Predicting next NFL wide receivers to get paid: Terry McLaurin, Drake London likely candidates for extension

Which wideouts might be able to land a new deal, and possibly this offseason?

The NFL offseason is a time of change. Players change teams. Teams change coaches, front offices, game-day schemes and so on.

Yet the offseason can also be a time of commitment. Players and coaches and executives get new opportunities, some of them quite lucrative. And sometimes, teams commit to players already on the roster, deciding they want to keep them around long term.

We saw an example of that Thursday when the Baltimore Ravens extended former first-round wide receiver Rashod Bateman. By the end of the offseason, we could see several more examples of wideouts getting locked up. With the Bateman deal in mind, we wanted to take a look at the wide receiver market in particular, and which player could be next to land a new contract.

Because of their contract situations and the fact they have recently become extension-eligible, the most likely wide receivers to be next in line to get paid are those selected in the 2022 NFL Draft. But there are also some veterans whose contracts are either up soon or not necessarily in line with their production.

The Falcons have already picked up London's $16.8 million fifth-year option, giving them some additional time with which to work out an extension with him. Atlanta is currently bumping up against the salary cap both this year and next, but signing London to an extension would actually relieve some of the financial burden for 2026 by lowering his base salary.

He's shown improvement with each passing season in the league, culminating last year with 100 catches, 1,271 yards and nine touchdowns in 2024. Those figures ranked ninth, fourth and ninth in the league, respectively. He also caught 29 passes that gained at least 20 yards, which were the fifth most in the NFL. London ranked third in the NFL in team target share, with 29.3% of Atlanta's passes being thrown in his direction, according to Tru Media, a rate that checked in behind only Malik Nabers and Justin Jefferson. He was quite efficient on a per-route basis as well, ranking 10th in the league in adjusted yards per route run (which accounts for first downs and touchdowns). 

London would be fully justified in asking to be paid near the top of the market, if not necessarily at the level of players like Jefferson, Ja'Marr Chase and CeeDee Lamb. If he's looking for a contract in that range, he'd probably be best off playing out the 2025 season and showing that he can replicate the production from last year. 

Wilson hasn't really been put in position to succeed during his Jets career, yet he's in large part succeeded anyway. He's topped 1,000 yards in each of his three seasons and seen his catch total rise from 93 to 95 to 101 while also seeing a spike in his catch rate last season as he hauled in 65.6% of the passes thrown in his direction. Wilson has done this despite playing his first two seasons with Zach Wilson, Mike White, Joe Flacco, Trevor Siemian and Tim Boyle under center, and his third with a diminished version of Aaron Rodgers tossing him the ball.

Wilson won't turn 25 years old until later this summer, and he said earlier this offseason that he hopes he's a Jet for life. As former NFL agent and CBS Sports contributor Joel Corry wrote this week, Wilson could likely look at the $33 million-per-year salary handed to DK Metcalf and scoff at it, insisting on being paid at a higher level. Wilson also has a chance to have another strong year this season playing with his former college quarterback Justin Fields, who helped get high level of production from D.J. Moore in 2023 that led to the wideout landing a contract extension last year. 

McLaurin has never finished a season with fewer than 919 receiving yards, and he's topped 1,000 in each of the last five seasons while making the Pro Bowl in two out of the last three years. He's been making noise about his contract situation of late, including skipping out on voluntary workouts after initially showing up. He's headed into the final year of his contract and his age-30 season, but given that he's Jayden Daniels' clear-cut No. 1 target and the best skill player on Washington's offense, it's important for the Commanders to get this done at some point soon.

Sutton is headed into the final year of his contract and coming off arguably the best season of his career. He'll turn 30 in October, which could make extension talks interesting, but he's clearly Bo Nix's No. 1 target and it sure seems like having that kind of threat around during the early portion of your young quarterback's career is quite important. He should be able to remain highly productive for at least a few more seasons, and while he's unlikely to be paid near the top of the market, he could be in line for a significant pay bump that keeps him around through the end of Nix's rookie-scale deal.

There's a complicating factor in Olave's extension discussions, thanks to the high number of concussions he's suffered in his career (four confirmed in three years), but he's shown he has the ability to produce like a true No. 1 wide receiver when healthy. He topped 1,000 yards in each of his first two seasons despite missing at least a game in both of them, and proved capable of handling a massive target share in each of those. 

New Orleans is always in a precarious salary-cap situation, but it seems like the team might actually be willing to take some hits and work through them over the next couple of years. An Olave extension would alleviate, not exacerbate, some of those concerns, though, and given his prodigious production it makes sense to at least explore what that would look like. The health issues could also give the Saints some pause, though, and it wouldn't be surprising to see them hold off on breaking the bank until he makes it through the 2025 season without suffering another head injury, as callous as that sounds.

Williams has had a topsy-turvy start to his career, with an ACL tear that kept him out for most of his rookie season, a gambling suspension in Year 2 and a performance-enhancing drug suspension in Year 3, in addition to an inconsistent role in a crowded Lions passing attack. He finally broke out in a big way as an explosive, big-play threat last year, though, and it's clear the Lions have major plans for him moving forward. 

As with Olave, though, there are some complicating factors here. The first is health, with the ACL tear. The second is the history of suspensions. The third is the aforementioned crowded Detroit offense. Jared Goff, Amon-Ra St. Brown and Penei Sewell are on top-of-the-market contracts. Taylor Decker is on a sizable deal as well, and the Lions will have to deal with the contractual after-effects of Frank Ragnow's sudden retirement. 

There's also the matter of the presences of Sam LaPorta and Jahmyr Gibbs. The Lions can conceivably pay all of their top skill players, but it's rare to see teams lay out that kind of money for so many guys. It was therefore surprising but not shocking that trade rumors surrounding Williams popped up ahead of the draft. Williams is the one of the three Lions weapons who plays a so-called premier position, but they have also already paid a player at his position, and they might be able to afford LaPorta and Gibbs on a pair of contracts that come close to what they'd have to pay Williams alone if he has another season like the one he did last year. 

The mid-to-late round picks

These are the type of players who could sign deals similar to Bateman in value, but may or may not be in a position where either they want to sign such a deal or their team wants to sign them until they prove they can produce at a higher level than they have so far. 

Players like Wan'Dale Robinson, George Pickens, Alec Pierce, Jalen Tolbert, Romeo Doubs and more have been varying degrees of effective for their respective teams, but they're all in situations where they're not necessarily priorities in their own offenses (and Pickens was recently traded to a new team and his agent said he's not interested in extending just yet) and they haven't yet shown that they should be. Still, if there's agreement to be found on a Bateman-style deal where they get paid like an ancillary part of the offense, something could come together.