The veteran wide receiver market is deep in the 2025 free agent class. But which players will be worth a big contract?
Wide receiver needy teams should be salivating at the players floating around both free agency and the trade block.
There are already a bevy of big-name receivers who could change teams in 2025 less than a week before the new league year officially begins.
Tee Higgins is the belle of the ball, but he may not go anywhere after the Cincinnati Bengals placed the franchise tag on him again, although a trade isn’t off the table, either. Young stars like the Seattle Seahawks’ D.K. Metcalf and the San Francisco 49ers’ Brandon Aiyuk could also be moved after Metcalf requested a trade and the 49ers reportedly plan to shop Aiyuk.
Other tradable players include Cooper Kupp, who the Los Angeles Rams appear adamant about dealing, and Tyreek Hill, who walked back his end-of-season trade request but could still be on the block.
And this is before we even get to the free agents.
This is the list of veterans who either have been released or are impending free agents this offseason: Davante Adams, Keenan Allen, Stefon Diggs, Amari Cooper, Chris Godwin, DeAndre Hopkins, Christian Kirk, Tyler Lockett, Marquise Brown, Brandin Cooks, Adam Thielen, Diontae Johnson and Demarcus Robinson.
This whole group, including the recently traded Deebo Samuel (who was on this list before his deal to the Washington Commanders), combined for 938 receptions, 11,476 yards and 83 touchdowns in 2024. That’s a lot of firepower for a team that needs a quick injection of offense.
Movement of this magnitude would be almost unprecedented at the position. There has never been more than four receivers in one offseason to switch teams via free agency and sign a deal worth at least $10 million annually. Typically, teams just extend their receivers rather than let them walk. That could change in 2025, though, with so many names potentially available.
Now, the average age of the aforementioned receivers is around 29 years old, and most of the under-30-year-old WRs are trade candidates rather than free agents. That doesn’t leave a lot of room for quality investments, especially since our data has proven that paying a lot for a receiver is typically a bad move for teams.
But if a certain offense and a certain team covets a player with a particular set of skills, there are a lot of options this offseason to acquire that type of talent.
2025 Wide Receiver Free Agent Rankings
(Open%=Open Percentage/Burn%=Burn Percentage)
Which Wide Receivers Are Worth It?
It should come as no surprise that Higgins is in a class of his own in this group. It’s why the Bengals franchise-tagged him for a second consecutive season to either sign him long-term or trade him for assets.
Higgins will also be the most expensive receiver of this group and will likely push for top-of-the-market value. Any team interested in trading for him will know that, but it might not prevent it from doing a deal if the team believes Higgins is the missing piece.
He’s proven to be worth a big payday. Higgins’ 74.30% burn rate ranked first among 92 receivers with at least 25 targets in 2024. He also has a 19.1% missed or broken tackles forced rate — good for 23rd in this group. While Higgins has missed five games in each of the past two seasons due to injury, his production on the field cannot be discounted and he scored a career-high 10 touchdowns in 2024.
Metcalf is a flashy name and still young but was ineffective this past season. His 52.8% burn rate and 61.1% open rate rank 18th out of the top 19 available receivers this offseason. Metcalf is a deep-ball magnet, but that doesn’t count for much if he’s unable to affect other portions of the game.
Adams is probably the best free agent of the group after the New York Jets released him for salary cap purposes. He still put together a 1,000-yard season and his route-running remains elite. Adams will cost a lot and is older than Higgins, but at least a team won’t have to trade anything for the right to sign him.
The rest of this group is a mix bag of injured or aging stars. Aiyuk, Diggs, Godwin and Kirk are all coming off various season-ending injuries. Aiyuk and Diggs tore their ACLs, Godwin dislocated an ankle and Kirk fractured his collarbone. Kupp and Metcalf are production machines but have both been riddled with ailments over the past few seasons. Allen, Lockett, Hopkins, Cooper and Thielen are efficient veterans but don’t have the same juice as they did earlier in their careers.
