NFL’s free agent period doesn’t officially start until March 16. That doesn’t mean the league was willing to rest on its laurels until then.
Reported free agent deals began trickling in Monday morning. Then, in the early afternoon, things got weird. The Jacksonville Jaguars, already in the midst of a spending spree that kept offensive tackle Cam Robinson via the franchise tag and landed big name free agents like Brandon Scherff, Folurunso Fatukasi and Foyasade Oluokun on the open market, became the day’s main character by landing Arizona Cardinals wideout Christian Kirk.
But it wasn’t just that the Jags landed the Robin to DeAndre Hopkins’ Batman. It’s that they did it with a deal that could make him the third-highest-paid wide receiver in league history.
It’s a 4-year deal worth $72M, source said with a max value of $84M. A huge deal for Christiain Kirk. https://t.co/vcefCh961q
— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) March 14, 2022
If Kirk hits his incentives, his $21 million annual average salary will trail only Hopkins ($27.25m) and Julio Jones ($22m). Even at a base value of $18 million per year, he would tie for ninth-richest in the NFL alongside Tyreek Hill and Kenny Golladay.
That’s a lot of money for a player who hasn’t been in the same stratosphere as the company he joins atop the contract leaderboard. Nine of the 10 players in the league who’ve earned an average of at least $18 million annually have been invited to at least one Pro Bowl. Kirk has never had the honor. All 10 have had at least two 1,000-yard seasons to their credit. Kirk has yet to hit four figures, even with last year’s 17-game slate.
That leaves Jacksonville with at least a $72 million bet on a 25-year-old wide receiver who is still more potential than production. Why throw that money at Kirk when more established options like old friend Allen Robinson, 2019 Jags standout D.J. Chark, Odell Beckham Jr. and JuJu Smith-Schuster were available?
First off, the rest of the wideout cohort in this year’s class brings its share of concerns to the table. Davante Adams and Chris Godwin were franchise tagged, eliminating two instant impact players from the field. Robinson will be 29 years old this season and coming off his worst full season as a pro. Chark got injured last fall. Beckham got injured in the Super Bowl. Smith-Schuster fought through injuries in 2021 and has yet to reclaim his 2018 Pro Bowl form. A trade for Calvin Ridley may have worked, but he’ll serve out a suspension of at least one full season after gambling on Atlanta Falcons games last winter.
Kirk, on the other hand, is rising after posting career highs across the board in 2021. He’s also only three years older than quarterback Trevor Lawrence, giving general manager Trent Baalke a 1-2 punch he hopes he can rely on for years to come.
The newest Jacksonville wideout had an efficient 9.5 yards per target rate that ranked 14th-best among all NFL receivers last fall. He was responsible for at least 3.0 expected points added in nine different games for the Cardinals. He performed well when Hopkins missed weeks last season, putting up 38 catches for 451 yards and a pair of touchdowns in seven games as Arizona’s WR1 — a 92-catch, 1,095-yard, five touchdown pace over a 17-game season.
You can even argue that, in the face of a rising salary cap, Kirk merely got the going rate for a WR1 in the NFL. The Jaguars paid a premium to get him, but that was always going to be the case after languishing in the league’s basement the past two years.
Christian Kirk signs basically the same deal as Robert Woods got two years ago (adjusted for cap) and everyone acts like the apocalypse is upon us.
Meanwhile Mike Williams got Dez/Demaryius/DeAndre money a week ago and nobody seemed to notice. pic.twitter.com/IOWznKF2or
— Adam Harstad (@AdamHarstad) March 14, 2022
Conversely, my god, that’s a lot of money for a guy whose best-case scenario last season wasn’t even 1,100 yards. Kirk’s addition limits the Jags’ spending room and does nothing to fix their 31st-ranked passing defense. He’s prone to inconsistent performances and was responsible for four different 2021 games in which he had negative EPA scores — three of which came during Arizona’s late-season slide from Super Bowl contender to one-and-done playoff team. His passer rating when targeted was 21 points lower than Hopkins’ was in the same offense.
So yes, this move is exactly as risky as you first thought when you saw “Christian Kirk” and “$84 million” in the same tweet. Kirk may not have hit his ceiling yet, but he’s not especially big (5’11, 200 pounds), he isn’t a dynamic deep threat (average reception distance: 12.3 yards), and he’s not a run-after-catch machine (his 3.0 YAC last season was a career low and ranked 141st out of 152 qualified players in 2021).
The Jags are betting he can grow from his breakthrough season and provide the kind of intermediate passing game presence that allows the team’s deep targets to fly and provides extra room for their short-range receivers to make moves with the ball. The problem is Jacksonville already kinda had that guy in Marvin Jones. There’s currently no field-stretching downfield threat on the roster.
There’s nothing wrong with taking a shot on a rising star capable of growing in-step with your young franchise quarterback. The question is whether Kirk is that guy. He had four years to show it in Arizona and mostly looked like a nice complementary piece. Now the pressure is going to be on him to produce like a superstar, because that’s how he’s getting paid.
If he comes through, it could lead Jacksonville out of the AFC South basement. If not? Well, the Jaguars remain the Jaguars.
