On Wednesday, Michael Thomas and the Saints agreed to a deal that will keep the standout wide receiver in the fold through the 2024 season. The contract was initially reported to be worth $100MM over five years, but those numbers don’t quite tell the whole story.
Here’s the latest on Thomas’ shiny new pact:
- Thomas extension has a base value of $19.25MM per year, Mike Florio of PFT tweets. He can get to $20MM per year – giving him the initial reported value of $100MM in total, but as Florio’s source puts it, “He has to do some crazy sh-t in the last two years of the deal.”
- Thomas’ new contract is the first real movement at the wide receiver position since A.J. Green‘s 2015 extension, Jason Fitzgerald of Over The Cap tweets. The yearly record set by Green’s deal has been broken multiple times in the last four years, but this is the first contract to truly top its $20MM in inflated annual value.
- The Thomas deal will play well in the Saints’ locker room, Jeff Duncan of the The Athletic tweets. The team’s core of young stars – including Alvin Kamara, Marshon Lattimore, Ryan Ramczyk, and Sheldon Rankins – will know they’ll be taken care of if they continue to produce.
- The holdout-ending deal was the smart move by the Saints, NJ.com’s Darryl Slater opines. The monster numbers could come back to haunt them, but Slater’s feeling is that it was worthwhile to end Thomas’ holdout, especially considering the fact that Drew Brees has a limited championship window.