On the day players reported for training camp on Tuesday, Sauce Gardner revealed that he and Garrett Wilson both agreed to contract extensions on the same day.
But there was a reason the two deals were announced on back-to-back days.
“Right before that, the Jets had sent an offer with the details that they were going to make me the highest paid [cornerback],” Gardner said. “Then Garrett got signed and I was like ‘I don’t want to do my deal today. I don’t want to agree to it today.’
“I told my team, ‘We [are] not agreeing to it today. I want Garrett to have his full day to himself, feel good about himself, and to spend time with his family, and I will do mine tomorrow.’
“That’s how it went and I was just very excited.”
Gardner and Wilson both have a million reasons to be excited about their contract extensions, which were agreed upon last week. Gardner is now the highest-paid cornerback in the NFL after signing his four-year contract extension worth $120.4 million.
During his first three seasons, Gardner has become one of the best cornerbacks in the league. He has been a two-time first-team All-Pro, a two-time Pro Bowl selection and won the 2022 NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year award.
However, Gardner, 24, is coming off a less-than-stellar 2024 season in which he committed 11 penalties, compared to only five during his first two seasons. Also, opposing quarterbacks completed 56.9% of their passes and had an 86.9 passer rating, according to Pro Football Reference.
Despite his newfound wealth, Gardner is still motivated to prove to his naysayers that he is one of the NFL’s best.
“I want to be the best,” Gardner said. “That’s not just this season, but in general. My legacy that I want to leave is, I want to win games and I think we have the players, the coaches and everything that it takes to win games and win a lot of games.
“I’m just looking forward to that and that’s my main thing. My individual accolades, those are going to come with us winning games because I know our coaches are putting us in position and they are going to put me in position to make plays. Individually, it is something that I’m not worried about. I just know that us winning games, everything else is going to come.”
Wilson hasn’t had the individual accomplishments Gardner has during his three seasons. But Jets first-year coach Aaron Glenn and general manager Darren Mougey made it a priority to keep him in the Green and White until after the 2030 season.
Wilson, 25, signed a four-year contract extension worth $130 million. His extension will pay him an annual rate of $32.5 million, which makes him the fifth-highest-paid receiver in the NFL.
Wilson has been one of the most consistent Jets players after registering three consecutive 1,000-yard seasons. However, it wasn’t long ago when there was speculation on whether Wilson would be with the Jets after last season.
Throughout the years, Wilson has expressed his frustration after suffering three straight losing seasons. He has also caught passes from several quarterbacks, including Zach Wilson, Joe Flacco, Mike White, and Aaron Rodgers. Wilson will be catching passes from Justin Fields this season, who was his former teammate at Ohio State for two seasons.
Despite a difficult 5-12 season in 2024, Wilson still finished with a career-high 101 catches for 1,104 yards and seven touchdowns. But says he was also confident that he would stay with the Jets for the long term.
“I’ve always kept my faith that this thing was going to turn around and why I’m going to be a big part of why it does,” Wilson said. “There’s times where you have some days are harder than others.
“I’m not superhuman. I’ve had days where I’ve been down and felt like things weren’t going our way, my way, maybe. But the next day, I always kind of came back down to earth and, and coming to work here with these people.
“It takes time to rebuild stuff like that, you know and I built that here.”
Now with the contract extensions out of the way, both Gardner and Wilson can focus on training camp and getting the Jets out of a dark abyss from nine straight losing seasons and not making the playoffs since 2010.
Glenn will be tasked with helping the Jets achieve that goal after he was hired in January. During his six-plus months on the job, Glenn has already begun to establish a culture that the players have bought into.
Glenn was the Lions’ defensive coordinator for four seasons. During his final two seasons, the Lions won 27 of their 34 games and made the playoffs during both seasons. That includes a 15-2 regular season record last year.
“He has done this thing,” Wilson said about Glenn. “He’s played at a high level. He’s been a Jet before, which for me is like huge.
“These things, our problems, we may have had these first three years, and the obstacles he’s just been a player in the league, he’s gone through, he can relate. Not to mention, he’s seen the blueprint for what it means to take a team that hasn’t had much success and turn them into a top-of-the-league premier team.
“He’s seen the blueprint twice or three times. So for me, that’s really all I needed to hear.”
