Fans whose favorite NFL teams have a young quarterback and need reliable receiving help have been eying one name for the past few months. Tee Higgins, who has 34 touchdown catches over five seasons with the Bengals, looms as the primary target for any team hoping to land a top wide receiver in free agency. Wideouts in their mid-20s with Higgins’ production and talent don’t often hit the market, but the combination of a pending Ja’Marr Chasedeal, the need to rebuild on defense and the cost of a second franchise tag might push Cincinnati’s star to the open market. If Higgins gets there, he won’t lack for suitors.

What’s more fascinating, perhaps, is what looms behind Higgins. This is an offseason in which there could be a potentially unprecedented amount of veteran wideout help available, either via the trade market or in free agency. Running through the list of potential options, I see players who have combined for 40 Pro Bowl appearances and seven different wide receivers who have been a first-team All-Pro during their careers.

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What does that market look like? How many of those players will actually come available? And where might they end up going? Let’s run through the logjam of trade options, cut candidates and unrestricted free agents, all of whom have already played through multiple NFL contracts. There’s still a lot of uncertainty surrounding who goes where, but if teams think they’re not going to be able to add Higgins, expect them to look closely at assistance from one of these veterans:

Jump to a section:
Two candidates to be traded
Four players who could get released
Six free agents hitting the market
Best of the rest: Five under-the-radar WRs

Trade candidates

Tyreek Hill, Dolphins

2024 stats: 81 catches, 959 yards, 6 TDs
2024 salary: $26.5 million
Age entering 2025 season: 31

The Dolphins are apparently a forgiving franchise. When Anthony Richardson asked out of a game in October because he was tired, the Colts quarterback was excoriated and benched for two games. In December, when 49ers linebacker De’Vondre Campbell refused to enter a game in the second half after he was taken out of the starting lineup, coach Kyle Shanahan and general manager John Lynch got him out of the building and suspended him for the final three games of the season.

But when Hill declined to play in the fourth quarter of Miami’s Week 18 loss to the Jets, and after the game said, “I’m out,” suggesting he wanted to play somewhere else? Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel said it’s not acceptable to leave the game and won’t be tolerated in the future. Hill appears to have walked back his trade request, and the Dolphins appear to have forgiven their star for his indiscretions.

The Dolphins could welcome Hill back, but playing down his Week 18 outburst might be a way to sustain some semblance of trade value for the eight-time Pro Bowler, who missed out on that honor for the first time in 2024. General manager Chris Grier cut veterans Raheem Mostert, Durham Smythe and Kendall Fuller last week to help create cap space, and Hill’s end-of-season statements have surely led the organization to consider whether he is part of their future.

While Hill signed a three-year deal before the 2024 season, the structure of the contract left in some wiggle room for a potential trade. The 30-year-old is due $28.7 million in 2025, with just under $27 million of that money guaranteed, but the only amount due in March is a $1 million roster bonus. Contracts with big option bonuses typically have those figures guarantee in March to ensure a team will make a decision on that player at the beginning of the league year as opposed to waiting until most other teams have spent their cash, which would limit the potential market for a player if he’s released.

Instead, while Hill is owed a $10 million base salary and a $15 million option bonus, the latter doesn’t need to be paid until Aug. 31, meaning the Dolphins could unload that $25 million on another team if they trade away Hill before the start of September. The trade would free up about $400,000 in cap space if it occurs before June 1 and just under $16 million if it occurs after June 1. Miami wouldn’t realize much in the way of cap savings, but it would be the franchise’s way to move on from him before a potentially bad situation gets worse.

Would there be a big market for Hill? You’ll see how many options there are at receiver as this column stretches on, but there’s no other player on the market with Hill’s raw speed. While he played through a wrist injury that had made him a candidate for season-ending surgery (according to his representation), his top-end speed also seemed to slow down. In 2022, per NFL Next-Gen Stats, he topped 20 miles per hour on 28 plays, 10 more than any other player. In 2023, that was up to 29 plays, 17 more than anyone else, and that was over just 695 snaps.

