The Kansas City Chiefs sent shockwaves through the NFL when they traded star receiver Tyreek Hill to the Miami Dolphins for five draft picks last month.
A six-time Pro Bowler, Hill was an essential part of the league’s most dangerous offense and a favorite target of All-Pro quarterback Patrick Mahomes, and his trade came at a time when the Chiefs’ main rivals — fellow AFC West teams the Las Vegas Raiders, Los Angeles Chargers and Denver Broncos — are in an arm’s race for division supremacy.
But from a team-construction standpoint, the deal made sense.
The Dolphins offered up a bounty of draft picks in the trade, and the cost to re-sign Hill to a third contract seemed onerous at a time when the NFL is more flush than ever with receiver talent.
MEANWHILE IN DETROIT: New Lions WR DJ Chark ‘feels good to be wanted’ after signing free agency deal
Hill signed a four-year, $120 million extension with the Dolphins as part of the trade, a deal that reset the receiver market less than a week after Davante Adams did the same with the five-year, $140 million deal he signed after the Green Bay Packers traded him to the Las Vegas Raiders.
Before receiver money skyrocketed this offseason — the Jacksonville Jaguars started the domino effect, giving Christian Kirk, an emerging slot receiver who has never had a 1,000-yard season in his pro career, a four-year, $72 million deal — just one receiver (DeAndre Hopkins) averaged more than $21 million per season.
“We came in aggressive (with a contract offer for Hill) and then after we got to a point, we just said, ‘Hey, listen, in this day and age, you have issues that you have to deal with, with the cap,’” Chiefs coach Andy Reid told reporters at the NFL’s annual meeting last week, via Pro Football Talk. “So we felt like it was better to allow him to go ahead and be traded. You can go different routes. You can play hardball with a player and do that, or you can kind of go about the way I did. Or we did.”
Though it runs contrary to the all-in approach of their division rivals and almost every other team in the AFC, the Chiefs’ logic seems prudent considering the NFL appears to be embarking on a golden age of receiver.
Hill and Adams are two of the best handful of receivers in the NFL, but the league has gotten increasingly younger and more dynamic at a position where rookies previously struggled to make an instant impact.
Justin Jefferson, the No. 22 pick of the 2020 draft, set a modern-era rookie receiving record with 1,400 yards on 88 catches. Ja’Marr Chase, the fifth pick in last year’s draft, broke Jefferson’s record with 1,455 yards and 13 touchdowns on 81 catches while helping the Cincinnati Bengals reach the Super Bowl.
Ten other first- or second-year receivers topped 800 yards receiving last season, including tight end Kyle Pitts.
FEELING A DRAFT: USC WR Drake London: Amon-Ra St. Brown ‘a big brother’ to me
By comparison, Calvin Johnson, the most recent first-ballot Hall of Fame receiver, caught 48 passes for 756 yards in his rookie season with the Detroit Lions in 2007.
“There are 11 first-rounders in the last two years and just about every one of them has panned out and played as well or even better than you would expect, and a bunch of second-rounders as well,” ESPN analyst Todd McShay said. “So that’s been really fun to watch. I think it starts with the seven-on-sevens in high school and the development and the systems now in college and spreads. It’s just, it’s become a passing game, as we all know, and it’s become a wide receiver-driven game. And it’s been really interesting to watch the last couple years. It’s gotten better and better.”
Last year’s draft could go down as one of the best receiver drafts in NFL history.
Along with Chase, Pitts (No. 4), Jaylen Waddle (No. 6) and DeVonta Smith (No. 10) were top-10 picks and the Lions stole Amon-Ra St. Brown (90 catches, 912 yards, five touchdowns) in the fourth round.
This year’s draft provides even more depth, McShay said, though without perhaps the same type of top-end talent.
USC’s Drake London, Alabama’s Jameson Williams and Ohio State’s Garrett Wilson are potential top-20 picks, though London and Williams are coming off season-ending injuries. McShay said as many as five other receivers — Wilson’s Ohio State teammate, Chris Olave, Penn State’s Jahan Dotson, Arkansas’ Treylon Burks, North Dakota State’s Christian Watkins and Western Michigan’s Skyy Moore — could go in Round 1.
“This wide receiver class is loaded and it’s loaded up front,” McShay said.
THE FLASH: Western Michigan WR Skyy Moore ready to fly in 40-yard dash
The Dolphins and Raiders chose to go the veteran route at receiver for different reasons. Miami wanted to surround young quarterback Tua Tagovailoa with as much offensive firepower as possible, both to take advantage of Tagovailoa’s rookie deal and to discern whether he’s the right quarterback for the future, while the Raiders jumped at the chance to pair Adams with his old college teammate, quarterback Derek Carr.
Contenders like the Chiefs and Packers, meanwhile, have amassed multiple picks in the back half of the first round which they could use to supplement their long-standing running back-like approach to the position, where players are pegged to fill specific roles and only occasionally stick around for second contracts.
The Packers have not taken a receiver in the first round since 2002, and found Adams in the second round of the 2014 draft. The Chiefs spent a fifth-round pick on Hill in 2016 and signed Juju Smith-Schuster to a team-friendly deal as a free agent this offseason (while also overspending to lure Marquez Valdes-Scantling away from the Packers).
Lions general manager Brad Holmes has shown a proclivity towards the latter approach at the position. He spent judiciously at receiver this spring, signing DJ Chark to a one-year deal and retaining free agents Josh Reynolds and Kalif Raymond. He waited to address the position, despite an obvious need, till Round 4 in last year’s draft. And his old team, the Los Angeles Rams, repeatedly drafted mid-round receivers during his time as college scouting director.
MORE FROM BIRKETT: NFL’s 4th down evolution about more than analytics: ‘You want your players to be fearless’
The Lions still have a long-term need at the position and will be a candidate to take a receiver late on Day 1 or early on Day 2 in this year’s draft.
Holmes said he does not think the exploding receiver market will impact how teams approach the position in this year’s draft because of the forward-thinking nature of the selection process.
In the future, however, things could be different.
“You got to look at, ‘All right, do you want to put that all on a rookie receiver?’” Holmes said. “(If you) say ‘OK, we got priced out of free agency. Well, we’ll just draft one.’ Well, is he really going to (do what a vet can do)? So that’s always the give and take you got to take into consideration when it comes to those decisions.”
Contact Dave Birkett at dbirkett@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @davebirkett.