The Bucs hit a couple of home runs in the 2020 NFL Draft. Between first-round pick Tristan Wirfs and second-round pick Antoine Winfield Jr. Tampa Bay came away with two Pro Bowl caliber players who would become key cogs in their Super Bowl victory later that season and likely stalwarts of the team for years to come. Both have blown the doors off both their draft positions and their rookie contracts, and both are now approaching their second contracts.

Wirfs has been locked in for an additional year via the fifth-year option clause in his original deal that keeps him under team control through at least 2024. The Bucs are likely to try and lock him in to a long-term extension this offseason to help lessen the $18,606,582 2024 salary cap hit as well as secure his services for the next four-to-six years.

Winfield, on the other hand, has no such option in his contract as he was selected outside the first round. Winfield has been a top safety in the NFL since his rookie year and appears to be ascending even higher early this season. He is currently the seventh-highest-rated safety in the league, including the highest rated pass rusher and second-highest-rated run defender per Pro Football Focus.

Add in the several splash plays he has posted this year, including two sacks, two forced fumbles and two fumble recoveries and it has many in the Tampa Bay fan base clamoring for the Bucs to lock Winfield Jr. in for a contract extension now before he becomes a free agent next offseason. That creates the natural question of “What would a Winfield contract extension look like?” Scott Reynolds discussed it a bit in a recent SR’s Fab 5 column.

Finding Comps

Through 3.25 seasons Winfield has registered 293 tackles, 11 sacks, seven forced fumbles, six fumble recoveries, 19 pass deflections and four interceptions. When looking at the top five safeties in the NFL in terms of average annual value on their second contracts this is how Winfield compares in terms of those traditional statistics over the four years prior to each player signing their current deals:

Despite still having just over 3/4 of a season to play to match the rest of the group he doesn’t rank last in any single category. And with 13 potential games remaining he could vault himself into third in games played and interceptions, second in tackles and an outside chance at third in passes defensed.

In short, his counting stats match up well with the group he is hoping to join financially. But player evaluations go beyond just counting stats.

To try to create some sort of objective comparison among the four I attempted to compare their Pro Football Focus grades. Now PFF does not publish career-long grades or allow you to customize grades across multiple seasons. The best I could do is create composite grades by weighting grades from each season leading into each player’s extension signing by their snap counts. For Winfield I also used his 2023 grades projected out over the average of snaps played in his first three years.

Here is how it all shakes out:

Winfield ranks third in overall composite PFF grade, surprisingly fourth in coverage, first in run defense, and first in pass rush. Again, this shows he certainly belongs in the conversation as one of the best safeties in the game and he and his representation will be able to point to a variety of data points such as these, along with his Pro Bowl selection in 2021 and his fourth place in voting for AP Defensive Rookie of the Year to make that case.

Using Versatility To Further Antoine Winfield Jr.’s Case

Bucs S Antoine Winfield Jr. – Photo by: USA Today

Antoine Winfield Jr. will likely point to his versatility as another reason why he should be paid in the upper echelon of his position group. Once again looking at the four contemporaries from above Winfield shows favorably in terms of the ways he can be deployed.

Jessie Bates is almost exclusively a free safety logging almost 75% of his snaps from a deep safety positioning. Jamal Adams leads the group in box snaps at almost 45%. Add in his deep safety snaps and he has almost 70% of his reps coming from one of those two alignments. Minkah Fitzpatrick is rarely used in the box (11%).

That leaves Derwin James and Winfield as the true “do-it-all” types. While Winfield has almost 60% of his snaps from a deep positioning, he is the only player in the group with over 20% of his reps from the slot while still ranking third in percentage of snaps at the defensive line and out wide.

Defensive coordinators talk constantly about how they love versatility in players and as injuries arise those chess pieces can transition into different roles to help cover. Winfield showed last year he can play well as a primary slot corner and his consistent play as a run defender and pass rusher belie an ability to potentially be a plus box defender when needed.

Antoine Winfield Jr.’s Draft Position Will Likely Depress His Market

Like it or not, draft position matters when negotiating second contracts. Draft status lingers in player evaluations long after players pass their rookie years.

