The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL - NFL free agency reverse engineering with Jason Fitzgerald & franchise tag deadline day breakdown with Lindsay Jones

Episode Date: March 10, 2021

First, Robert and Lindsay recap NFL franchise tag deadline day, discussing the biggest takeaways from guys that got tagged, like Cam Robinson and Marcus Williams, and guys that didn’t, like Kenny Golladay, Carl Lawson, and Joe Thuney, the Bucs deciding to tag Chris Godwin over Shaq Barrett, potential Kenny Golladay landing spots, and more.Plus, Over The Cap’s Jason Fitzgerald stops by to break down optimal free agency planning, including addressing the defense first, targeting multiple $3-4 million contract players, rather than putting all your eggs in one basket, how the Buffalo Bills have successfully defied certain expectations about spending a lot of free agency money, and much more.You can get an annual subscription to The Athletic for just $3.99 a month when you visit theathletic.com/footballshow Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the athletic football show. Welcome to the athletic football show. I'm Robert Mays. Fun show for you guys today. Jason Fitzgerald from Over the Cap is going to be joining us a little bit later. I felt like some of the free agent conversations we were having were kind of the sky is falling conversations about how bad it is. So I wanted to have somebody on to talk about how teams can make free agency work for them.

What positions are usually smart to chase, what types of players, what price ranges. Jason does so much good work on that at Over the Cap that. I thought he was the perfect guy to have on for that discussion. Before we get to that, though, it's franchise tag deadline day, which I did not know when I planned this podcast, but guess what? Happened to work out. And to help break down all the franchise tag news is the Athletics Zone, Lindsay Jones. Lindsay, how are you? I am great.

Yeah, it's like a national holiday franchise tag day. It's so depressing. All of the excitement associated with free agency, like, oh, man, what if this guy hits the market and what if this guy does? And then none of the good free agents hit the market. The one, we will talk about some of the surprises of guys who didn't get tagged. But before we do that, let's get into the ones who did. So obviously there were some guys that had been tagged before today. Guys like Leonard Williams, Brandon Shurf, you know, we talked about those on yesterday's show.

Not surprising. I think those guys plus Marcus, Marcus May was a little bit surprising. We talked about that with Sando yesterday. But Justin Simmons, Leonard Williams, Brandon Shurf, all ones that we could have anticipated. And I think for the most part, the rest of the rest of the rest of the rest of the rest of, of them are too. Alan Robinson, we can get into some of the details with that. He was franchised by the Bears. Chris Godwin, I think we expected him to be franchised by the Bucks if they couldn't come to a deal. Taylor Moten, the Panthers right tackle, another guy that was franchised.

So, Lindsay, if you're looking at the list of guys that were franchised, what would you say is your number one takeaway from that group? Yeah, I mean, I don't think there were a ton of, like, huge surprises. It was notable to me how many guys got the tag for the second time. Because usually that's something that teams won't trigger because it's 120% of your previous salary. That's usually a place that teams aren't really willing to go. Usually if a guy has played the whole year on the first tag, there's kind of an understanding of either we're getting a deal done and you're going to be signed long term or you're going to go hit the free agent market. But the fact that there are multiple guys, Justin Simmons, Brandon Sheriff, Leonard Williams, and then technically

Doc Prescott, who all got the tag for the second time. I think it just says a lot. about each of those individual players, what they mean for their teams, where those teams are at financially. And, you know, all of those guys, I think are going to be okay getting the tag for the second year because of how much money they're going to make. And this is one- Especially with a depressed cap. Yeah. And, you know, I was talking to an agent about this yesterday, where usually getting the franchise tag is kind of a worst-case scenario for a lot of players because it delays their movement. It inhibits their ability to actually test in-farmes. out what their true market value is.

This year where there is the expectation that the cap is going to be depressed at a lot of positions, you know, the top guys are going to get their big deals. But there's going to be a lot of players that are going to be have to be accepting less. And these guys that are franchise tagged, they're guaranteed to not have to accept less. They're going to be paid at the top of the market for their position and have the chance to hit the market next year when the expectation is the cap should be back up to, you know, in that ballpark of $200 million. So it's not a terrible situation.

I know there's guys who are going to be pissed about it. Alan Robinson is at probably the top of the list of the guys who isn't going to be happy to get that tag. But, you know, I don't think there's a ton of surprises or guys that should be, you know, super aggrieved by this news. The Bears were never going to let him walk away. I mean, you can't lose him for nothing when you're a GM and a head coach backed completely against the wall and in win now mode. I mean, whether it's going to be a trade immediately to try to get something. in this draft or keeping him, that always felt like the most logical end point of the Alan Robinson thing if they couldn't come to a long-term deal. A couple of guys on this list

that might be a little bit surprising. Cam Robinson, the Jags Left Tackle, was franchised. $13.9 million is the estimated number. It's surprising because he hasn't been that good of a player compared to the market, and that's a lot to pay for him. But we talk about this with Jason a little bit later on the show. That's a position where there just isn't much. scarcity. It's hard to find a guy there. And if you're going to draft a quarterback with a number one overall pick, walking into the off season without an answer at left tackle is a dangerous proposition. So for a team with $70 million in cap space, just having someone at that spot that doesn't even preclude you from drafting someone. If you love a tackle with your second

first round pick, whatever, you can draft somebody. He can be your starter in 2022. You figure it out. I just think it provides certainty to them when they know the most important player on their franchise and on their team is going to be arriving here in a couple months. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it was probably the name that was like, oh, I hadn't thought. I mean, you know, our beatwriters at the athletic last week did, you know, every, every guy went through in basic, all of the beat writers predicted some cap or some potential franchise tags candidates. And, you know, a lot of them were, you know, they made sense. You know, Cam Robinson was kind of the one guy. we were like, oh, you know, when his name came across today,

he said, oh, wasn't sure about that. But it totally makes sense, given what that market is. And now the left tackle market is not great, right? I mean, when you look at who else is out there, Trump Williams is the big fish now in that left tackle pond. But otherwise, it's not really a super intriguing market. But it's going to be a good draft class there. So if there was a team that maybe was eyeing Cam Robinson,

now maybe they need to look a little bit harder at spending a first round pick on a tackle. The other one that was a little bit surprising solely because this team is $58 million over the cap as things currently stand is the Saints franchise tagging Marcus Williams. It's just a joke at this point. I just don't know what else to say about it. We play Monopoly like nonstop in my house. It's my daughter's new favorite game. Is it just one game that's constantly going? Basically, yeah, we have the same game that's been set up for about a month. But like, is that just like the kind of money that they're like playing with? Like, do they realize that there is, like, real cash involved in this?