In 2024, though, Hill topped 20 mph on 11 of 906 snaps. He reached that mark over 4% of his snaps in 2023 and on just 1.2% in 2024. Eleven snaps was still good enough to be tied for eighth in the league, so Hill wasn’t exactly a slowpoke, but there’s a meaningful gap between being the fastest guy in the league and one of the fastest guys.

Hill’s performance, which had been otherworldly in 2023, fell way back toward the pack in 2024. He averaged 4.01 yards per route run in 2023, the best mark posted by any wide receiver going back through 2007, the first year ESPN began compiling route data. In 2024, that fell to 1.9 yards per route run, which ranked 40th. While some of that could be chalked up to Tua Tagovailoa missing time with a concussion, Hill’s stats in this category were virtually identical with and without Tagovailoa on the field.

It’s a game of chicken vs. egg. After racking up nine gains of at least 40 yards in 2023, Hill had only one in 2024, and that came in the Dolphins’ Week 1 victory over the Jaguars. Those big plays and open space to the end zone would have given him the best opportunity to hit top speed on the field. Did he not record as many 20-plus-mph runs because he wasn’t hitting those big plays, or was he not generating as many big plays because he wasn’t able to reach the same peak speeds as he did a year ago?

Hill is probably worth more to the Dolphins than he is to any other team, given how heavily they rely on their receivers to create big plays after the catch. And the fact that he backpedaled on his comments following the Week 18 loss to the Jets suggests he wants to stay with the Dolphins. Given his guaranteed salary, the most likely scenario is that he sticks around in Miami, at least for one more year.

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Deebo Samuel, 49ers

2024 stats: 51 catches, 670 yards, 3 TDs
2024 salary: $12.6 million
Age entering 2025 season: 29

Samuel, who has requested that the 49ers trade him, is the best yards-after-catch generator of his generation. From 2021 to 2024, he generated 903 yards after catch over expectation. The only other player with more is Ja’Marr Chase, who generated 11 more YACOE but needed 151 more catches to do so. The No. 3 player on that list, George Kittle, has 585 YACOE.

Put another way: By receiver score‘s YAC component, on a per-snap basis, Samuel ranked first in 2021, first in 2022, first in 2023 and second in 2024, trailing only Greg Dortch. (The size and style disparity between those two receivers makes for a fun comparison.) If you’ve watched any 49ers games over the past few years, you’ve seen Samuel bursting through tackles or running away from defenders in the open field. He’s one of the league’s most difficult players to bring down.

The problem is most everything else. Samuel ranked 137th in catch score while dropping four of his 80 targets on the season. After a hot start, he seemed to fade as the year went along; he failed to top 25 receiving yards in six of his final seven games. Without Christian McCaffrey and Brandon Aiyuk, the San Francisco offense instead seemed to flow through Kittle and Jordan Mason or Isaac Guerendo, with Jauan Jennings as the team’s third-down threat at receiver.

And while Samuel generated extra value in the past as a wildly efficient running back, he averaged only 3.1 yards per carry across his 42 rush attempts in 2024, less than half of his prior career mark of 6.3. Yards per carry can be misleading if a player is picking up a lot of short-yardage first downs, but he went from generating first downs on more than 30% of his runs from 2021 to 2023 to just 11.9% this season.

Cut candidates

Davante Adams, Jets

2024 stats: 85 catches, 1,063 yards, 8 TDs
2024 salary: $17.3 million
Age entering 2025 season: 32

Money, money, money. When Adams was traded from the Packers to the Raiders in an ill-fated move before the 2022 season, the five-year, $140 million contract extension he signed as part of the deal was designed to accomplish three things. The first was to pay him. The second was to reset the wide receiver market, with a number that was more for show ($28 million) than reality. His $67.7 million in compensation over the three ensuing seasons was the top for wideouts at the time, but it was surpassed six days later when Hill was traded to the Dolphins.

The third goal of the deal was to try to get Adams one more crack at a big contract. The structure of his deal was designed to force the Raiders to make a decision after three years. After Year 3, his base salary jumped from just over $11 million to $35.6 million in both 2025 and 2026. While Justin Jefferson makes about that much per year when his bonuses are included, a base salary north of $35 million was always going to be an unpalatable figure if Adams was playing at anything short of an All-Pro level.

