It would be one thing if Tunsil just exploited his leverage for a huge deal, but other Texans deals from this period were also surprisingly high. Watson’s four-year, $160 million deal came in well ahead of expectations when compared to the deals for Goff and Carson Wentz after their third seasons. Zach Cunningham inked a four-year, $58 million deal with a middling track record. Nick Martin and Whitney Mercilus were paid like stars at their respective positions, while O’Brien paid over the odds in free agency for replacement-level players like Eric Murray and Randall Cobb.

Of these players, the only ones left on the Texans roster are Murray (who took a pay cut last month) and Tunsil, who moved from one rebuild and joined another.

January 2020: The Texans blow a 24-0 lead against the Chiefs

For a moment, it looked like O’Brien’s all-in move to get Tunsil was going to pay off. After a comeback victory over the Bills at home in the wild-card round, the Texans were set to try to advance past the divisional round for the first time in team history. At the end of the first quarter in Kansas City, the underdog Texans were up 21-0. No team had ever blown a first-quarter lead of at least 21 points in a playoff game, and Houston added three more early in the second quarter.

You know what happened next. The Chiefs scored 41 unanswered points across their next six drives. The Texans failed on a fake punt and allowed four sacks during their unprecedented collapse, eventually losing by 20 points. The loss wasn’t Tunsil’s fault, but it was a sign that O’Brien’s move to go all-in hadn’t left the team with the sort of roster they needed to compete with the best team in the AFC.

If the Texans hold onto that lead, who knows what happens? They would have been at home in the AFC Championship Game against the Titans, who O’Brien & Co. had beaten in Week 15 (before sitting their starters and losing a meaningless Week 17 rematch to the same team). The Texans likely would have been favored with a chance to go to the Super Bowl. It’s impossible to say whether they would have beaten the 49ers, but going to a championship game would have affirmed everything they had done over the prior two seasons. It also might have discouraged O’Brien from drastically changing his roster, including trading away arguably his best player.

March 2020: The Texans trade DeAndre Hopkins to the Cardinals

It’s still stunning. After reports that there was some friction in the relationship between Hopkins and the only professional organization he had ever known, a trade came suddenly, and the terms didn’t make any sense. The Texans had swapped fourth-round picks with the Cardinals and acquired Hopkins for a second-round pick and running back David Johnson, whose contract was drastically underwater. I wondered whether Hopkins had lost a limb.

The trade doesn’t look any better with hindsight for the Texans, who paid Johnson more than $15 million for two years of replacement-level running back work. They used their second-round pick on Ross Blacklock, who has started three games across his first two seasons despite limited competition. The fourth-round pick was used to help trade for Marcus Cannon, who was cut after playing four games for Houston.

We also have more evidence that the package for Hopkins was well below what we saw for other, similarly talented wide receivers. The trades for Odell Beckham Jr., Stefon Diggs, Davante Adams, and Tyreek Hill each saw the team trading away their star wideout getting a first-round pick and additional draft selections in return. The Texans were able to get only a second-round pick and a player whose contract canceled out most of the value from that pick.

I don’t think the Texans should have dealt Hopkins for the package they received, and they could have afforded Hopkins if they had managed the rest of their contracts more efficiently, but the contract the Cardinals eventually gave him might explain why they were willing to make the trade.

September 2020: The Cardinals hand Hopkins a spectacular extension

When the Cardinals acquired Hopkins, he had three years and just under $40 million remaining on his deal. They then handed him an unprecedented average salary for a wide receiver, as they negotiated a two-year, $54.5 million extension. The previous high for a wideout was the three-year, $66 million deal signed by Jones the prior September.

Like Jones’ deal, Hopkins’ was an extension on his already-existing deal, which still had significant runway remaining. Hopkins’ deal, on the whole, was a five-year, $94.4-million contract, with three years and just over $60 million practically guaranteed. You can choose either the $18.9 million total average or the $20 million practical average, but he wasn’t really ever getting $27.3 million per year. Half of the new money in the extension was paid up front as a signing bonus, while the other half was spread throughout the deal.

In the NFL, though, players (and agents) care about average annual salary, especially at the top of the market. There’s a long-established trend of players near the top of their position becoming the highest-paid player in the league at that spot when they sign a new deal. It’s more about pride and respect than anything else; for whatever accolades or quotes a player gets, nothing reinforces production and dominance more than becoming the highest-paid player at your position.

