Brock Bowers has been a star from the minute he set foot in the NFL. The Las Vegas Raiders were lucky enough to have him fall into their lap during the 2024 NFL Draft, and Tom Telesco was smart enough to select him, even though Michael Mayer was taken in Round 2 the year before.
Las Vegas has been paid back in spades for that gamble, as Bowers was a First-Team All-Pro as a rookie and quite dominant amid all of the dysfunction when healthy last season as well. He is arguably the best tight end in the entire league and will soon be paid as such.
But Bowers cannot be extended until the conclusion of his third season, which means that the Silver and Black will have to wait before locking up their star pass-catcher. And the longer they are forced to sit idly by, the more the market gets driven up by other teams and players around the league.
It happened again on Tuesday with Kyle Pitts.
Kyle Pitts' Falcons extension just made Las Vegas Raiders TE Brock Bowers even more expensive
ESPN's Adam Schefter reported that Pitts and the Atlanta Falcons agreed to terms on a contract extension. It is a three-year deal worth up to $54 million with $36 million guaranteed. Essentially, Pitts is making $18 million per year, and the first two years of the contract are guaranteed.
This makes Pitts the third-highest paid tight end in the NFL in terms of both average annual value and total contract value, just behind the Arizona Cardinals' Trey McBride and the San Francisco 49ers' George Kittle, who are making $76 million and $76.4 million over four years, respectively.
Here's the kicker, though: Bowers is way better than Pitts, and he certainly has an argument that he's better than McBride or Kittle. At least as a pass-catcher, anyway. With that in mind, the Raiders' eventual contract extension will now certainly cost more than $18 million per year.
Between his age and prowess as a blocker, McBride is really the league's only tight end who could feasibly cost more than Bowers. Kittle did barely reset the market after McBride, but Bowers should eventually shatter that $19.1 million per year number if he stays on course.
If Las Vegas was thinking that they could sneak Bowers in slightly under his value, though, the Pitts contract changes that complexion. Previously, the next-highest paid tight end in the NFL was the New York Giants' Isaiah Likely, who makes an average of $13.3 million over three years.
Green Bay Packers stud Tucker Kraft and young Detroit Lions star Sam LaPorta are two of the league's best tight ends as well, and they are due for bigger deals at some point this season, too. How and when those deals get done, and what they look like, will also affect Bowers and the Raiders.
For now, though, the canyon between the duo of McBride and Kittle and the rest of the league has narrowed after the Pitts deal. Bowers stands to benefit from that jump, as he'll now certainly make more than $18 million per year when he eventually signs his extension if all goes well in Las Vegas.
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