Like, they are masters at manipulating the cap. Like, Mickey Loomis and Sean Payton for whatever crazy accounting they're able to do. I mean, maybe they should be in some other, like, line of work in terms of the way that they can handle finances. I mean, they'd probably be in jail if they worked in any other industry with the way that they manipulate their funds. But, yeah, I mean, every year, it seems like they figure out some different way. And I guess good for Marcus Williams? I guess. Marcus Williams is a good player.

This is not surprising based on the quality of player he is. I just didn't think it was feasible when you consider how many hurdles they still have to jump through in order to make this thing work. They don't have a quarterback. They're paying Taysam Hill a gazillion dollars. I mean, not a gazillion dollars. But you know what? They're paying Taysam Hill way too much money for what he actually does. What are you going to do with Marcus Lattimore?

There's just a lot of. Well, with Latimore and Ramcheck, there's a possibility that they assign them to extensions in order to get those numbers down. I mean, we could be in a spot where those guys have $6 million cap hits this year with monster gains to come in future years. I think that I would actually be smart because both of them, I think, are making between $9 and $10 million this year. And if you can get that down, that's one way to cut costs because you know you want them around long term. But it still is, I have no idea how they're going to make this work. they have to make it work. So it's going to happen.

I just don't know how it's going to happen. They're going to find a way and they're going to probably go 10 and 7. I was talking to somebody about this earlier today. We're going to have to shift all of our math. How weird does it sound to say 10 and 7? I know. I was almost going to correct you and then realize what you were doing. Yeah.

But you know, they're going to finagle their cap. We're not going to have any idea how they squeeze in under here. They're going to trade for Russell Wilson. They're still going to find a way to pay them. And they're going to go to the playoffs. and there'll be financial geniuses or criminals, one or the two. Those two things are not mutually exclusive often. So Chris Godwin also got the cap, not surprising.

You know, the bucks were going to have some things they had to figure out. Levante David has already signed an extension. So he will be back. Not surprising to me. I mean, he is such a leader of that defense. He's been there forever. He's made a decent amount of money playing. He's going to be on his third contract, I want to say.

He's been in a league for a decade. him coming back at a relative discount is something you probably could have predicted. So he'll be back there. Chris Scott won't be back there. Now the question is about Shaq Barrett. So he's one of the bigger names hitting free agency, along with guys like Kenny Gallaudet, Carl Lawson, the guys that were not tagged today that now are going to be free agents and probably cash in. Is there anybody that you were surprised wasn't tagged?

You just thought it was kind of a given that they would be back with their team mixture. Yeah, I mean, Goladay was the name. that really jumped out at me is the guy that we just really figured based on his production, based on the needs of his old team at this point. It just seemed like, okay, Kenny Gallaudet kind of fit in that bucket with some of these other guys that we talked about with Alan Robinson and Chris Godwin, that I just didn't think he was going to actually get to the market. But so that was kind of the curious one. The other ones weren't really surprising.

I mean, I think the bucks are kind of just in an interesting spot where they only had one tag. So you debate, do you give Shaq Barrett the tag? Again, do you do Chris Godwin? It's really risky to not tag Shaq Barrett. It would have been really risky to not tag Chris Godwin. So they were in a really difficult situation right there. And, you know, now they're just going to have to do a lot of crazy accounting in Tampa because they're going to pay Lamante David. Yeah, I mean, what do you do?

What do you do now? I mean, so, okay, Chris Godwin's going to play on the one-year tag, right? They're extending Levanti David. He's getting his extension. How do you make it work with Shaq Barrett? We've already seen it. They added three voidable years onto the end of Levanti David's deal in order to spread out the cap hits. They never do that.

If you look at their cap, there is very little dead money on any of the contracts that are coming toward the end here. They can move on from guys like Cambrate, William Golston, all of those guys for nothing. because the bucks very rarely pro-rate bonus money. But we've been talking about this for close to a month. We thought there would be teams that would go against some of their typical practices because it would be necessary this year. You can fit in anybody you want to. You just have to borrow from future years.

And when a team like the bucks that never does that starts, that's how you know that this is going to be a wild, wild stretch. Yeah, I mean, Shaq Barrett, man, what a ride. Two years ago signed a one year, wasn't it about $4 million? It was like a one year, $4 million deal. Very much a prove it deal. It was not the first, that very first crush of free agency. And here he goes.

He's going to, he's going to make a lot of money now. I mean, I think the wise thing, the best decision would be here for him to stay in Tampa, but it'll be real interesting to see what his market is like. And if there's somebody who could entice him away from playing in a place where he was just the the critical piece of winning the Super Bowl, I mean, or, you know, or one of one of two very important pieces. So I think those were the teams that really kind of jumped out at me as like, you know, making a little bit of a surprising move. But some of those other guys, I mean, Hunter Henry, not getting tagged again, Hassan Reddick, you know, seemed like that is not super

surprising after the JJ Watt signing last week. You know, with the Rams, they could have tagged John Johnson their safety. I think he's going to be a really intriguing player on the market. I like him a lot, exactly how, you know, where he's going to go, would love to see him stay with the Rams, but as part of that really dynamic secondary that they have, but, you know, now maybe he gets to hit the market. So I don't know. Was there anybody else that jumped out at you as a, okay, he's hitting the market now? The Gallaudet thing was interesting on a couple different levels. One, the fact that now he was going to hit free agency. And that, there's a domino effect of that, right? The guy who represents Corey Davis, it would be doing backflips. If