As a result, when the top of the wide receiver market began to approach the final year of their contracts, teams were facing an impossible problem. They were stuck negotiating off that $27.3 million average as the baseline for the top of the wide receiver market, even though that Hopkins extension doesn’t technically start until 2023 and never really looked like $27 million per season. That was one thing for a player with three years left to go on his existing deal, but organizations negotiating deals for 2022 wanted to go off of the standard for contracts in the short term, which was Amari Cooper’s mark of $20 million per season.

While the weirdness of the 2021 season and its reduced salary cap put some extensions on hold, that disconnect eventually led to two huge trades in a matter of days.

March 2022: The Packers trade Davante Adams to the Raiders

Adams’ initial ask in contract negotiations was reportedly $30 million per season, which would be a leap above Hopkins. Again, given that Adams was a franchise-tagged free agent and Hopkins was under contract for years to come, this would have been a massive difference in terms of short-term value. Hopkins made $60.1 million over the first three years of his new pact; Adams would have been in a totally different stratosphere. The Packers could have franchised him twice and paid him $44.3 million, so there wasn’t really a way to make that sort of money work.

In the end, they dealt Adams to the Raiders for a first- and second-round pick in April’s draft. Adams signed a five-year, $140 million deal that exceeded Hopkins’ average salary on paper but doesn’t play out as lucratively in practice. Adams will likely take home $67.7 million over the first three years of this deal in practical guarantees, which is ahead of Jones and Hopkins, but by only $3.7 million.

Signing Adams to that deal would have been reasonable for the Packers; as I wrote at the time, it’s tougher for the Raiders, who have to forgo the surplus value of two high picks to get Adams on their roster. If the Hopkins extension isn’t so far out of line with the top of the wideout market, Adams likely comes in with a paper value of $23 million or so per year, and I wonder if Green Bay gets that deal done without having to trade away its star receiver.

March 2022: The Chiefs trade Tyreek Hill to the Dolphins

A few days later, the Chiefs followed in kind by deciding against an extension for their downfield dynamo. Hill was shipped off to Miami for a package of five selections, most notably the Nos. 29 and 50 picks in this draft. The trade leaves free-agent signing JuJu Smith-Schuster as Kansas City’s top receiver.

Hill’s deal is a step beyond what the Raiders paid Adams (and the Bills paid Stefon Diggs) by every measure. In terms of average annual salary on paper, he actually makes the leap to $30 million per season on a four-year, $120-million extension. He had one year remaining on his existing deal when Adams was a franchised free agent, but by the structure of his deal, Hill will take home $72.8 million over the next three years. That’s the fourth-highest mark in the league for non-quarterbacks, as he will trail only a series of edge rushers in T.J. Watt, Joey Bosa and Khalil Mack.

As a position, wide receiver has now clearly surpassed left tackle and cornerback and become the third-most expensive spot on the positional spectrum. Positions don’t usually give back these sorts of massive jumps in terms of contract value, which is why organizations with young wide receivers are going to ask themselves serious questions about their deals. Do the Steelers really want to commit $30 million per year to Diontae Johnson? Will the Seahawks do that for DK Metcalf, or the Titans with A.J. Brown? We’re going to see teams that are willing to pay that price for star receivers and others that prefer to spend their money elsewhere.

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Robert Griffin III breaks down what the Tyreek Hill trade means going forward for the Dolphins and the Chiefs.

The Dolphins, meanwhile, find themselves having come full circle from the Tunsil trade. After trading away young stars to amass a haul of draft picks, they are now the team trading picks for an immediate impact. From an offensive perspective, there’s a lot to be excited about, with Tua Tagovailoa throwing to Hill and Jaylen Waddle. After adding left tackle Terron Armstead in free agency, Miami can expect to get the best out of its young quarterback in a critical third season for Tagovailoa.

At the same time, it runs into the same problem the Raiders have with Adams: It’s so tough for any non-quarterback to deliver on this sort of contract with the added cost of the draft picks used to acquire that star. The Rams made it work with Jalen Ramsey, but he was still on a rookie deal when the Rams made their deal. You can argue that the Dolphins had extra draft capital from all their deals, but those picks could still have been used to acquire younger talent on team-friendly contracts. Hill is a dynamic receiver, but if he’s not the same away from Patrick Mahomes, his contract will immediately look bad.

On the other hand, do you think the Texans look back on deciding against paying Hopkins with any level of fondness? O’Brien was fired four games after the Hopkins deal, the Texans went 4-12, and they’ve been irrelevant since. I don’t think they collapsed in 2020 as a product of trading him — and what has unfolded with Watson has nothing to do with that deal — but it’s not as simple as going for the cheaper option at a position, either. We’ll see what happens with the Adams and Hill trades in a few years, but if the Texans simply re-sign Duane Brown all those years ago, the entire league might look drastically different.