Here we are three years later, and a lot has changed. Adams isn’t on the Raiders, who acquired him to play with Derek Carr, his former teammate at Fresno State. The Jets traded for Adams to link up the veteran with another quarterback from his past in Aaron Rodgers. Carr is no longer with the Raiders and might be on the move from the Saints. And after last week, we know Rodgers won’t be returning to New York for a third season.

All of this gives Adams an uncertain future. A late-season surge got his numbers in line with where they were in 2023, which pegs him as a starting-caliber wideout, if not the superstar he was in the previous years. Buoyed by a 198-yard game against the Jaguars in December, he finished with 1,063 receiving yards on 141 targets. His 2.1 yards per route run ranked 29th in the league. While he finished 70th in ESPN’s Receiver Score metric, that figure was dragged down by a dismal Catch Score that looks like an outlier relative to his past performances. There’s a crafty receiver with the ability to get open here.

Adams is still a useful player. He’s just not worth nearly $36 million per season, and that’s going to bring an end to his time with the Jets, given the primary reason they dragged Adams to New York will be hitting the road. ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler reported that Adams could return to the West Coast, which would leave a number of teams as plausible candidates. The Chargers and Rams both have potential openings at wide receiver and would expect to win now.

And then there are those old friends at quarterback. Will Carr stay with the Saints? Will Rodgers continue his career? Bringing former Packers along for the ride didn’t exactly go well in New York, but Adams can justify his roster spot much easier than Tim Boyle or Randall Cobb could in 2023. Wide receivers in their 30s almost never generate significant deals, but a deal with one guaranteed year and $15 million or so would make sense for the six-time Pro Bowler.

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Christian Kirk, Jaguars

2024 stats: 27 catches, 379 yards, 1 TD (8 games)
2024 salary: $24.1 million
Age entering 2025 season: 28

Kirk might have been a victim of his own success. After a breakout season in 2021, the Jags signed him to what was a stunning deal at the time. His four-year, $72 million pact was a desperate move from a front office that just wanted to get solid receivers alongside Trevor Lawrence. Playing in an every-down role and running the sixth-most routes of any receiver in 2022, he then racked up 1,108 yards and eight touchdowns on a team that reached the playoffs.

Since then, Kirk has 1,166 yards over the ensuing two seasons, with injuries — including a broken collarbone last October — limiting him to 20 games over that span. His 2.1 yards per route run over those two seasons is above average, but he has also dropped seven of his 130 targets and lost two fumbles. Considering Kirk took three-quarters of his snaps from the slot last season and doesn’t have the size to line up outside, he profiles as a moderate-floor, low-ceiling receiver.

While Kirk isn’t a bad player, he has become a sort of cautionary tale for teams that just want to spend whatever they can to get competent players in their lineup. He was competing for regular work with Rondale Moore in 2021 when he had a career year, at which point the Jags decided to pay Kirk an market-altering deal. His 2022 season was a sign that he could hold up with heavier volume, but it was also the sort of deal that kept Jacksonville from making bigger splashes at positions of need. Good organizations find their Kirks in the draft or even on the waiver wire. Bad organizations pay a premium to find their Kirks because they’re not confident they can develop their own.

Kirk has $16.2 million in unguaranteed money upcoming in the final year of his deal, which is untenable given his recent impact. Former Arizona coach Kliff Kingsbury, now the offensive coordinator in Washington, raved about Kirk as “one of my favorite players I’ve ever been around,” and the Commanders need to add help at wide receiver beyond Terry McLaurin. Luke McCaffrey should have a larger role in his second NFL season, but it wouldn’t be shocking if Kirk reunited with his old coach to play in the slot for Jayden Daniels.

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Cooper Kupp, Rams

2024 stats: 67 catches, 710 yards, 6 TDs
2024 salary: $29.8 million
Age entering 2025 season: 32

There’s already a strong idea that Kupp won’t be back with the Rams. The organization has allowed him to seek a potential trade partner, which is almost always the precursor to a player’s time with his team coming to a close. Given that the Rams were reportedly talking to teams about a potential trade after they started 1-4 this season, the writing has been on the wall for a while.

