The Better Signing Wears Blue

Likely vs. Andrews: Similar contracts, different trajectories

John Harbaugh won his first game in East Rutherford on Sunday night, and the loudest argument for why came from a tight end the Ravens drafted, developed, and could not keep.

Isaiah Likely caught all eight balls thrown his way for 78 yards and two touchdowns in a 28-20 win over Dallas. He was the leading receiver in the building. Cris Collinsworth called him a young Travis Kelce on national television. Five catches, 59 yards and a score before halftime, then a 2-yard bulldoze to open the third quarter.

In Indianapolis, Mark Andrews caught four of six targets for 49 yards in a 41-23 Ravens rout.

Now, Week 1 is the most overinterpreted Sunday on the calendar, and I’m not about to build a season on 60 minutes of football. The 2025 Colts started 8-2 and finished 8-9, the first team in league history to open that hot and end up under .500. Seventeen weeks is a long time.

But this isn’t really a one-game argument. It’s a contract argument, an age argument, and an opportunity argument. And on all three, the Giants got the better deal.

Isaiah Likely already looks like a great addition to this new Giants offense

8 REC, 78 YDS, 2 TD vs. Dallas

Reunited with John Harbaugh this offseason and immediately became a go to target for Jaxson Dart. pic.twitter.com/cg4LW4HHUr

— Football Performances (@NFLPerformances) September 14, 2026

The Contracts are Nearly Mirror Images

Pull them up, side by side and the case makes itself.

Andrews, per Spotrac: three years, $39,267,000. A $10,095,833 signing bonus. $25,944,444 guaranteed. AAV of $13,089,000.

Likely, per Spotrac: three years, $40,000,000. A $12,500,000 signing bonus. $26,000,000 guaranteed. AAV of $13,333,333.

A difference of $244,333 a year. The structures are practically dupes. Over The Cap has Andrews fully guaranteed $20.955 million at signing with another $5 million vesting on the fifth day of the 2026 league year; Likely is fully guaranteed $20.5 million with another $5.5 million vesting in March 2027. Same money, same mechanism, same trigger window. Both deals carry annual workout bonuses. Both end with a small March 2028 roster bonus.

So, if you’re paying the same freight, the question becomes simple: what are you getting for it?

Baltimore is paying roughly $13.1 million a year for a tight end who turns 31 this season. New York is paying roughly $13.3 million a year for a tight end who turned 26 in April. That contract runs through 2028. At expiration, Likely will be 28 and entering a second payday. Andrews will be 33 and entering a conversation nobody in Owings Mills wants to have.

Two hundred and forty-four thousand dollars a year for four years of age. That’s not a close call. That’s a rounding error buying a half-decade.

Where Likely’s Deal Gets Better

Per Spotrac, Likely carries a 2026 cap hit of $6,087,254. Andrews carries $6,979,625. The younger, ascending player costs the Giants less against this year’s cap than the older one costs Baltimore.

Spotrac’s practical value — the money a club is realistically on the hook for before the exit ramp appears — comes out to two years, $35 million for Andrews and two years, $28 million for Likely.

Read that one twice. Baltimore committed seven million more in real, practical dollars to the older player.

And Likely’s deal has teeth working in the Giants’ favor. Spotrac lists non-cumulative receiving touchdown incentives: $250,000 at six, $500,000 at eight, $750,000 at ten. New York doesn’t pay the premium unless Likely produces at a level that makes the premium a bargain. He’s got two in the bank after one Sunday. That’s how you write a contract when you’re betting on ascent instead of paying for a résumé.

Where’s The Upside?

This is the part Ravens fans have known in their bones for two years and haven’t wanted to say out loud.

Likely’s 75.6 PFF offensive grade in 2024 ranked seventh among 87 tight ends with at least 185 snaps. Seventh. He posted that while playing a backup’s workload. He never cleared 500 receiving yards in Baltimore — career-best 42 catches, 477 yards, six touchdowns in 2024 — and the reason has never been talent. Andrews out-snapped him in all four seasons and out-gained him every single year. Add Charlie Kolar taking a real share of the room, and Likely spent his entire rookie contract as the third mouth at a two-plate table in an offense that threw it 25 times a game.

Sunday in New Jersey was the first time in his professional life that a scheme was pointed at him. Eight targets, eight catches. Matt Nagy moving him around. A second-year quarterback who reportedly lives in the same building as him — Likely’s been a fixture in the Giants’ quarterback room since March, and it showed on the option routes.

Andrews, meanwhile, is coming off 48 catches for 422 yards and five touchdowns — a career low in yardage, and a fall from 11 touchdowns the year prior. He’s a Hall of Very Good tight end whose best football is behind him. That’s not an insult. It’s arithmetic.