Gowaday, Godwin, and Alan Robinson got franchise. Now, Gowaday is available, so it changes the entire complexion of the market. But I also think that provides a window into the Lions thinking. So when the Lions traded for Jared Gough, I was surprised just because I thought that they were a perfect candidate to just tear this whole thing down. And now, I think they still might be. them moving on from Kenny Goladay and then Brad Holmes was on

with Steve Weish and Jim Trotter earlier today and he was not really committing to the idea that Jared golf is their long-term answer or a quarterback. So I think they might be willing to lose more games and look like a far worse team than I would have thought

three weeks ago after thinking about the golf trade and why they might have made it. Poor Jared Gough. I know. He just wants someone to love it. I know it sucks. Maybe they don't. Maybe they don't draft somebody,

but this does seem like they're not going to try to play things in the middle. By moving on from Gaudet and really having no receivers on the roster anymore, it's going to be hard for them to fuel a pretty good offense this year or a pretty good team. I could envision some cuts coming for them defensively. They already cut Christian Jones, one of their linebackers. That could be the first of many. So I think this decision kind of provides us a window into what the Lions might be thinking about their prospects in 2021.

The other guy, I was very happy not to see him tagged, is Carl Lawson. One of my favorite players in the entire league, I think that he is a truly special pass rusher and him hitting the market, he's going to make some team very, very happy. If he can get a deal in like the 12, the 4, maybe it's going to be a little more.

Let's say it's $14 to $16 million a year. I would do that in a heartbeat when you consider some of the guys making 20 out there right now, on the interior and at the edge. If you can get him for that price, I think you'd be very pleased. Do you have a perfect fit for him or a handful of teams I should call him?

I'd love to see him in Cleveland with Miles Garrett. I just think that that would be such a great pairing. They have money. They know they need somebody across from him. That's why I was excited about JJ Watt potentially going there. I would love if they stole them from a team in their division. The Brown's released Adrian Claiborne today freed up a little bit more money. They don't play the same position.

but, you know, another roster spot potentially along that defensive line. So shoot, he wouldn't even have to move that far. I know. Wouldn't you have to move that far at all? I tweeted this earlier today. Adrian Clayboard is one of those guys that every year he seems to move teams. He's been on a bunch of different teams. And he signs for like one year, six million.

And then I'll just be sitting there on a Sunday in the late slate. And he'll have like a really nice pressure. And I'm like, I kind of like Adrian Claiborne. It happens at least once a year. He's a useful piece. He is. Well, you remember the game where he had like, five sacks against Dr.

Well, of course, but that's, that's an entirely different thing. I'm pretty sure Kent Garrison, one of our producers is still seeing that in his sleep. Adrian Claybourne is the boogeyman to one and only one NFL franchise. And it's the Dallas Cowboys. Well, he is my father-in-law's favorite player because he,

because Adrian Claiborne went to the high school where my father-in-law taught in St. Louis. This is the most random thing you've ever said in the podcast. It's the most St. Louis story. If you, if anybody knows what St. Louis is like,

and so my father-in-law will bring him up to me and he be like, hey, did you see Adrian today? Or like, Adrian at this game. I'm like, Adrian, ooh. He just refers to him on a first name basis and like assuming that I'll know. But he loves him. And, you know, when I saw him at Super Bowl Media Day a couple years ago, I said, Mr. Paul from Webster High says hello.

And he's like, oh, say hi to Mr. Paul for me. So shout out to my father-in-law, Webster goes high school in St. Louis. That's really funny. The one other guy that's up near the top of the market that was not tagged, not surprising because he was tagged last year, is Joe Tooney. I mean, he is going to be somebody that. a team is going to pay $15 million a year.

He's going to be a starter every single snap. He's going to be a solid player and they're never going to think twice about it. And I don't know who that team is going to be, but that's exactly the type of proposition he provides in free agency this year. The Bengals are all about this. Bengals Twitter is a Twitter. It makes so much sense. He grew up like 10 feet away from Paul Brown Stadium and it's exactly the position that they need.

Yeah, I mean, I've been following our Bengals beat writers, Paul Danaer and Jay Morrison. and they've been tweeting about it, Ben Baby from ESPN.com. It's that it's, all the pieces are aligning here. So that's one of those moves that seems like it would just make a lot of sense. So, you know, we franchise tag day kind of sucks because a lot of these guys that we really like Alan Robinson, Chris Godwin, those guys, they're not actually hitting the market. But there is this other group and these guys that we talked about, the guys that didn't get tagged,

these are the guys that are going to be in position to actually get paid this year. There's going to be a lot of guys who are going to be disappointed. I think, but these guys that we've just mentioned can throw in Hunter Henry, Bud Dupree, Aaron Jones from the Packers who didn't get a tag. I think those guys will do okay. You know, their markets will be pretty active. But, you know, we're just not going to see quite as much excitement, I think, with the wide receiver group as maybe as we could have gotten.

And, you know, we're not having any super high profile quarterback hitting free agency, thanks to the Doc Prescott deal. Is there a team you would like to see, Gallaudet land with because he's the most exciting guy now, right? I mean, he's probably the most exciting name on the market outside of like Shaq Barrett, but wide receivers just a little bit different. Well, I mean, I think every time we talk about receivers and a team that I just really, really, all I want to do is gift to them receivers is the Baltimore Ravens. They don't have a ton of money to spend, but I, God, I just want them to get some bodies and to get like an elite number one wide

receiver in Kenny Goliday. So they're the team that just jumps out at me right away just because, God, I want them to have some better receiving options as soon as possible for Lamar Jackson. I would love to see him land in Washington. If they could get, it's somewhat interesting quarterback there, him with Terry McLaurin. I think that's the exact type of option they would like to spend on just to give them a big physical presence to go with McLaren as their one A and one B. I think that makes a lot of sense.

Baltimore does as well. He's going to have a market. There's no denying that. There are going to be a lot of people chasing after Kenny Gallaud. Lindsay Jones, anything else? Any other franchise tag business that you want to get to you before we get out of here? No, I'm just waiting on the salary cap number now. That's all that's left here is to know exactly what that number is going to be.

