When it comes to the contracts of wide receiver Garrett Wilson and cornerback Sauce Gardner, the Jets are not obligated to give them new deals in 2025.
They are both under contract this year, the fourth year of their rookie deals, and then the team can pick up their fifth-year options, so the players can be under team control for the next two years. Then they can tag them, but it’s not likely to ever get to that point.
But for all those people pushing the Jets to give megadeals to these players from the their 5-12 team last year, there was an organizational approach in the recent past to wait until after the fourth year, and that led to the war between Jamal Adams and the Jets in the 2020 off-season, eventually leading to the safety being traded to Seattle.
Remember what Yahoo’s Charles Robinson, who knows former Jets GM Joe Douglas well, wrote during the Adams’ contract dispute before the trade: “What is clear is that the Jets are not interested in setting a sizable precedent by extending Adams after his third NFL season – a multitude of defensive superstars from recent draft classes played through their fourth seasons before getting an extension, including Aaron Donald and Khalil Mack.”
And even though Douglas is no longer with the team, it’s unlikely he was on an island with that philosophy. People above the GM likely felt the same way, and if they didn’t, they would have probably told the GM to pay the player.
So everybody assuming the Jets are just going back up the Brink’s Truck for these players after their third seasons might want to consider what happened with Adams in 2020, after his third season.
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