Let me take you back to a long, long time ago. One before the massive wide receiver contract became the norm of the NFL world.  A simpler time. You know, five months ago. It was a pivotal time for the Bucs. It was a pivotal time for their impending free agent wide receiver Chris Godwin.

And fans were anxious as well.

On the eve of free agency news broke that the team would be using its franchise tag on Godwin for the second consecutive year. This would mean Godwin would cost Tampa Bay $19.2 million dollars against the salary cap. At the time that would have meant that the annual average value of Godwin’s contract would have made him the sixth-highest paid receiver in the league. 

This came as a shock to most of the NFL world. Most reasonable estimates had Godwin signing a long-term deal with the Bucs in the neighborhood of $16-17 million per year.

Then over the course of five days Chargers wide receiver Mike Williams and Godwin each signed nearly identical three year, $60-million contracts. These two helped usher in a new era of $20+ million/year contracts that has swept the league this offseason. Since then, eight more receivers have signed new deals or extensions that have put them in this not-so-exclusive-anymore club.

In addition, Brandin Cooks got just under that on a deal with Houston. There are now 14 receivers with AAV’s of $20 million or more. Prior to this offseason there were just four.

The Trouble With Comparing Godwin’s Contract

Bucs WR Chris Godwin – Photo by: Cliff Welch/PR

But how does Godwin’s contract compare to all of the others signed this year? Historically in the NFL it has been hard to make those types of comparisons. This is due to the non-guaranteed nature of the contracts. In all other American professional sports league contracts are fully guaranteed. And thusly, you simply compare the average annual value of two or more contracts to see which player made out best.

But in the NFL, there are a multitude of factors that convolute the process. Some players receive more fully guaranteed money than others. Some get better cash flows in the first three years. These factors have both been used in the past by analysts to try and explain how some players fare against others in the contract-negotiating game.

A New Way To Compare Contracts

Over at Pro Football Focus Arjun Menon and Brad Spielberger created a model that may help with that process going forward with their new model called “Expected Contract Value.” I’ll let them explain what it is as they can do it much better than I.

“We (Arjun Menon and Brad Spielberger) wanted to create a metric(s) that fixed this issue. Building off Bryce Johnston (now with the Eagles) and Nicholas Barton’s (both formerly of Over The Cap) terrific work on the Expected Contract Value metric, we decided to try to apply the same methodologies to 2022 offseason free agents and players that were extended. Using expected contract value (ECV), we can then create other metrics, such as expected APY, and percent of contract expected to earn.

After building out expected contract value, we believe this can serve as a way to truly compare contracts between players to see whose deal is stronger.”

How Strong Is Godwin’s Deal?

This of course begs the question how strong is Godwin’s deal in the “year of the wide receiver mega-deal?”

Let’s start first with Godwin’s contract. Godwin signed a three-year $60 million deal with $40 million fully guaranteed. Here is what Arjun and Brad came up with in terms of Godwin’s expected contract outcome.

This represents the likelihood Godwin plays each year. Now that we have this, we can multiply that likelihood by each year’s base salary to come to the expected contract amount.

Now thanks to Arjun we can compare this to each of the other big deals signed this offseason.

Of the 13 contracts listed you can see Godwin comes out with the seventh-highest “Expected APY” just behind Williams. This is because Williams is less likely to play his third year. Additionally, Williams has a higher salary for that third year and so his expected APY is higher due to higher cash flows earlier in the contract that are more likely to be earned.

The Bucs should be happy that they got a premium talent like Godwin at such a reasonable expected APY. Over the past three years on a per game basis, this is where Godwin has ranked among this group: third in receptions, third in yards, and sixth in touchdowns.

Looking At It From All Sides

From Godwin’s perspective he should feel very good about getting such strong guarantees on his deal. With an expected percentage of contract earned of 82.20% he ranks third on this list behind only A.J. Brown and Cooper Kupp. Plus, he will be able to hit the market again before he is 30 years old. That will allow him to get another crack at a big deal.

On the Bucs’ side, they were able to get Godwin at what has turned out to be a relative bargain in hindsight. Early on this deal looks like a rare “win-win.” And now that Bucs fans will get to see Godwin in pewter and red for most likely another three years, we can call it a “win-win-win.”