Acme Packing Company
30 of the NFL’s 32 second-round selections from the 2025 draft have still not inked deals with their new teams.
While Cincinnati Bengals first-round pick Shemar Stewart is stealing headlines among unsigned rookies, due to the fact that he’s not participating in offseason practices with his team, there are still plenty of 2025 draft picks who have yet to sign their rookie contracts.
Below is the breakdown of players who are unsigned by round:
It doesn’t take a math whiz to figure out which group is unlike the others: the second-rounders. That, to me, is a much bigger story than Stewart v. Cincinnati.
So what’s going on here? Why haven’t second-rounders signed their rookie deals?
First of all, it’s important to understand what is and isn’t agreed upon with NFL rookie contracts. Since the 2011 NFL collective bargaining agreement, the league has operated under a rookie wage scale, which essentially decides how much money a rookie will make based on where he was selected in the draft. Basically, raw cash is not something that can really be negotiated at the table.
What is up to teams and players’ representation, though, is how much of that money is guaranteed and what types of clauses there will be in these contracts. For example, Stewart’s beef with the Bengals right now seems to center around clauses that would give Cincinnati the ability to default on guarantees under certain circumstances. In short, it’s an argument over language.
For second-rounders, though, the big issue right now is guaranteed money. The Houston Texans were quick to give their wide receiver Jayden Higgins, the second pick in the second round of the 2025 draft, a fully guaranteed $11.7 million contract, which was the first fully guaranteed contract for a second-round pick in the history of the NFL. For perspective, the Packers’ Javon Bullard, a 2024 second-round pick, only received $3.8 million in guarantees last year.
At the moment, the only players in the second round who have signed their deals to date are Higgins and Cleveland Browns linebacker Carson Schwesinger, the first pick in the second round, who have both signed fully guaranteed deals. The next 31 players selected behind that duo in the 2025 draft remain unsigned.
The 66th pick in the draft, Kansas City Chiefs pass rusher Ashton Gillotte, signed for $1.5 million guaranteed earlier this offseason, which means that those 31 unsigned players between Gillotte and Higgins — including the Packers’ Anthony Belton — are currently waiting out the second-round market to see how the guarantees play out closer to their draft slots. NFL owners and general managers can’t be too happy with the fallout of the Texans’ deal with Higgins right now.
The highest selected unsigned second-rounder at the moment is the Seattle Seahawks’ Nick Emmanwori. Whenever he signs his...