A lot of the accounting is already kind of being done now with these tags. So we just want to know, we just want to know, is it going to be 182, 183, 185 so that the business of the NFL can really get going with the legal tampering period because God knows nobody is talking contracts. Right. No one has been no information traveling back and forth, not over the last month or so. All right. Lindsay, thank you very much.

Always good to chat with you. We will talk next week. And yeah, thanks. I'm thrilled now to welcome the one and only Jason Fitzgerald from over thecap.com. How you doing, man? I'm good. Yeah, busy, but doing pretty good. This is your time of year.

I mean, over the cap, if you guys don't use it, I don't know what you're doing. It's an indispensable resource when you're trying to figure out free agencies, the financial landscape of the league, everything. Not an exaggeration. I visited every day multiple times a day. I use the calculator multiple times a day. You guys should be looking at it if you're not already. So the idea I had for this show was essentially to kind of reverse engineer free agency.

If you guys listened to the conversation we had with Lewis last week, it was kind of demonized, just talking about how much anxiety it creates and how many swings and misses there are among guys. So I wanted to talk about instances where free agency has worked. worked for teams. And it just so happens that Jason and his team over and over the cap had just put out a free agent guide this year that you guys should check out that talks about a lot of the ideas, which positions work, which money ranges tend to work. So I couldn't think of anyone better to talk about this with than you.

Good. That was a pretty nice introduction there. I'd say if I ever get a hype man, you're my job man right there. Boom. I'll take it. All right. So let's get, I want to start off just with some rules of thumb that you found when you were doing your research, some basic kind of broader ideas that a team could bring to their free agent plan. So when you're looking at just kind of the pillars of what you think does and doesn't work in free agency, where would you start?

So I think doing the research and a lot of the stuff was even new to me when I started to really run through these things because a lot of the stuff, you know, you have some preconceived notions of things. I was really surprised that the biggest takeaway I think I had on it is that defense first is really the way you want to go in free agency. I thought it was so interesting. You know, most of the time, we do kind of get caught up with the offensive free agents and we get caught up with the wide receivers and the big names at running back and even some of the offensive linemen and the tight ends. But it's really the defense, if you run through the numbers, that's had the most impact on actually changing the fortunes of teams from one year to the next. I think the other big takeaway from it, too, is that free agency really is just a one-year tool. There's not a lot of teams that go in there and create any kind of foundation in free agency. You know, you get this one-year bump in a lot of cases, but long-term usually doesn't work out that well.

You need to get those draft picks in there to really solidify your roster and kind of use free agency, I think, as a tool to kind of supplant that and, you know, fill in those gaps. I think that the defense first thing is so interesting. And my pet little theory, which is something that you posited in the book as well, is that the volatility on defense lends to it being more valuable in free agency. You want to build the bedrock of your franchise on offense. You want to draft a left tackle. You want to draft a number one pass catcher. You want to draft a quarterback.

But on defense, it's so volatile from season to season that if you have these little injections of talent, it can go a really long way. I don't know if that would actually bear out over time. that's my first thought when you say that. Yeah, I think that's accurate. I think if you look even at the performance of players, even if we get into players who have been extended and everything else, if you look at the secondaries, for example, there is so much variance year to year in the way your cornerbacks play, that changing that mix up, just

to have other options in there rather than over relying on one player who maybe just happened to have a great year last year, he's probably going to come back down to earth. And so much of defense is, I guess unlike offense, is. much more situational. You get a lot more players who are, you know, 50% snap guys, a 30% snap guy, a 60% snap guy versus, you know, on offense, certain players who are there every snap. You know, your offensive alignment are out there every play. Your top wide receivers are out there pretty much every play. So I think having those added parts and those added pieces defensively, I think that's a big reason why that applies, you know, on defense almost more exclusively

because you can always find roles for the players. And then when they stand out and they have that great season, kind of your whole defensive fortunes have changed. And you're not over-relying on the things that worked for you the year before, or maybe it didn't work for you the year before. And that leads for you being able to improve your defense or maybe keep some kind of defensive performance year over year. And one of the other positions I thought it was kind of surprising to me

when I looked at the numbers was linebacker. Because if you look at just the way it's valued overall, I think a lot of analytically forward teams are diminishing its importance. And understandably so because I think it is replaceable more than other positions on defense. But what you kind of threw out there is that it is an affordable and kind of easy way to add new injections of talent and variance to your defensive rotation. You don't have to spend a ton of a linebacker. But if you throw three or four million at a free agent linebacker and you add that to your defense, that's a way to kind of change things up in a way that has been kind of fruitful.

for teams over the last five years or so. Yeah, I think so. And, you know, the other thing where you mentioned players like that at that kind of spending levels, the other thing that you can do is, you know, kind of like in the draft, you know, we'll talk about throwing a lot of darts at the board, right? You know, you want a lot of opportunities so you can kind of hit on the right player. Free agency can kind of be treated that same way. Not at the top because the money's so high.

But where you get into the players that are $3 million, $4 million players, if you can figure out a way to sign two or three of those guys, even though. if they're going to play a similar position, all you need is really one of them to work out really well for you. And sometimes that's a better way to approach it than the, you know, all your eggs in one basket sign in the one big name guy like the Jets, for example, where they signed a linebacker a couple years ago for $17 million a year. You know, so there's a lot of ways, I think, that you can kind of try to game the system that teams haven't really done yet in free agency. I think it's still pretty, pretty myopic. You know, you kind of get your sights set on one guy,

and once you get that guy, then it's like, okay, now we're moving on to a different position. And I think some of the teams that take a little bit more wider approach to it are probably the ones that are doing a little bit better. I want to talk about a couple of those teams a little bit later, but the Jets specifically, people that don't know, you're a Jets fan. It's a sad existence. So if you guys go to Twitter right now and you just punch in free agent spending into the search bar, the first thing that will come up is a chart that Jason tweeted out. It was free agent spending versus record from 2017 to 2020. The Jets are at the bottom far right of the entire chart. So they've spent the most of free agency and they have the worst record over that stretch.