For the Rams, the goal is to get a deal done before March 16, when Kupp’s $7.5 million roster bonus will be paid. Most of that bonus — $5 million — is already guaranteed. They could pay it themselves as a way of reducing the amount of money a new team would pay him, a move they would be willing to make only if they land a meaningful draft pick in return. The acquiring team would be on the hook to pay some amount of the $20 million he is owed in 2025, minus whatever the Rams chip in to pay his bonus and base salary. L.A. did this in 2023 when it traded away Allen Robinson, eating $10 million to save the remaining $5 million it owed the disappointing free agent pickup.

If the Rams end up cutting Kupp, things are a little murkier. They would pay him that $5 million, at least at first. It’s unclear whether his deal has offset language, which would allow the franchise to recoup up to that $5 million mark if he signs for that amount elsewhere. If it doesn’t, he could double-dip and earn that money from the Rams and the full amount of a new deal elsewhere.

Releasing Kupp seems more likely than finding a trade that makes sense for everyone involved. Even if the Rams are willing to eat the full $7.5 million bonus, I’m not sure there would be a flood of teams lining up to pay him $12.5 million. If there’s offset language, the Rams would be on the hook for only $5 million, and his deal should eventually be for more than that in 2025. Given that the new team would want to renegotiate his deal, he has a de-facto no-trade clause.

All of that is complicated by evaluating Kupp the player, which is more difficult than ever before. After his legendary 2021 campaign, his 2022 season was ended prematurely by a high ankle sprain that cost him the second half of the year. He has struggled to stay healthy since. He missed the first month of the 2023 season because of a hamstring injury, and another high-ankle sprain cost him five games in 2024. He has also left three other games early over that span.

Kupp looked good in the first five games after his return from the injury in 2024, racking up 401 yards and four touchdowns, but he seemed to fade out of the offense afterward. Through his final seven regular-season games and two playoff contests, he caught only 18 passes for 252 yards and a lone touchdown, averaging 36 receiving yards per game. He played just 55% of the snaps in the wild-card round win over the Vikings, with coach Sean McVay seemingly resting him for most of the second half in a one-sided game as L.A. played more 12 personnel groupings.

Nobody is expecting the 2021 version of Kupp to return, but there are real questions about whether a new team would get the full-season version of him from a year ago or the one who was anonymous in December and January. He averaged 2.1 yards per route run in 2024, which would comfortably make him a starting receiver, but that fell to 1.4 yards per route run over that final seven-game span, which is much less impressive. Organizations will have to treat a full season out of Kupp as a pleasant surprise and project him as a 13-game player when they value him on the market.

Kupp has a distinct and useful skill set. He has excelled in the Rams’ motion-heavy offense as a player who can break down defenders on crossing and choice routes, with that little burst of pre-snap speed giving him an advantage. Nobody ran more routes in motion at the snap than Kupp’s 106 in 2024. McVay also used that motion to play into his strengths as a blocker, where he’s capable of crashing down onto front-seven players in the box and locking up defensive backs on bubble and tunnel screens.

I’ll mention them multiple times in this piece, but there’s an obvious fit here with Kupp and the Chargers, who have a need at receiver, ask their wideouts to block quite often and used motion at the snap at the eighth-highest rate of any offense last season. The Texans just brought in coordinator Nick Caley, who was the pass game coordinator for the Rams last season. And while the Commanders don’t use a ton of motion, Kupp would be a valuable addition on all the perimeter screens and RPOs they run. My guess is that as a free agent, he would end up landing a deal in the $8 million range, where his every-snap value as a blocker and receiver would be mitigated by the concerns about his ability to stay healthy.

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Tyler Lockett, Seahawks

2024 stats: 49 catches, 600 yards, 2 TDs
2024 salary: $18.9 million
Age entering 2025 season: 32

It might be the end of the line for the venerable Lockett in Seattle. Even as the Seahawks ran the league’s ninth-most pass-friendly offense on early downs in neutral game scripts, he averaged just 35.3 receiving yards per game, his worst mark since 2017. He averaged 1.2 yards per route run, which was narrowly behind that 2017 season for his lowest average.

