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Greg Auman
NFC South Reporter
The Buccaneers have very real, pressing matters in free agency, with quarterback Baker Mayfield, receiver Mike Evans and safety Antoine Winfield all mere weeks away from hitting the open market.
Their front-office focus, understandably, is fixed there right now, but at some point in the next year, there’s a strong chance that Tampa Bay will make Tristan Wirfs the highest-paid offensive tackle in the NFL.
Wirfs, 25, has been a star since his rookie year, when he played every snap in 20 games in a Super Bowl championship season. He has made the Pro Bowl in each of the past three years, and in 2021, he became the first offensive lineman in Bucs history to earn first-team All-Pro honors from the Associated Press. If that weren’t enough, after three years as a right tackle, he made the daunting shift to left tackle last season and still finished as the league’s fifth highest-graded player at the position by Pro Football Focus.
So how much might a new deal for Wirfs be worth? His NFL earnings to date have been fairly modest, earning $16.2 million in four years after being taken with the 13th overall pick in 2020. The Bucs have exercised his fifth-year option for the upcoming season, which will pay him $18.2 million, more than doubling his career earnings in one year.
There’s a good chance the guaranteed money on his next deal will double his career earnings through five years.
NFL draft picks are eligible for extensions after three seasons, so there’s already a model for a tackle drafted in 2020 in the Giants’ deal with Andrew Thomas last summer: five years and $117.5 million, including $67 million guaranteed. Thomas earned that without so much as a single Pro Bowl or All-Pro nod, with just two playoff games in his time with New York, so Wirfs’ deal will certainly exceed it.
The highest-paid tackle in the league on a per-year basis is the Texans’ Laremy Tunsil, who signed a three-year, $75…
Source link : https://www.foxsports.com/stories/nfl/tristan-wirfs-contract-projection-what-will-bucs-need-to-resign-pro-bowler
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Publish date : 2024-02-22 17:54:12
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