A Dose of Reality

Sunday’s target share was almost identical. Andrews saw six of Baltimore’s 25 attempts, roughly 24 percent, tying Zay Flowers for the team lead. Likely saw eight of 29, roughly 28 percent. The box score gap was largely a function of Lamar Jackson throwing for 324 yards on 25 attempts, Derrick Henry going for 144 and three scores, Flowers posting 150 before the hamstring, and Declan Doyle’s offense scoring on four of its first five drives. Baltimore put up 506 yards and never needed its tight end.

And Likely’s eight targets came with Malik Nabers in his first game back from an ACL tear. That volume may compress as Nabers gets right.

Fair enough. Both true. Neither changes the age curve or the practical dollars.

Did DeCosta Blow It?

If your conclusion here is that Eric DeCosta dropped the ball, let’s think it through.

He tried. DeCosta said publicly the Ravens wanted Likely back. The contract Likely signed in New Jersey is functionally the contract Andrews signed in Owings Mills. Baltimore wasn’t lowballing anybody. This wasn’t a front office that misjudged a player’s worth; it was a front office that couldn’t manufacture the one currency Likely was actually shopping for.

Playing time was the deal-breaker, not dollars. You cannot promise a 26-year-old a featured role when your franchise’s all-time leading receiver is signed through 2028 and your offense throws it 25 times on a good day. Harbaugh could promise it in New York because there was nothing in the room. That’s not a failure of negotiation. That’s geometry – the kind that sets up Likely for his third contract.

The injury scrambled the timeline. Likely broke his foot in camp in July 2025, had surgery, missed three games and finished with a career-low 307 yards. December arrives, all three tight ends are heading to the market, and DeCosta has to decide with the young man’s value at its murkiest point in three years. He locked down the sure thing. Anybody telling you they’d have done the reverse with that information is revising history. If anything, perhaps DeCosta should have tried to secure Likely a year sooner. But do we know for sure that he didn’t try?

The market moved underneath everybody. Look what happened after March. Kolar — a blocking tight end — got three years and $24.3 million from the Chargers. Kyle Pitts got three years and $54 million from Atlanta, roughly $2 million a year more than Likely. Tight end money inflated fast, and the deal that looked aggressive in March started looking like a bargain by June. That’s not a scouting miss. That’s a market.

And the fear was real. All three tight ends were pending free agents. Andrews, Likely, Kolar. If Baltimore doesn’t extend Andrews in December, there is a live scenario where the Ravens wake up on the second day of free agency with an empty room and Lamar Jackson asking who’s running the seam. They lost Likely and Kolar in a single afternoon anyway. Imagine that afternoon with Andrews gone too. DeCosta bought insurance against a catastrophe, and the catastrophe came within one signature of happening.

Let’s Not Undersell No. 89

Andrews is not just a stat line, and the “washed” chorus is a cheap knee jerk response.

He is the franchise’s all-time leader in receptions and receiving yards. He is, in DeCosta’s words, “an all-time Raven.” He has managed Type 1 diabetes at the highest level of professional football for his entire career and turned it into advocacy work that has mattered to a lot of kids in this city. He took the worst moment of his professional life — that drop in Buffalo — and showed up the next season without excuses.

He is now the only veteran tight end in a room of rookies and a journeyman blocker, under a brand-new head coach and a first-time coordinator. That room needs somebody who knows how to be a pro. Andrews has been one for eight years. There is real value in that, and it does not show up in yards per route run.

Paying market rate for leadership, availability, and red zone reliability is a defensible use of $13 million. It just isn’t the better use of $13 million.

At The End of The Day

Same contract. Five fewer birthdays. A lower cap hit. Incentives that only pay out if he earns them. Seven million less in practical money. And four years of untapped production that Baltimore, through no real fault of its own, was structurally incapable of unlocking.

Isaiah Likely is the better signing. He’s better right now, he’ll be better in 2028, and the paperwork will look smarter every year it ages.

Eric DeCosta didn’t lose this one. He got cornered by a roster he built too well at one position, an injury with lousy timing, a market that moved in March, and a genuine risk of watching an entire position group walk out the door at once.

Sometimes you make the right call and still end up watching the other guy’s highlights on Monday morning.

One game down. Sixteen to go. Breathe, fellow Flockers.

After all, let’s not forget that Declan Doyle’s offense still produced 506 yards of offense without Likely.

GOOD, BAD & UGLY: Ravens Start 2026 With a 40-Burger

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Source: https://russellstreetreport.com/2026/09/14/lombardis-way/likely-vs-andrews/