The range of skills Lockett can offer a team has also diminished. He was targeted a career-low 10 times on deep routes in 2024, though he did catch five of those passes for 150 yards. His catch rate was 6.3% over expectation, one of the league’s best marks, but that might be a product of playing with arguably the NFL’s most accurate passer in Geno Smith; Jaxon Smith-Njigba and DK Metcalf also posted excellent marks (both at plus-4.8%). And once an excellent return man, Lockett has two kick returns and one punt return over the past three years, and he didn’t take a single snap on special teams in 2024.

With Lockett due $17 million in unguaranteed money in 2025, there’s just no way a Seahawks team $11.3 million over the projected cap can bring a guy who profiles as their third-best wideout back on that sort of deal. He has a $30.9 million cap hold, which is fourth among wideouts behind Adams, Metcalf and CeeDee Lamb. He will need to take a significant pay cut to return to the only franchise he has ever known.

If Lockett does move on, could he reunite with his old coach in a new location? New coach Pete Carroll and the Raiders are thrilled with rookie sensation Brock Bowers at tight end, but with Jakobi Meyers occupying the slot, there are opportunities to add help outside. Speedster Tre Tucker is going to be the deep threat in the offense, but Lockett could be a veteran option and a reliable voice in the locker room for Carroll as he tries to build an organizational culture in the desert.

2025 free agents

Keenan Allen

2024 stats: 70 catches, 744 yards, 7 TDs (with CHI)
2024 salary: $23.1 million
Age entering 2025 season: 33

Allen’s move to the NFC after 11 seasons with the Chargers failed to live up to expectations. Expected to be the third-down solution and safe pair of hands in a widely hyped trio of Bears wide receivers for rookie Caleb Williams, he flopped. The six-time Pro Bowler dropped eight of the 117 targets thrown in his direction. The only receiver who ran 400 routes and posted a higher drop rate was the Jets’ Allen Lazard.

The core of Allen’s game was always getting open. As recently as 2023, he led the league in open score, with second-placed CeeDee Lamb (Dallas) closer to 10th than he was to first. While that skill hasn’t totally disappeared, Allen posted a 57 open score in 2024, which dropped him to 64th by that same measure.

If Allen struggles to catch the ball, given his reduced ability after the catch in his 30s, it’s tough for him to add significant value. He racked up 126 fewer yards than an average receiver would have with the same targets, per NFL Next Gen Stats, which was the league’s 11th-worst mark. If you’re inclined to think that was some product of Williams and offensive coordinators Shane Waldron and Thomas Brown, there’s probably some truth to that theory: Rome Odunze was the fifth-worst receiver by the same metric, while DJ Moore was also below league average.

Allen is one year removed from a 1,243-yard, seven-touchdown season with the Chargers, but as he enters free agency, his age and the disappointing season with the Bears should limit his market to one-year offers in the seven-figure range. There are competitive teams where his ability to feel out holes in zone coverage would be valuable as a second or third wideout, with the Broncos coming to mind as a logical landing spot.

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Marquise Brown

2024 stats: 9 catches, 91 yards (2 games with KC)
2024 salary: $7 million
Age entering 2025 season: 28

Signed to a one-year deal last offseason, Brown’s debut in Kansas City was waylaid by a shoulder injury suffered before the regular season. When he returned late in the season, he seemed to be a focal point of the offense with designed touches on a limited snap count, as he was targeted on a whopping 45% of his routes in a pair of Chiefs victories.

Brown’s role diminished in the postseason, however. His target rate dropped to 20%, and he turned his 65 routes into just 50 receiving yards. The hope was that he might be a downfield threat for the Chiefs, but he failed to catch any of the five deep targets thrown in his direction, including a back-shoulder possibility in which he stepped out of bounds and a deep ball that hit him in the hands.

