Dez Bryant, Demaryius Thomas Reset NFL WR Market for Years to Come

July 18, 2015   ·   Ty Schalter   ·   Jump to comments

Welcome to Football Econ 101. Today, we're talking about the free market.
A player hitting the open market usually means a huge payday. With revenues always increasing and the salary cap going up, the bar is reset again and again as top players sign new contracts. For the rest of the NFL, each position's top contract serves as a benchmark to approach, or template to build on, until it's topped.
In 2012, the wide receiver bar was set by Calvin Johnson's seven-year, $113.5 million contract. The deal's $16.2 million average annual value, with a whopping $53.3 million of it guaranteed, blew out the curve for wide receivers.
Dez Bryant and Demaryius Thomas, two consistently elite receivers who each outproduced Johnson by a large margin in 2014, just signed stunningly similar contracts. At five years, $70 million, with around $45 million guaranteed, both deals fall significantly short of Johnson's in terms of length, average annual value and guarantees.
This isn't ho...

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