Teams looking to add to their receiver room will need to weigh cost versus potential production when it comes to these players. Just look at Darnell Mooney for the Atlanta Falcons and Gabriel Davis for the Jacksonville Jaguars. Both signed similar three-year, $39 million deals in 202, but Mooney finished with 992 yards and five touchdowns, while Davis finished with 239 yards and two touchdowns. A player’s fit on a team matters as well as how he’s used in the offense.
This is where a player like Demarcus Robinson may be more valuable than someone like Kirk. Robinson finished with a 71.2% burn rate and 13.4 burn yards per target in 2024. Kirk, meanwhile, finished with a 66.0% burn rate despite being four years younger and likely commanding a higher salary.
Godwin is perhaps the most intriguing player of the group considering the sensational season he had in Tampa Bay before his ankle injury. His 83.9% open rate ranked eighth among receivers with at least 60 targets and his catch rate of 93.5% ranked 14th.
Godwin dominated in the slot for the Buccaneers under Liam Coen and could be a target for Coen’s new Jaguars’ team or his old team in the Rams.
Which Team Should Pursue Wide Receivers?
For some teams, going out and grabbing a talented pass catcher in free agency or via trade is worth it to make a Super Bowl run.
It’s why the Commanders sent a fifth-rounder to the 49ers for Samuel despite his age, injury history and dip in production. Washington simply needed another good offensive contributor alongside Terry McLaurin for quarterback Jayden Daniels to take another leap in his second season.
According to our ELO model that evaluates wideouts through tracking matchups between a receiver and defensive back, Washington improved by plus-0.4 points following the move. That means if the Commanders were previously a 0.4-point underdog, adding Deebo makes the game in that example.
The Philadelphia Eagles also had recently extended their receiver duo of A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith, and they rode both to the Super Bowl this past season.
A stud receiver can unlock an offense, and this group offers that potential for a few teams.
In looking at all 32 teams in 2024, there were eight whose receiver rooms ranked below league average in burn rate (59.6%, open rate (73.3%) and WR receiving yards (2,567): the Tennessee Titans, Pittsburgh Steelers, New York Giants, Kansas City Chiefs, Carolina Panthers, Cleveland Browns, Chicago Bears, Buffalo Bills and Arizona Cardinals. Of that group, the Steelers, Bears and Cardinals should be the most interested in adding a receiver and have the cap space to pull it off.
However, other teams need help in their respective receiver room, either because they’re losing players to free agency, actively looking to trade one, or both. The New England Patriots, Green Bay Packers, Los Angeles Rams, Jaguars, Los Angeles Chargers, Houston Texans, Denver Broncos, Baltimore Ravens and Seahawks all qualify for that list with different salary cap situations. That’s a big list of teams for a big list of available receivers.
WR production by team
The other element to consider is the weak receiver draft class in 2025. There aren’t any clear-cut WR1s in this group, unlike the 2024 group that had Marvin Harrison Jr., Malik Nabers, Rome Odunze, Brian Thomas Jr., Xavier Worthy and Ladd McConkey. The closest this year are Colorado’s Travis Hunter and Arizona’s Tetairoa McMillan, but those two will likely go to top 10 teams who might have already added a veteran in free agency.
Here’s the other problem; Not many of the available receivers are considered above average by those team standards mentioned above. Only Higgins, Adams, Godwin and Allen finished with better than average burn rates and open rates. So, if a team is looking at a different receiver in free agency or the trade market, they’ll need to have a good plan in place to bring them back up to a contributing level.
The receiver market can get crazy – as we’ve seen in years’ past. But this offseason is crazy in a different way. There are so many players to choose from with so many different issues that who teams are willing to pay will vary based on their 2025 aspirations.
Does a team want to supercharge its offense with another playmaker? Maybe it want to give a young quarterback a No.1 target to throw to? Or will a contending team be able to offer the promise of a shot at a championship to an aging star without a ring of his own?
It’s March, so the madness is going to start sooner rather than later.
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