It's a tough needle to thread. They're on their own island out there. It's a rough time. It's a rough decade. So if you look at overall, though, that bottom right quadrant, which is the quadrant you don't want to be in, that's where you see a lot of the most anemic franchises in the entire league. The Jets are there.

The Raiders are there. I mean, look at what happened with the Raiders this week and all of the guys they've already moved on from. The Jaguars are down there. The Browns are down there, which, you know, I think their fortunes are changing a little bit. But for the most part, you have teams that are consistently bad because those teams consistently have a lot of money because they're not retaining any of these players. So it shouldn't be a surprise that spending a lot of money in free agency is typically the mark of an unsuccessful franchise. But we already kind of know that. Yeah, that's how it works out.

Even when you go into some of the stuff that we did in the guide where we started to break down who spends on the big, kind of the big money positions, it's almost exclusively, you know, all your teams have finished the year before under eight wins or under six wins. You know, those are the teams that really go in there and just go crazy and free agency compared to the better teams who probably have more expensive players to begin with. They don't have the cap room to be able to do that. They don't have the budgets to be able to do that. So they're a little bit more targeted when they do tackle kind of some of those. big price guys and the rest of the time they're kind of living in the lower ranges of free agency. But yeah, you know, it's almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy with some of these teams. You know, one of the things with the Raiders today, and it's something that I get a lot that people talk about. You know, the Raiders released all these guys. They said they're going to release them. They'll release them, you know, sometime soon.

And the thing everyone will say is, well, you know, there's no dead money. They were dead money the last two years. You had them on the roster. They were dead money. I mean, if you want to say it's buried into their cap charge because they put everything in cash, fine. It doesn't make it a good contract. You didn't do good signing Trent Brown for $16.5 million to play 16 games so you can trade them to do another team where he's going to take a pay cut to go play there. It's like you did a bad job with that.

And you did a bad job financially with that. And I guess as more of these teams do this where they don't put a lot of dead money in there, it gives them that opportunity to spend like mad in free agency one year. And then two years later cut all the guys. And people don't pay as much attention to it because there's not a bunch of dead money. It's like, oh, well, they can go back in and spend again. That doesn't make it good. It's like, you know, especially when you can carry over a cap room.

Who cares? In this world now, where if you're spent an $18 million on a right tackle that you shouldn't be spent an $18 million on, who cares if there was $4 million? in dead money three years later if his cap charges been $8 million. It all comes out in the wash at a certain point. Yeah. And I think that just gets lost on people. And I think for the general managers, it's almost become like a tool to kind of navigate

bad seasons or bad decision making to where you can kind of, you know, everyone gets upset with the releases. Now the Raiders will have $30 million in cap space. So a couple weeks later, we're going to watch them sign a bunch of talent again. and all the people that were upset are going to be like, oh, this is so great. We just sign this guy, this guy, and this guy. And you're going to finish six and ten next year.

It's a great way to pedal hope. That's exactly what it is. And teams really do use that to their advantage. All right, let's get into some positional specifics because I love the breakdowns that you guys had. So first, I don't want to start with a couple of spots that are just kind of off the board, that we just don't see work in free agency

and we don't see really money allocated in free agency because of scarcity at those spots. And that's quarterback and left tackle. For the most part, quarterback contracts in free agency do not work. If your team is handed out a big money deal to a quarterback and free agency, you're already losing. Think about the ones in that kind of category. Those are your Nick Foleses, your Case Keenoms, your Brock Osweilers.

It never works. Tom Brady and Philip Rivers recently, those were hits, but I think those are unique circumstances. Yeah, they're not going to come around very often, if ever. And then the other spot is left tackle. I mean, not only are there not many hits, but there just isn't much money spent on left tackles and free agency year to year because there are so few players that hit the market at that spot. The players don't get there.

That's why when it was announced that Cam Robinson was going to get franchised today and everyone's like, oh, I can't believe he got franchised. It's like, well, yeah, he was going to get franchised. He's the best young left tackle who's available. That doesn't make him a good player. It's just there's no other players available. Jaguars weren't going to have anybody else to get. You know, we, I had them valued around 12.5 million, $13 million a season, I think, on an extension.

So it kind of makes sense for where they were with their cap room and the scarcity of talent there to just do this with them until they can find a better option. Yeah, you just can't plan on the left tackle and free agency unless you want to look for, you know, somebody who's coming off like a couple really bad seasons or someone who's much older, you know, like older guys. You know, Whitworth gets into free agency or last year. Yeah, O'Koon, and last year, Jason Peters sat around for a while before he ended up back in Philadelphia. You know, those kind of players will get there. But you're talking about signing guys who were 35, 36, 37 years old sometimes. You know, that's not building a team for the long haul. That's, you know, just filling in a gap for a year or two.

I want to say the numbers you guys had only 18 left tackles at Switch team since 2014. Yeah, it's a real small number. And compared to 41 at right tackle. I mean, that's drastically different. Yeah, so when you get to right tackle, at left tackle, the teams pretty much hoard their left tackle. At right tackle, they just use the right tackle position pretty much while the guys are a rookie or while they're cheap, and then they have a decision to make. And the majority of the teams that have them seem to think, okay, we can get a different option. Or maybe we have another option on the roster.

Maybe we have a younger tackle or younger player is a swing kind of player. We'll force him in there next year. And we'd rather have him at, you know, a million dollars, two million dollars, than keeping the best right tackler. good right tackle for eight or nine. And so those players hit free agency. And those players often swap teams. And they tend to be okay sometimes. Yeah, usually they're pretty good.

