Free Agency: Buyer Beware

[The Gunshooter]

No need to sign free agents, TT should just draft extra wideouts every year and once they show great potential like James Jones did last year and Jennings this year, trade them for lineman.

[cheesner]

I firmly believe that Ted has been too quiet in FA. That being said, I don't want him to sign players like the Vikings and Raider do either. Can't we have a balance?

Couldn't we have brought in a couple of guards over the last two years to push these young guys a bit? Wasn't there a little room for a fullback, or a TE?

It is not as simple as a decision by the GM. He can't say, I am going to go out and sign a PB caliber G this year. There has to be one available and at a reasonable price. Maybe there have been no good deals out there. I have seen TT be rather ambitious in some of the FAs that he has gone after. I believe that if he sees a player that is worth the money he will outbid other teams for the player.

But he doesn't just chase players for their name or to make headlines.

[cheesner]

It's all about making smart decisions. If Tom Brady were a FA, I'd throw the biggest contract in football history at him. Would that be a dumb decision? Maybe to you, but I like winning, so hell yeah I'd take him on my team. FA is the open market, and players tend to earn what they're worth in FA.

So if a couple of GMs had the same idea, you would still outbid them and sign Brady to $50M per year. Do you think you would win?

I realize $50M per year is a ridiculous amount, but I exaggerate to try and illustrate a point. There are economic decisions that you must make as an NFL GM. If you put a lot of money in one position, other positions will suffer. And if you are paying 40% of your cap on your QB, you can then only spend an average of $1.1 million on the rest of your players. What kind of LT are you going to find for your team that makes $1.1 mil per year?

So you splurge and get a LT for $8 mil per year, what positions are going to suffer even more now because of that signing?

Winning in the NFL is not as easy as a decision to spend money. Dan Snyder has tried this method and has failed miserably.

And how good would your team be if, like this year, Brady got hurt?

[RashanGary]

I think the problem, in recent years, is that teams have become better and better about not letting their best players ever see free agency, through increases in the cap, smarter contracts, and more liberal use of tags to control player movement. There's also been an uptick in player trades which used to be virtually unheard of, largely to move players who were unlikely to be resigned (e.g. Corey Williams).

So as a result there's no guarantee that there's any reasonably high quality free agents in any given position in any given year. Generally if a player is being allowed to hit free agency these days it's because the player's former team is either incompetent or thinks that the player isn't that good and is ultimately expendable.

So the issue you get into in modern free agency is largely "Team A has a need at position x. There are players available at position x, but none of them will be dramatically better than players already on the roster at that position. They will be slight upgrades but at significant cost, at what exchange rate is the increase in quality at the position worth the additional cost, particularly when money saved can be used to keep valued members of Team A from leaving free agency."

While Ted has been largely quiet in free agency, I can't say that he's really mismanaged most positions. The really dire needs have been filled for the most part, and few of the FAs he passed on turned out to set the world on fire elsewhere. If "not signing a FB a couple years back" makes it easier to sign Jennings to a long term contract, I'm all for the neglect to this point.

Another really good point.

[RashanGary]

It's all about making smart decisions. If Tom Brady were a FA, I'd throw the biggest contract in football history at him. Would that be a dumb decision? Maybe to you, but I like winning, so hell yeah I'd take him on my team. FA is the open market, and players tend to earn what they're worth in FA.

So if a couple of GMs had the same idea, you would still outbid them and sign Brady to $50M per year. Do you think you would win?

I realize $50M per year is a ridiculous amount, but I exaggerate to try and illustrate a point. There are economic decisions that you must make as an NFL GM. If you put a lot of money in one position, other positions will suffer. And if you are paying 40% of your cap on your QB, you can then only spend an average of $1.1 million on the rest of your players. What kind of LT are you going to find for your team that makes $1.1 mil per year?

So you splurge and get a LT for $8 mil per year, what positions are going to suffer even more now because of that signing?

Winning in the NFL is not as easy as a decision to spend money. Dan Snyder has tried this method and has failed miserably.

And how good would your team be if, like this year, Brady got hurt?

Another really good point. It's opportunity cost. You spend this here, you have less there. The goal is to make sure when you spend it you're getting value. You want to get more here than you take away from there so as to make you team better overall, not better in one spot at the expense of another. It's the BIG PICTURE. YOu have to take into account the chain of effects a decsion will make, not get rosey eyed and look at the one benefit, ignoring the cost. I think some people are mentally incapable of seeing that as this point is pretty straight forward, obvious and hard to argue.

Normally you can do well by locking guys up early rather than waiting for UFA. Hence drafting well and finding a bunch of under the radar guys like Grant, Bigby, Cole, Jenkins, Tramon Williams, Donald Lee, etc. . . ) should have a more profound impact on your winning than spending money on a UFA that even if he does perform he's taking more away from the rest of the team through the opportunity cost that is implied through the salary cap.

[RashanGary]

And after all of these good points, I think they can be tied together and used as some evidence for where this particular team is going.


They had a dearth of talent by drafting poorly for several years. They had few of their own to lock up and Ted resisted the urge to spend more than a player is worth and not cutting short the ceiling of the team through the afore mentioned opportunity cost. INstead he moved money ahead to a day when there is more talent on the team and locking guys up to contracts that help more than they hurt will be much easier. That time is starting next offseason.

Those who say "this team will always be the youngest" are wrong. They do not see where the team started, the context behind why things are what they are and assume current conditions to never change. Instead we should look at why, listen to what Ted says and put together a more accurate projection of where things are going. When we do that, we'll see guys like Nick Collins, Greg Jennings, Aaron Rodgers, Darryn Colledge, Jason Spitz, Ryan Grant, Atari Bigby, and many others being resigned and growing as a team. We'll see more cap space used the right way, increasing the overall quality of the team without taking so much away from other areas. Because of that, when we peak, we'll be less likely to run out of money and fall short before the ultimate glory.

The bottom line is that we have a great base layed right now and it's just ready to take off. Watch. I'm not saying this because I look at right now and assume eveyrthing to stay the same. I'm saying it because I use situational context along with sound economic reasoning that is important because of the set budget and project the future with a "where is it going" mentality not a "where it is now will never change" mentality.