As a month most popularly known for its college basketball “madness,” March has provided the National Football League (NFL) the opportunity to stage a little craziness of its own: free agency. America’s most popular professional sport, with annual revenues of around $10 billion (and the explicit goal of raising that number to $25 billion by 2027) has continued its quest to make the league a true year-round experience for fans.
Your typical die-hard sports fan is probably guiltier of obsessively checking social media for leaks from Adam Schefter on March 10, the eve of NFL free agency, than catching up on college hoops before the tournament.
NFL free agency has become the bridge in the league year between the Super Bowl and the NFL Draft for ravenous football fans. For those who argue that the NFL is over-covered by the media, the off-season television numbers would suggest that even non-game football action is intensely scrutinized by sports fans.
The NFL Draft’s first round garnered television ratings almost three times greater than those of the MLB World Series. The league’s business executives have taken notice of this growing, unprecedented success.
Free agency, which at its most basic level is a time for negotiations between franchises and players not under contract, has continued to grow in its pomp, circumstance and popular media coverage. As television networks, websites and social media pundits have increased their focus on free agency, fans have concurrently grown more impatient with their own teams.
Haven’t made the playoffs in a few years? Sitting on an excess of salary cap space? Traits like these are representative of a team that may splurge on elite players in free agency.
But with all the fanfare aside, what are the true values of growingly exorbitant free agent contracts to the franchises that offer them? The dark truth is that the big free agent splashes don’t bode as well as fans think. The teams that consistently offer cap-crunching contracts to big-name players tend to be those very teams that toil in mediocrity. As renowned NFL columnist Peter King so eloquently stated, the only way to “win” free agency is “to get a quarterback” and “learn to say no.”
Take, for example, the past five teams that have spent over $100 million in total contract money on free agency: the 2011 Philadelphia Eagles, the 2012 Denver Broncos, the 2012 Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the 2013 Miami Dolphins and the 2014 Buccaneers. The Broncos were the only team to see marked improvement after their splurges, but this is completely attributable to their signing of Peyton Manning and the dominant years he has strung together since then.
The other four squads either lost more games the following two years after their big money off-seasons or maintained mediocre records. Some notable signings of the batch: the Eagles with cornerback Nnamdi Asomugha and quarterback Michael Vick, the Dolphins with linebacker Dannell Ellerbe and receiver Mike Wallace and the Bucs with guard Carl Nicks and defensive end Michael Johnson.
Those players, elite at their positions in the free agency market for their respective years, signed contracts that totaled almost $350 million in all and should have extended through at least the 2016 season. Nevertheless, not a single one of those players is still on the team with which he signed, whether through underwhelming performance or unwieldy cap numbers.
The teams that handle free agency best are those that remain among the league’s elite season after season. Franchises such as the Patriots, Ravens, Packers, Seahawks and Steelers avoid making the headlines in free agency and instead opt for cheaper, younger players acquired through competent drafting.
A common denominator for all those teams is excellent quarterback play as well.
Though some may point to the large contract the Patriots gave All-Pro cornerback Darrelle Revis last off-season as a glaring exception, it panned out to be a wily short-term move for a team on the brink of a championship. In reality, the majority of teams that hand out free agent contracts are not that close to contending.
This current off-season, the franchises that have doled out the most in free agent dollars were among the usual suspects: Miami, Buffalo, Philadelphia, Jacksonville and the New York Jets. The Dolphins made Ndamukong Suh the highest paid defensive player in the NFL, and although this is reasonable for a player of his caliber, a team (especially with the dubious track record of the Dolphins) committing that much capital to a non-quarterback is risky.
Further north, Eagles coach and personnel czar Chip Kelly essentially swapped one All-Pro tailback in LeSean McCoy for another in DeMarco Murray while adding Ryan Mathews to the mix as a pricey yet oft-injured potential backup. To round out the questionable signings, the Jets inked Darrelle Revis, Antonio Cromartie and several other aging defensive backs to massive deals, strange for a team with no answer at quarterback in the foreseeable future.
This year’s disciple to the Patriot method of free agency, however, was the Colts, a team with All-World young quarterback Andrew Luck and the staunch belief that 2015 could be the year to bring a Lombardi trophy back to Indianapolis.
Though the team gambled with its future for the next few years by signing aging stars such as Andre Johnson, Frank Gore and Trent Cole to arguably excessive deals, their playoff experiences and veteran presences could pay dividends come the playoffs in January.
Also, even if the Colts do swing and miss on these mid-sized deals, they still have luck and a talented young core of players to soften the blow. Though the Colts may be the current “winners” in free agency, as we have seen, very rarely are Super Bowl champions crowned in March.
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