Being selected in the second round will have a negative impact on the ceiling of what Antoine Winfield Jr. can secure. Derwin James, Minkah Fitzpatrick and Jamal Adams all got their deals in years prior to Jessie Bates. However, Bates was not able to hit the $17 million/year threshold that the other three cleared. The biggest difference between the four? Adams, James and Fitzpatrick were all first-round draft picks (taken within the first 20 picks). Bates, on the other hand, like Winfield, was a second-round pick.

Projecting Antoine Winfield Jr.’s Contract

Bucs S Antoine Winfield Jr. – Photo by: USA Today

Derwin James is in the pole position for the safety position at a $19 million AAV. Minkah Fitzpatrick clears the $18 million threshold by just under $250k. Jamal Adams’ AAV is at $17.5 million with Jessie Bates at just a hair over $16 million. At the time of signing these player’s AAV’s accounted for the following percentage of the salary cap at signing: James – 9.19%, Fitzpatrick – 8.76%, Adams – 8.83%, Bates – 7.12%.

Antoine Winfield Jr. should easily clear Bates in terms of percentage of cap. And I think he will be able to make a solid case for the range that Fitzpatrick and Adams currently occupy, although with his draft status ultimately forcing him to fall a bit shy of their markers. My projection would be Winfield hitting around 7.75% of the cap in the year of signing if he continues to play at his current pace.

If that year is 2024 where the NFL salary cap is projected to be around $250 million that would translate to an AAV of $19.375 million per year. That would allow Winfield to clear James for the largest AAV for the safety position ever.

Now the interesting thing is how many years that contract will be for. The last three extensions the Bucs have signed players to have been for three-year deals. Winfield may be inclined to go for the same length as opposed to signing a four-year pact like the rest of the safeties we have been comparing him to.

With Winfield having just turned 25 in August, a three-year deal would allow him to attempt to get to one more multi-year deal at 29. Three years at $19.375 million would get the total contract to $58.125 million.

While the other top-paid safeties received about 50-56% of their total contract values in guarantees, Winfield would conceivably get a higher percentage because of the shorter nature of his contract. At about 70% guaranteed he would get $40 million guaranteed which would put him just $2 million shy of James.

With a $17.5 million signing bonus and a $10 million salary in year one Winfield would have a year one cash flow of $27.5 million, which would eclipse every safety and he would get the entire cash flow in three-years, which would also be more than any of the other players currently at the top of the safety market.

The Franchise Tag Option

Bucs S Antoine Winfield Jr. – Photo by: Cliff Welch/PR

All of this is based on the notion that the Bucs extend Antoine Winfield Jr. at the end of this season. But there is no guarantee that happens.

The team has shown they aren’t afraid to place the franchise tag on a player they value and want long-term. They did that in 2021 when they tagged wide receiver Chris Godwin. And the franchise tag for the safety position is reasonable at a projected $18,216,000.

The Bucs could opt to use the tag on Winfield and defer giving him a long-term deal while they sort out their quarterback position and lock Tristan Wirfs up to an extension. If that were to happen there would be pros and cons for Winfield.

The cons are obvious as he would have to risk another year of potential injury without the security of a long-term deal. But the Bucs have shown that even if a player suffers a major injury if they value the player, they are still willing to sign up for a big contract, as they did with Godwin following that 2021 season when they gave him a $60 million deal even though he was still rehabbing from a torn ACL.

The pro to Winfield working on the tag would be deferring his long-term deal to a year when the salary cap will almost certainly go up yet again. 7.75% of $250 million puts Winfield just a hair beyond James’ $19 million AAV. But if the cap were to reach, say $285 million in 2025, 7.75% of that would equate to an AAV of just under $22.1 million and kick his guaranteed money to somewhere between $43-46 million.

Not to mention the fully guaranteed tag salary in 2024. The Bucs’ decision to tag Winfield could maximize his earnings in a way that Kirk Cousins was able to do in Washington several years ago. The total for that contract plus the tag would round out to four years and about $84.5 million, which would clear James’ deal by $8.5 million.

The bottom line is that Winfield is in line to secure his bag. And he’s earned every penny of it.