I mean, most of the offensive linemen, I mean, even if you look at like a guard, centers, center's not a ton of guys switch teams. But, you know, most of those players work out. If you look at how they play based on how many pressures they give up, if you look at, you know, the types of sacks they're allowing, the type of playing time, they're relatively healthy. The problem is they're just not difference makers. So you sign these players, sometimes the big deals. More so at guard, I think, than right to tackle. And then you get disappointed because your team doesn't get any better because they're blocking usually for a lousy

quarterback. So your team doesn't get any better. And then you start to look at things and go, well, you know, why are we paying Andrew Norwell $13.5 million a year? All right, let's ask him for a pay cut. And then everyone's like, why are you asking this guy for a pay cut? And there's really not a good reason for it. He just doesn't meet the expectations of that big salary. But in terms of how they played before free agency, after free agency, most of them kind of play, I don't know, pretty much to the level pre-contract. It's a safe way to spend your money, even if it's not the most difference-making way to spend your money. I think that's probably the right way to put it. I think the problem is that too many teams look at it as like a difference maker. And maybe that's just one of the problems with

offensive spending in general. Sometimes it's hard, I think, for the teams, to kind of separate themselves from the fact that the quarterback that they drafted isn't any good. And you get into this really bad thing, you know, this bad cycle where it's like you don't have talent around the player. You know, obviously I deal with this with the Jets right now with Sam Darnold. But it happens with almost every single team that has a questionable young quarterback. It's like, well, what would they do if they had a great left tackle? What would they do if they had a great guard?

What would they do if they had great wide receivers? And eventually there's not much more. you can add. And you know, you just get into these things where you start adding all these pieces. And it doesn't change anything because the quarterback still throwing the ball into the ground, throwing it to the wrong colored jersey, throwing it out of bounds, you know, taking sacks. And your offense just can't function. You know, maybe 15 years ago, you could get a dominant offensive line when a lot of teams were doing, you know, pretty much run style offenses. And that would lead you to do something like better that way. But with the quarterback, you need a guy who can throw.

And it doesn't matter what you put in front of them, you're not going to take a bad player and magically make him good by signing these players on the offensive line. And I think that's been a trap in free agency for a lot of football teams. And I think that offensive line especially, you want functional players at all of the spots. And that's why kind of shopping in the middle of free agency, because it's still safe and you're not necessarily looking for a difference maker, can benefit some teams. Did you find any sort of difference between the guard? in like the six to $10 million range and the guards over $10 million, which kind of brings back more value?

There's not much difference. You know, with right tackles, I know in particular, the cheap right tackles and the expensive right tackles are all pretty equal. You know, they might give up a couple extra bad plays, but it's not that many. You know, you're talking about a thousand plays on offense

and you're talking about one or two plays that maybe is worse. So, yeah, there's a lot of cheap talent that's there. even the other day we did a little bit of a study just on sub two million dollar players who are typically available in free agency and you know who play a lot you know a lot of snaps and do okay and the sub two million dollar guards there was a pretty good amount of them you can probably plan on maybe six free agency year uh that you can give an example uh off top of my head I'm not sure players um me putting you on the spot but that's yeah I'd have to search uh search the old list up to see if I could pull some of those players up.

But you can typically find some talent that's there in those lower cost ranges that you can get in there and you can slot them in. And I guess the other thing, too, where you look at the guards in particular, if you have a pretty good left tackle and you have a decent center, you can probably kind of cover for some of the deficiencies that maybe a cheaper guard might have, you know, just with the build of the rest of your offensive line. So, you know, I think that's kind of, you know, one of the things the team could look at is going in those kind of cheaper, more depth ranges and just finding viable

players to put on the line. If we're talking about teams that have gotten out on a free agency, that's essentially the approach the bills took to their guards over the last several years. The John Feliciano contract is two years, $7.2 million. It's exactly the price range they were shopping in. And then if you move over one spot, this is a kind of set of returns that I really was fascinated by. Center tends to be. a pretty good place to spend. When you think about the returns, how safe it is, and how deep into these contracts a lot of these guys get.

And if you think about anecdotally, that makes sense, right? Think about some of the center contracts have been handed out. Mitch Morse, Ryan Jensen, Alex Mack, these have been, over the last five years or so, some of the better, smarter deals that teams have handed out in free agency. Yeah, so I think what happens with Center is you have, it's kind of like a tug of war.

There's certain teams that like the concept of paying a center, and then there's certain teams that really don't. So the teams that don't like paying the center that have these great centers that they drafted often will let them walk. So you get good talent that gets into free agency. And again, you're talking about a position that unlike the real athletic positions

where guys seem to kind of break down, the offensive linemen play until they're 32 years old, 33 years old, and they're still playing at a high level. So if you're signing a free agent who's 28, 29, you can get three, four good years. out of that player without worry. Pretty much you sign them. And as long as they don't get hurt,

you can pretty much slot them in that they're going to do okay, unless you're playing a completely different scheme. If you're playing the wrong scheme fit for somebody, that's a whole different story. That's not my area of expertise at all. But, you know, that that's the one thing that I think throws stuff out of whack is, you know, when you get the guy in the wrong scheme and you put him in there and he just looks lost.

That's why I think a guy like Corey Lindley this year, if somebody just hands him a three-year $30 million deal, they're not going to regret it. I don't know how much it's eventually going to move the needle, but if that's a position of need for you, I think those types of players in that price range have benefited teams if we look at kind of the returns over the last three or four years. Yeah, absolutely. And you know, you also get, I think, some other benefits with that too. You know, if you had a player like that onto a team that maybe has a young offensive line and you're looking for that kind of veteran leadership that's there. Talking to you, Chargers. You know, get these guys to gel, get them to just, just.

understand sometimes about, you know, how to approach the game week in, week out, how to preserve your body, how to stay strong, how to stay fit, you know, go through what's going to be a 17-game season now. I think sometimes that gets overlooked when we kind of get into talking about the benefits of certain types of players that you bring in. But I definitely think, yeah, when you bring in a veteran player like that, not only are they going to help you on the field, but I think even off the field, they're going to give you some benefits that are really going to help you out, you know, kind of grow your team if you're adding them to a younger team. So let's get into me confirming my priors in ways that I really enjoy. Looking at some of the numbers you had on wide receivers, one, it seems like expensive receivers aren't disasters a lot of the time.

