mahomes. They signed Hill to a three-year deal worth $54 million in 2019, and they won the Super Bowl the following year. Hill was traded in 2022 to the Dolphins, who signed him to a deal worth $120 million — more than double his previous contract.
Kansas City went on to win back-to-back Super Bowls. Miami hasn’t won a playoff game since 2000, the longest active drought in the league, although quarterback Tua Tagovailoa‘s concussion issues impacted the 2022 postseason. Tagovailoa, who also was extended this offseason, is again on injured reserve because of a concussion.
The Dolphins signed Jaylen Waddle to an extension worth $28.3 million per year in May as they tried to surround Tagovailoa with as many top-tier weapons as possible.This year, Miami is spending the most of any team in the NFL on the wide receiver position, but largely because of Tagovailoa’s injury, the Dolphins are 2-3 and rank 32nd in points per game (12.0).
Similarly, the Eagles extended wide receiver DeVonta Smith with a three-year, $75 million deal in April, and then extended quarterback Jalen Hurts.
Former Atlanta Falcons general manager Thomas Dimitroff can relate to that philosophy. When the Falcons went to Super Bowl LI with Matt Ryan at quarterback, Atlanta carried the league’s second-highest salary cap charge on wide receivers at $21.9 million, according to Roster Management System.
“The reality of it for me at the time, even though Matt was a few years in, I always knew I was going to do all in my power to provide Matt with the right offensive firepower to help him evolve into the quarterback that he wanted [to become],” Dimitroff recently told ESPN.
The Falcons lost in the divisional round the year after losing in the Super Bowl, and they haven’t been back to the playoffs since. They traded Ryan in 2022.
The cost of a quarterback who is not on a rookie contract can impact how a team navigates the salary cap, including at wide receiver. Tagovailoa and Hill combine for a quarter of the Dolphins’ total projected cap space in 2025, according to Roster Management System. Miami is already $3.7 million over a projected salary cap of $272 million for 2025, despite having only 36 players under salary.
At this year’s scouting combine, Cincinnati de facto general manager Duke Tobin said a team under such constraints has to be judicious with money and determine what’s needed and what is wanted. Besides Chase, the Bengals also have been unable to reach a long-term deal with receiver Tee Higgins.
“It’s a finite pie, and we slice it up a lot of different ways,” Tobin said. “We want to keep as many good players as we can, but there’s always hard decisions to make as you go through a roster building.”
Where a quarterback is in his development plays a key role. When Buffalo was one of the big spenders on wide receivers in 2020, quarterback Josh Allen was in his third season. General manager Brandon Beane said at that time the Bills wanted to trade for a receiver who could help Allen. They acquired Stefon Diggs from Minnesota, who had an All-Pro season with the Bills in 2020 and helped turn Allen into an MVP candidate.
The impetus for that move, Beane said, was a wild-card loss to the Houston Texans in 2019 in Allen’s second season. Five years later, the Bills traded Diggs to Houston.
“Now that Josh has ascended to the player he is, is [having an expensive No. 1 receiver] a requirement?” Beane said in April. “I don’t think so.”
Only time will tell whether this year’s receiver spending spree helps teams looking to pursue postseason success. But if last season is any indication, it is anything but a sure thing.
In 2023, 11 teams carried a salary cap charge of $25 million or more for their wide receivers. Three of those teams made the playoffs. None of them made it past the divisional round.
Worthy, meanwhile, scored his fourth touchdown of the season Monday night against the New Orleans Saints as the Chiefs, who rank 20th in cap hit for wide receivers, improved to 5-0.
ESPN NFL insider Jeremy Fowler and NFL Nation reporters Alaina Getzenberg, Daniel Oyefusi and Adam Teicher contributed to this report.
