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The Indianapolis Colts inked wide receiver T.Y. Hilton to a five-year contract extension Thursday worth $65 million, with $39 million guaranteed according to ESPN's Mike Wells. The deal will kick in following the 2015 season after Hilton's four-year, $2.64 million rookie contract comes to an end. Hilton will be under contract with the Colts through 2020.
The new deal makes Hilton the fourth-highest paid wide receiver in the NFL from both a total contract and guaranteed money standpoint. Only Calvin Johnson and the recently extended duo of Dez Bryant and Demaryius Thomas pull in larger paychecks. Below, via Spotrac, you can see the 15 wide receivers earning the most guaranteed money.
| Player name | Total value | Contract length | Per year average | Guaranteed money |
| Calvin Johnson | $113.5M | 7 years | $16.2M | $48.8M |
| Dez Bryant | $70M | 5 | $14M | $45M |
| Demaryius Thomas | $70M | 5 | $14M | $43.5M |
| T.Y. Hilton | $65M | 5 | $13M | $39M |
| Mike Wallace | $60M | 5 | $12M | $30M |
| Vincent Jackson | $55M | 5 | $11M | $26M |
| Jeremy Maclin | $55M | 5 | $11M | $22.5M |
| Torrey Smith | $40M | 5 | $8M | $22M |
| Larry Fitzgerald | $22M | 2 | $11M | $22M |
| Pierre Garcon | $42.5M | 5 | $8.5M | $20.5M |
| Marques Colston | $36.3M | 5 | $7.3M | $17.8M |
| DeSean Jackson | $24M | 4 | $6M | $16M |
| Victor Cruz | $43M | 5 | $8.6M | $15.6M |
| Randall Cobb | $40M | 4 | $10M | $13M |
| Jordy Nelson | $39.1M | 4 | $9.8M | $11.5M |
Worth noting is that players like A.J. Green, Julio Jones, Amari Cooper and Justin Blackmon, high draft picks still on their rookie deals and therefore each making between $16-23 million guaranteed, were left off this list.
For Hilton, the deal is a good one because it provides him a security blanket. His financial future is now set no matter what happens this season.
What about the Colts, though? Was making Hilton the fourth-highest paid wide receiver in the NFL a smart move?
The Performance
The first area that needs to be analyzed is how Hilton has fared on the field since being selected by the Colts in the third round of the 2012 NFL Draft. From a numbers standpoint, the former FIU Panther has been a good receiver over the past couple of seasons, but not quite great. If he were playing a different position he'd probably fall right below that "elite" category. Hilton caught 82 balls each of the past two seasons, ranking 21st in the league last year. Over a two-year span, 14 receivers have caught more balls. Hilton, however, did amass a total of 1,345 yards last year at 16.4 yards per catch, both sixth-best in the NFL.
So again, really good, but not quite in the category of Calvin-Dez-Antonio Brown (who, by the way, is getting robbed with his five-year, $42 million contract, with just $8.5 million guaranteed).
The advanced stats paint a similar picture. Hilton was 11th in the NFL in Football Outsiders' DYAR stat last season, and 14th in DVOA. Pro Football Focus ranked Hilton as the 90th-best player in the NFL. Also, at just 5'9 and 178 pounds, Hilton is far from being the prototypical size of a No. 1 wide receiver.
But Hilton does have one "elite" skill that, given the team he plays on and the quarterback he plays with, is one of the reasons this contract is a good one: He is one of the best in the NFL at catching deep balls. Hilton's 528 "deep" yards, five "deep" touchdown and 14 "deep" catches last year (as charted by Pro Football Focus) were all top-five in the league. Since 2012, Hilton has 17 receptions of at least 40 yards, the third-most in the NFL, per ESPN Stats and Information. That's five more than the rest of the Colts combined.
The simple breakdown of all this is that the Colts need T.Y. Hilton in order to take advantage of having Andrew Luck. Luck is one of the best and most frequent deep passers in the NFL (a league-high 88 attempts last season, per Pro Football Focus). He's got the arm strength to air it out, the brain to pinpoint the open spots and the size and awareness to stay in the pocket for a few extra seconds to allow plays to develop downfield. That's all great, but if he didn't have a speedy receiver capable of burning defenses and creating plays, all those skills would be for naught.
That Hilton has been so explosive during the Colts' last three postseason runs -- 36 catches for 604 yards in six games, including a 224-yard monster in Jan. 2014 against the Chiefs -- shows how Luck feels about his No. 1 target. The plan in Indianapolis is, obviously, to build around Luck. The best way to do so is by handing him as many weapons as possible.
The Market
Analyzing the wide receiver market is more complicated than just looking at the chart above. Other areas need to be taken into account. For one, Hilton may be the fourth-best paid wide receiver now, but in a year, when both A.J. Green and Julio Jones become free agents, he'll likely see that ranking fall. Also, the fact that the extension doesn't kick in until next season makes this an even better move for the Colts.
We see contracts like this in baseball all the time. Teams buy out a player's arbitration years essentially in exchange for a lower per-year salary. It's a win-win for both sides. The player gets financial security. The team gets the player to sign a long-term contract below what the market value would have been had he waited to hit free agency.
To summarize, the Colts get Hilton to play one more season with a cap hit of just $1.7 million, and next season, taking into account the contract that Green and Jones are likely to sign, Hilton will become roughly the sixth-highest paid receiver in the league. Considering the relationship he has with Luck and what the Colts are looking to do, and that Hilton is still just 25 years old, this seems like the kind of deal that allows everyone to go home happy.