Garrett Wilson extension – what it means

ESPN’s Adam Schefter announced that the Jets have given wide receiver Garrett Wilson a four-year, $130 million contract extension with $90 million guaranteed.

Wilson is represented by CAA (Creative Artists Agency), which also represents a lot of media figures.

Giving Wilson this mega-deal, after this third season, breaks from the Jets’ recent policy of not wanting to give first-round picks their huge second contract until after their fourth season.

That is what led to the nasty contract dispute with safety Jamal Adams in 2020. The Jets wanted to wait until after this fourth season.

Clearly, they have moved past that philosophy because they just paid Wilson, and are on the brink of giving cornerback Sauce Gardner an enormous second deal after this third season.

There was another first-round pick from the same draft as Wilson and Gardner, defensive end Jermaine Johnson, who is perhaps not going to get that big second deal right now because he’s coming off a torn achilles tendon.

Another player from that same draft, running back Breece Hall, theoretically should already have his second contract, since this is the last year of his rookie deal, but reading the tea leaves, you don’t get the sense that the Jets are going there right now. He’s actually entering the last year of his rookie deal, since he was a second-round pick, and got a four-year deal, and this is no fifth-year option in Round Two.

While the Wilson extension is pricey, one small win for the Jets here is that this deal didn’t in the same region as wide receiver Justin Jefferson’s contract in Minnesota which is $35 million per season, or wide receiver Jamar Chase’s contract in Cincinnati, which comes in around $40 million per.

Wilson lands at $32.5 million. in the same vicinity as the deal the Pittsburgh Steelers gave D.K. Metcalf, which averages $33 million per.

So, at least the Jets didn’t go into the rarified air of the Jefferson-Chase contracts.

While this is a big day for Wilson and should be congratulated at now being set for life, huge wide receiver contracts can be risky business, because while you need talent in your WR room, how many receivers lead you to the promised land?

Who were Tom Brady’s receivers in New England when he won six rings?

Who were the New York Giants’ receivers when Bill Parcells led them to two championships?

But we have known for months the Jets were going to do this, and there was probably a small PR angle to this signing, and the impending Gardner deal.

Jets fans don’t have much to hang their hats on right now, and they’ve been calling for the Jets to pay Wilson and Gardner.

One down, one to go. These moves will make Jets fans, who are a little down in the mouth right now after the 14 years out of the playoffs, and the Aaron Rodgers experiment not working out, happy.

But how happy is Wilson going to be this year on the field?

We know that he has been dismayed the last three years with all the losing, and how much will that change this year? That remains to be seen, but some view this as a reboot year without high expectations. Also, now he’s going to play with a QB who doesn’t go through his progressions or see the field as well as Rodgers, so the WR, given to sideline outbursts at times, how is he going to deal with that?

Perhaps getting paid this kind of money will help deal with stuff better.

July 14, 2025

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