Brown has the speed to be a downfield threat, but the Chiefs used him more as a gadget player and runaway option on crossing routes. They already have someone who can do that in Xavier Worthy. If they’re going to add a third wideout around Worthy and Rashee Rice, they would probably prefer a bigger option who can work the middle of the field and take over some of the work between the numbers from Travis Kelce.

There has always been a potential breakout hinted at by Brown’s underlying metrics, but injuries and other circumstances have prevented that from happening. He averaged 2.0 yards per route run with a 25% target share in Baltimore, but that was in the league’s most run-happy offense under coordinator Greg Roman. He was on pace for 122 catches, 1,374 yards and 8 touchdowns after 6 games with the Cardinals in 2022, but he fractured his foot. By the time he came back, Kyler Murray had torn his ACL. When Murray returned in 2023, Brown got hurt and missed the final three games of the season. And in 2024, with Patrick Mahomes and a pass-happy offense, Brown missed most of the season.

Hitting free agency again after a one-year, $7 million deal with the Chiefs, Brown faces an uncertain future. The Chiefs reportedly want to bring him back, but after their ugly loss in the Super Bowl, general manager Brett Veach might want to devote more resources to the offensive line and keeping star guard Trey Smith.

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Brandin Cooks

2024 stats: 26 catches, 259 yards, 3 TDs (10 games with DAL)
2024 salary: $8 million
Age entering 2025 season: 31

Cooks’ numbers have fallen precipitously over the past five years. The 2014 first-round pick averaged 2.3 yards per route run during the 2020 season with the Texans. Since then, his route efficiency has dropped in each consecutive season: He was at 2.1 in 2021, 1.7 in 2022, 1.3 in 2023 and all the way down to 0.9 this past season with the Cowboys, when he had 259 yards across 10 games. His 2024 mark ranked 100th out of 114 wide receivers who ran 200 routes or more, down from 13th in 2020.

It’s fair to look toward the absence of Dak Prescott as a potential factor for Cooks’ struggles last season, but he was also declining amid healthy, productive seasons from Prescott in 2022 and 2023. He didn’t have a single catch further than 20 yards downfield in 2024, although he did beat Darius Slay for a big gain on a double-move with a sluggo route against the Eagles. At this point, he’s probably a third wideout a team is relying on to win versus man coverage with a little bit of wriggle. Cooks ranked last among all wide receivers in yards per route run versus zone coverage in 2024.

While Cooks is still only 31 years old, the well-traveled veteran entered the league at age 20, so there’s more tread on his tires than other players at the same age. He made $8 million with the Cowboys last season, but as an unrestricted free agent, he’s probably looking at something closer to $3 million on a one-year deal. For a player who has dealt with concussions and made $116 million during his career, that might not make it worth his while to return.

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Amari Cooper

2024 stats: 44 catches, 547 yards, 4 TDs (with CLE/BUF)
2024 salary: $20 million
Age entering 2025 season: 31

While Bills general manager Brandon Beane was hoping to land the 2023 version of Cooper when Buffalo traded for him at midseason, the version the Bills landed looked a lot like the guy who was sleepwalking through the first part of the season with the Browns. Cooper got hurt in his second game with the team, missed two weeks and failed to top 12 yards in three of the ensuing six games he played during the regular season.

Cooper then added just 41 receiving yards across three playoff games, with the Bills using him on only 38% of their offensive dropbacks. His last catch proved to be fateful: The Bills dialed up a perfect screen versus a Cover-0 blitz on third-and-10 late against the Chiefs, but he managed to get only 5 yards. Even a couple more yards would have allowed them to present the threat of a Josh Allen run on fourth down; instead, the fourth-and-5 set up Chiefs coordinator Steve Spagnuolo to send a perfectly timed blitz toward Allen, blowing up the play and ending Buffalo’s season.

Cooper never seemed to be in position to generate the big plays that drove his success in 2023. During that season, he caught 17 passes on throws traveling 20 yards or more downfield, the second most of any receiver, behind Hill. In 2024, playing with Allen for half the season, he had just six of those catches. That drop-off was responsible for wiping 478 receiving yards off his totals on its own. He had six catches on throws further than 30 yards downfield in 2023 and none in 2024.