They're going to produce at a similar level to what they had done at previous stops. But the sweet spot that it seems to exist in those six to $10 million a year. receivers in free agency. anecdotally, you recognize those guys, right? Like the Marvin Jones contract that he signed in Detroit, I think is a perfect example. Five years, 40 million, and is a good player throughout the entire length of that contract when he's healthy. Vic Beasley, kind of a similar kind of deal.

That same range, like $6, $7 million a year has been everything the bills wanted. So that seems to be a really good place for teams to shop to get production in free agency. Yeah, that actually surprised me a little bit when I went. through those numbers. You know, I didn't really think about it that way at all until I started to look at them. And, you know, the big name wide receivers, they came through. And like you said, it was, okay, they do pretty much what you would expect most of the time. And then as I started cycling through and I got to that third tier, that third salary tier, I said, wow, you know, these guys are actually doing pretty good. You know, they're kind of playing above expectations.

I guess a lot of times it's finding a player that, you know, maybe didn't have like that big of a role on the prior team. They have a lot of talent. So now you're giving them that opportunity to play more or to earn more playing time, I guess is the right way to put it. And I guess you just have a specific idea for how you're going to use those players. And they seem to do relatively well, you know, playing into those deals into the third year of a contract a lot of times. And, you know, that's pretty much a win, especially for players like that. If you get someone that's going to play into a third year, you're going to extend them onto another contract. That's generally a big win because you're not putting a lot of guarantees typically in those types of

contracts. You know, there's not as much risk that's involved with those as there is with signing, you know, the $10 million wide receiver, 10.5, you know, somewhere in that range where you're going to have to fork over $20 million in guarantees and, you know, much more security that way. So I think if you look at specific players, one guy that, another one that jumps out, Robert Woods is like right in that range. It's exactly the type of situation he walked into with the Rams gets extended, has a bigger role, different spot, different situation there than he had in Buffalo, look at their returns. If you look at this class, I think it would be a guy like Curtis Samuel, who maybe was the number three option with the Panthers. Now that Ghaladay is on the market

and you have a couple guys that are true, more outside guys, like Corey Davis, I think I would put above him. Can you get Curtis Samuel on a three year, 20, let's say even three years 30 with most of the guarantees in the first two years? I think that's. tolerable. I think that's ballpark for him. I think I have him right at like 9-5. He's right around that number is where I think that he'll be. He's someone that it's good because you can always find a role for him too. There's a lot of different things that he can do on the field. That's usually pretty valuable. And that's also one of those ways too where even if it doesn't work out necessarily as a receiver, when you can find those roles, people don't look at it as a bad contract when they

can see him doing a couple runs even by the goal line if he's able to score a couple touchdown. owns that way or something like that. But I think that'll be the ballpark for him, you know, that he should come out probably around there. He would probably have gotten more money if this group of wide receivers wasn't as deep. But I think with so many of those bigger names on there, players like him in particular, and a couple of the smaller name guys, I guess, too, might end up not having as robust of a market as they might, you know, might have had in a normal season. I just think that if Juju's in the $15 million year range and Curtis Samu's in the 9 to $10 million a year range, I'm going Curtis Samuel with $6 million left over every

single time. And especially when you look at what's happened and what the recent returns have been at guys in that range. Yeah, I think that that's right. I think especially too, I mean, you bring up a player like Smith-Juster there. If you look at what happened with him without Rathlisberger there, it was not really a showing. And even this year, you can see he, he has kind of fallen to, you know, third fiddle, fourth fiddle kind of guy. I don't know if that's going to change when he goes to another team and

you're going to try to make him, you know, your second highest targeted guy. I don't know if he's going to live up to that or if he's just going to be kind of a short chain mover, Jameson Crowder type player that doesn't move the needle one way or the other, but you're going to be paying $15 million for him. So let's move to the defensive side because I think a lot of the, you know, these really jumped out to me, some of the numbers associated with them. Edge Rusher seems to be a spot where really at all levels of investment, you get returns in year one. It's one of the more obvious improvements over expectation.

That's one of the metrics you guys used that a team can get. So among the teams that spent more than $10 million on edge rusher in free agency in a given year, 53.5% won more than 10 games the following year. And two thirds of them improved more than their expectations. would dictate, which that's really, really good, especially compared to the numbers associated with other positions. Oh, yeah, definitely. You know, this was definitely one of those positions where adding, you know, to get over $10 million,

you're going to be adding a big name player. You know, you're just getting good performance from those guys. And again, I guess it's probably a lot of times, too, it's getting a new guy in a new system and teams aren't prepared for that. You know, teams are creatures of habit. They study films so much in the offseason. and they prepare for all the stuff they saw last year. And while they can prepare for that player individually,

they're not going to prepare for him as much playing against a different, alongside a different player in a different scheme, you know, maybe with a different approach on it. And those guys, they do. They tend to stand out, you know, and I guess help improve those teams, you know, really kind of take off the next year. And I think even the step below that, you get some returns as well.

So if we're looking at this free agent class again, Carl Lawson's probably going to be one of those guys after not getting tagged, that's going to get paid. I mean, I think he's going to get paid near the top of the market and make a lot of money. And then you have guys like Romeo O'Cora, Hassan Reddick, maybe they're in the one year, $8 to $10 million ranges. They try to boost up their value. I think both of those groups of players, those are people that I would chase.

Even if it's a little bit expensive, this seems to be a spot where it's worth spending a little bit more money if you have it. Yeah, I think so. And again, you know, where you get into those salary ranges you're talking about, you can sign two of those guys. And if you're looking to kind of rebuild your entire pass rush, that's not a bad approach to do. If you can get two guys for one guy for 13, one guy for 10, you're probably better off doing that than you are signing Barrett for $20 million and then going all the way down to find that $3 million pass rusher that you hope you can get some snaps out of. So I think that's a good approach.

And this year is a great year to try to do it just because there's so much depth. with those past rushers and free agency. So going to the back end of the defense, I mean, these are the spots when I was just thinking about this idea right off the bat that jumped out to me. Because it really does seem like there are a lot of examples, especially at safety, of a certain price range really providing results for teams.

