The Las Vegas Raiders made their biggest move of last offseason when they signed free-agent defensive tackle Christian Wilkins to a four-year, $110 million contract with $82.75 million guaranteed.
Wilkins was coming off a career-high nine sacks with the Miami Dolphins in 2024, which was the first time he had five sacks over his five seasons with the team that drafted him. It was easy to immediately point to the deal as a potential aggressive overpay for Las Vegas, but time would of course be telling.
Wilkins registered two sacks over the first five games last season, but a foot injury in that fifth game sidelined him for the rest of the season. If he'd had enough snaps to qualify, his overall (74.8) and run defense (80.2) grades from Pro Football Focus would have been top-20 and top-5 among defensive tackles, respectively.
Still, a defensive tackle entering his age-30 season coming off a significant lower-extremity injury lands as a less-than-ideal future investment. Seemingly in acknowledgement of that, the Raiders have restructured Wilkins' contract to clear nearly $15.4 million in cap space for this year. That money was moved to future years, increasing his cap hits in 2026 and 2027.
Of course, albeit just one season in, the Raiders' signing of Wilkins has landed as one of the worst free-agent decisions of 2024 in a lot of places.
Christian Wilkins' contract named mistake by Raiders' previous regime
Brad Gagnon of Bleacher Report recently named the most overpaid player from each NFL team, and Wilkins pretty easily landed as the choice for the Raiders.
"The 29-year-old has never been an All-Pro of any kind or even a Pro Bowler, he's never posted an approximate value in the double digits and has never had a campaign with 10 sacks or more than two forced fumbles. And yet, his $27.5 million average annual salary is the second-highest among defensive tackles leaguewide. This was an awful signing last offseason."
Wilkins gets a bit of a mulligan due to that injury last season. But there's no denying the 2025 season is a big one for him to prove he's worthy of the investment that was made in him, or a year from now we will be calling him another mistake made by previous regimes.