At 30 years old, Cooper isn’t a burner, if he ever was one. But the 2023 version was excellent on back-shoulder throws and 50/50 balls, giving quarterbacks a safe place to put the ball up either sideline. The Raiders and Cowboys were able to squeeze some extra efficiency out of him earlier in his career by moving him inside and using him as a power slot receiver, but he has been more efficient on the outside over the past couple of seasons in Cleveland and Buffalo.

Teams have prematurely counted out Cooper in the past. In 2018, the Raiders didn’t see him as a building block and traded him to the Cowboys, where he almost immediately turned around their offense and drove a dramatic improvement in Dak Prescott‘s numbers. In 2022, Dallas chose Michael Gallup and Dalton Schultz over Cooper and was about to cut him before trading him to the Browns, where he had back-to-back seasons with more than 1,150 receiving yards.

The Browns didn’t want to extend Cooper after his Pro Bowl season in 2023. It would be a surprise if he returned to the Bills in 2025. He was a below-average wide receiver in 2024, and that’s usually going to mean a modest free agent market for a player who will be 31 in June. I would be a little nervous he’s going to defy the odds and prove yet another team wrong for writing him off.

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Stefon Diggs

2024 stats: 47 catches, 496 yards, 3 TDs (8 games with HOU)
2024 salary: $22.5 million
Age entering 2025 season: 31

Diggs gets an incomplete grade for his season with the Texans, as he made it through eight games before suffering a torn ACL, which ended his season. He was on pace for 100 catches and 1,054 yards, which would have been roughly similar to what the he produced in his final season with Buffalo after adjusting for a reduced target share.

Advanced metrics were fonder of Diggs’ production than you might guess. His 2.0 yards per route run ranked 38th among players with at least 200 routes run, just behind Courtland Sutton and Calvin Ridley. He did a great job of actually bringing in the football, the first job of a wide receiver; he didn’t drop a pass all season and caught 5.1 more passes than expected, per NFL Next Gen Stats. That figure ranked seventh in the league through Week 8, and it came on a team in which the other wide receivers and tight ends combined to catch 1.4 passes over expectation across a much larger target volume during that same span.

Receiver Score was even more optimistic. After years of seeing Diggs as a top-10 wideout, he dropped to 67th in the rankings during his final season with the Bills. In 2024, though, he jumped back up to third, driven by a great catch rate and the league’s seventh-highest Open Score. Open Score attempts to measure both what a receiver does on the routes in which he’s targeted and his ability to get open on the ones where the ball goes elsewhere, which seems to augur some optimism towards his ability sustaining into his thirties.

But then there’s the torn ACL, and while that’s not an injury that ends careers like it might have in the past, it’s only going to complicate things. Teams are already hesitant to give healthy players in their 30s multi-year guarantees out of fear they’ll get injured and/or have their performance suddenly decline. Now, Diggs is coming back from a serious knee injury before he’s even signed with another team, which means he’ll likely be playing on one-year deals in 2025 and beyond.

When the Texans traded for Diggs last April, they voided the final three years of his deal, allowing him to suit up in 2024 with the possible motivation of earning a new contract in the years to come. It was a bizarre move given that they were trading a second-round pick to acquire him, but it ended up being inconsequential. Diggs would have probably ended up as a cut candidate after the injury, with an unguaranteed $18 million base salary in 2025 that will likely outstrip his actual deal on the open market.

As a free agent, Diggs’ best move might be to stay put. The Texans have a hole at wide receiver next to Nico Collins after Tank Dell suffered a multi-ligament knee injury late in the season, one that John Metchie and Xavier Hutchinson struggled to fill. Veteran Robert Woods is also a free agent. The Texans were willing to take a big swing to add Diggs a year ago, and while the offense was wildly disappointing, it wasn’t his fault. Given that Diggs doesn’t play special teams, is coming off a serious injury and has a reputation for bad behavior when he’s not where he wants to be, there’s going to be a narrower market for him than there would be for other wideouts with his production.

