UPDATE 2: The Seahawks made Devon Witherspoon the highest paid across the board at 4/$132, $33m AAV, and $101m guaranteed
UPDATE: Like a Randy Orton RKO, out of nowhere Denzel Ward took the AAV crown of $31.1m
As the NFL Salary cap consistently goes up, so will NFL contracts. Over the next two years you will see records fall at every position. It’s just the nature of the NFL. Since the offseason is agonizingly long, each week I will profile a different position to tell you who is the next man up for the Biggest NFL Contract. This week: Cornerback
Quarterback
The Next Biggest NFL Contract Series
EDGE
Offensive Tackle
Defensive Tackle
Wide Receiver
Cornerback
Guard and Center
Safety
Running Back
Linebacker
Tight End
Special Teams
It’s coming. I’m glad I got to this feature before pen hits paper because the Devon Witherspoon mega-extension is coming. We’ll get to him later on, but here is who he is aiming for.
AAV – Trent McDuffie – $31m Denzel Ward – $31.1m
Earlier this offseason, LA made a bold move by trading #29 and 3 more picks to the Kansas City Chiefs for Trent McDuffie. McDuffie wanted a new contract and the Chiefs just don’t seem to do that with cornerbacks. Well, the Rams do. They gave McDuffie a market topping 4/$124m contract. McDuffie’s agent took last year’s Sauce Gardner contract (4/$120.4m) and tacked on $900k to each season to make it a cool $31m.
Now it’s Ward for the time being with his 2/$62.1m extension narrowly edging out McDuffie
Total Value – Trent McDuffie – $124m
That Sauce contract seems a bit weird, right? That’s because $120.4m is based on the 3/$90m contract Derek Stingley signed earlier that offseason. Stingley was the one who bumped up the market after seeing what Jaycee Horn received from Carolina. Horn signed a week earlier at 4/$100m, narrowly beating out 2024’s record setter of 4/$96m by Patrick Surtain II. If Horn was getting that money, then Stingley had to prove a point, and he did.
Total Guarantee – Trent McDuffie – $100m (but it’s really Derek Stingley at 99%)
McDuffie’s deal also topped the total guarantee charts, but only because he signed a 4-year contract. In fact, Of Stingley’s $90m in new money, $89m of that is guaranteed. The funny thing is that because NFL contracts are weird and reported so strangely, he also has $21m of his deal NOT guaranteed. How is that possible? Because part of that $89m was money already coming to him in 2025 and 2026. Still, he gets 100% of his money for the first 4 of his remaining 5 years under contract. McDuffie can’t say that.
Who’s Next?
He knows it, the Seahawks know it, and every agent/executive in the NFL knows it… so why didn’t I write Devon Witherspoon across all three categories above yet? Because there is a game of chicken being played right now by the CBs of the two Super Bowl teams.1 Witherspoon is not signing his extension until Christian Gonzalez signs his with the Patriots.
Both CBs were drafted in 2023 and are shoe-ins to break McDuffie’s records. For Gonzalez, he doesn’t want to sign first and shortchange himself. He either wants to see what Witherspoon gets to try to beat it or if DW blows McDuffie away, ride that wind up even further over McDuffie.
Those two are both just finished with their 3rd year though and could possibly wait until next offseason to sign. If they did that, it would mean 3 more CBs would be jousting for the title: Quinyon Mitchell and Cooper DeJean of the Eagles and Stingley’s teammate Kamari Lassiter. While I think the Eagles will be fine paying both their guys, the Texans may have some trouble dedicating record deals to both their CBs. We’ll see.
CB is a young man’s position. I suppose there is a chance older players like Marlon Humphrey and Denzel Ward could possibly nab shorter, big AAV contracts from the Ravens and Browns respectively, but that would only be with monster seasons this year. (UPDATE: Ward did exactly this but with no monster season)
Contract Terms
Usually, I only give one Next Big Contract, but since two are likely to happen in the next few weeks and Eagles will be involved next year, I’ll triple the prognostication. Assuming Christian Gonzalez signs first, his deal will only slightly advance the market at 4/$128m as the logical next iteration of the Gardner/McDuffie contracts. Once that’s out of the way, Witherspoon will shake things up with a conservative 4/$140m deal and possibly higher. That even seems low as I write it, but it’s already $4m per year higher than the current record.
Next year, the Eagles have the nice dilemma of paying two 1st Team All Pros. There are two possibilities here. While Q matches up with WR1 every week, Coop goes wherever Vic Fangio needs him. Q has objective value while Coope has been subjectively suppressed for the good of the team. This could see Q come in at 4/$140m+ or both come in at an equal $120m-$140m each. A lot will depend on what happens with each this year.
- It could also have something to do with the sale of the Seahawks, but I doubt it ↩︎
Contracts: Spotrac
Photo: Erik Drost, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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