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Chris Godwin

2024 stats: 50 catches, 576 yards, 5 TDs (7 games with TB)
2024 salary: $20 million
Age entering 2025 season: 29

Godwin got off to a spectacular start in 2024, as the move by offensive coordinator Liam Coen to shift him back into the slot more seemed to unlock his efficiency. As he suited up in garbage time against the Ravens, he was averaging 2.5 yards per route run, identical to what Ja’Marr Chase produced over the full 2024 campaign. He was on pace for a 121-catch, 1,399-yard campaign, which would have been an excellent advertisement as he entered free agency.

Then, disaster struck. Godwin dislocated his ankle, ending his season. What looked to be his best season since his breakout 2019 campaign instead came to a wildly frustrating conclusion. There’s never a good time for a player to get hurt, but seeing Godwin go down in a meaningless moment in a contract year felt particularly unfair.

There’s a significant level of uncertainty surrounding what his market will look like, in part because it’ll be determined by the wideout’s medicals. A healthy Godwin would have been in position to get a multiyear guarantee, especially if he had been able to keep up his early-season performance over the rest of the season. Teams will understandably be more reticent to make that sort of commitment with him returning from a serious ankle injury. It’s tough to draw much insight into his potential market without seeing how he’s healing from the injury.

At the same time, Godwin should have fans in a pair of key roles across the league. The Bucs have sent back-to-back offensive coordinators to head coaching opportunities over the past two years, with Dave Canales taking over the Panthers before Coen earned the Jags job. Both of those teams could easily justify making a move for Godwin, as the Panthers are on their annual quest to find enough help for Bryce Young, while the Jags could replace Kirk in the slot. Whether Godwin leaves for one of those options or stays in Tampa, he might want to lean on a familiar face on a prove-it deal in the hopes of landing something more significant next offseason.

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Best of the rest: One trade candidate, four free agents

Adam Thielen has outplayed expectations amid multiple quarterbacks and offensive coordinators in Carolina, racking up 1,629 yards over two seasons. He’s owed only about $6.3 million in 2025, so the Panthers could comfortably afford a third season with the now 35-year-old wideout. They could potentially trade him to a more competitive team if they want to make a more substantial investment in a veteran receiver, which would likely land Carolina a Day 3 pick in return.

Mike Williams didn’t seem to find any traction with the Jets, who dealt the 6-foot-4 wideout to the Steelers at midseason for a fifth-round pick. He ended up becoming one of the first two players since 1930 to play 18 games in a regular season alongside Leonard Williams. He wasn’t a consistent threat for Pittsburgh, but he did manage a number of his customary big plays down either sideline, including a winning touchdown catch against the Commanders. He should have an opportunity as a third or fourth wideout, albeit on a reduced salary from the $10 million he made a year ago.

DeAndre Hopkins made it to the Super Bowl with the Chiefs and scored a fourth-quarter touchdown, but his trip to the biggest stage will likely be remembered for a disastrous drop at the end of the first half that cost the Chiefs a chance to score their first points. After an 86-yard, two-touchdown performance in his second game for the Chiefs, he never really seemed to develop a consistent rapport with Patrick Mahomes, and he was only a part-time player during the postseason. It might be tough for the five-time Pro Bowler to find a significant opportunity this offseason.

Demarcus Robinson was the third wideout for the Rams and set career highs in receiving yards (505) and touchdowns (seven). Given how frequently he was on the field, though, he generated just 1.0 yards per route run, which ranked 44th out of the 47 wideouts who ran 400 routes or more. He was also charged with DUI in January, which could open him up to potential league discipline. If the Rams let Kupp leave, they could justify bringing back Robinson on a one-year deal in the same $4 million range he earned a year ago, although it’s fair to suggest they likely could upgrade on the 30-year-old if they tried.

JuJu Smith-Schuster was cut by the Patriots before reuniting with the Chiefs, where he had exactly one great game in the regular season with a seven-catch, 130-yard performance against the Saints. He finished with just 231 receiving yards, but the Chiefs like him for his ability to block and hold his own on the many pick plays Andy Reid loves to call on offense. Smith-Schuster doesn’t play special teams, which hurts his value versus other backup wide receivers, but he’s enough of a known quantity and offers just enough on the occasional catch to justify a roster spot.