I mean, I think about the bills again, what they spent on Micah Hyde and Jordan Poirer that one year in 2017 and what they've gotten from those players. Safety is between like $6 and $8 million really feel. feels like a sweet spot for teams to find guys if they're looking on the market. Yeah, I think that's pretty much the spot for them. You will always get your expensive safeties who are there. But again, it's a position. You won't be happy that you landed them for the most part. No, you know, it's a position again where you need so much depth, you know,

with the amount of players that are going to be playing in the secondary, you need a lot of guys. You need to be able to do a lot of things and fill a lot of spots there. I think those guys in that $6 million range, $7 million range really do stand out. is the difference in performance between like those real elite players, at least from a salary perspective, and these guys who are down in that second tier of salaries, it's a very small difference. You know, it's kind of like maybe a little bit even like the way the offensive line is, where you're paying a lot of extra money for a very, very minor improvement.

And yeah, when you can get those guys in that $6 to $7 million range, usually those guys work out pretty well. And most of the time, I'm surprised when a lot of those guys sign those contracts. I'm like, I can't believe that guy signed for that. You know, I know he's going to be released this year, but, you know, Tray Boston every year. I was like, how is this guy never getting paid? I just, I can't figure it out. I can't get it.

But, you know, he's had a relatively good career for, you know, pretty cheap, all things told compared to, you know, other players. I think that safety and the interior of the offensive line are weirdly connected to me because you might be happy if you're shopping in free agency, if your expectations going in are that you're not getting a difference-making player. If what you want out of the process is to fill a hole at a place where a really bad player is more obvious than a really good player, then I think you might be happy. And I think those are two spots that it's a similar kind of thing. What you want out of it is similar to me. Yeah, I think that's a fair assessment,

because most of the time you're not going to bring in the safety and be like, wow, you know, this guy's amazing, you know, unless you're talking about a player like Ed Reed or Earl Thomas in their prime, there's not that kind of game-changing ability that's going to come from most of the players, you know. But you notice when they're bad. Yeah, you notice when they're bad because they sit there and they just get obliterated in a big playoff game. If you happen to be in one, they'll just get targeted. You know, every time they're going to be out there in coverage, you're just going to target them. You know, they're going to try to match up, you know, against some of the game.

someone like a Travis Kelsey and just get annihilated, you know, in a playoff game. And that's what happens. And then everyone's like, oh, why is this guy even on the field? And that there were other avenues, obviously, to improve if teams would look at that. So the other spot in the secondary corner, obviously, that if you're looking at some of the deals that have worked out over the last five years, the Gilmore deal is kind of like in flashing lights as one of the best free agent signings and just the returns that the Patriots have gotten. Did you find that corner is a spot that seems to be worth spending if the right guys hit the market? Yeah, I think so.

I think it's a spot where you can get decent with that. I think, again, the problem there, and maybe even Gilmore is a good example. You know, he was fantastic last year. And then this year, just not as good, beat up, kind of hurt a little bit. I think whenever you buy in a cornerback, and this is why I liked what Miami did kind of last year, I think when you buy in, you have to buy into the concept of we're going to try to build up a whole secondary. Don't just go into this over-reliance on one guy. You know, there's only a handful of players. Like Philly. Yeah, you know, there's only a handful of players out there who historically

have been able to command that kind of respect in the passing game, you know, whether you're talking about a Richard Sherman or Patrick Peterson or Dorel Revis or, you know, going back much further, you know, and the Dion Sanders kind of players, you know, Champ Bailey. They're few and far between. So you have to build up, you know, these really big. secondaries nowadays, especially because teams on offense are rolling out so many wide receivers. They have so many different concepts that they're kind of trying to bring into those passing games. Their goal is to get away from your top guy and then pick on everybody else. So I think if you're going to invest in one good kind of cornerback, you want to keep investing,

even if it's going to be in those $5 million price ranges where you can get a lot of good players in there too. I think that's kind of the way to approach it, is, just fill up your secondary with as much talent as possible instead of one player you think is going to be a surefire bet and then a whole bunch of question marks. If you look at teams that are usually high in secondary spending, they do seem to be taking that approach where they're valuing back to front all the way through. Baltimore is like that. Buffalo is like that. Miami is like that. So it does seem to be kind of an organizational vision that has worked out for those teams, which I think is interesting. So speaking of the

bills. If you look at that chart of spending to wins, the Jets are kind of in their own little area and the other team that is as well is Buffalo. No team has had as much success in the last four years while spending as much money in free agency. That could come back to Earth very quickly. It's a dangerous world in which to live. But do you think there are specific aspects of how the bills have approached the market that has allowed them to find more success than other teams? I think they've done a couple good things. I mean, you haven't seen them make too many splashy signings.

You know, obviously they made the trade for digs. But most of their free agent signings have been, you know, where you talk about getting a center. You know, maybe that's the most expensive center that was there that year. But that's someone that just helped kind of solidify a team. Everywhere else they've gone, they've kind of looked for reasonable prices, you know, John Brown, Cole Beasley, you know, safeties that they've. that they've picked up guys in the secondary that they've picked up.

You know, they got a couple years ago, they had Kevin Johnson for, I think, three million dollars to kind of, you know, fill a void for a little bit. They moved him,

they let him play the slot. And then when guys got hurt, you know, he went out to the outside a little bit. So I think they've kind of taken this approach of bringing guys on either moderate cost contracts or just one year deals to where you're not getting, you know,

bogged down into these long-term contracts. You know, if we need a player for, one year. We're going to do a contract that gets him here for one year. We'll take that benefit and then we'll let him go somewhere else and we'll bring in somebody else to replace him that kind of goes on that same line. And they've done a really good job there. And like you said, it might not be sustainable. You know, if Josh Allen, if he, you know, if the clock strikes 12 and he turns into a pumpkin again, you know, that team is going to go downhill somewhat. But I don't think

people realize how bad of his shape the bills were in when they took over. When they were, when And Bean got hired as GM, their organization was a disaster. The contracts that they had on hand and the roster they had on hand, it was awful. They took on like $65 million in dead money, I think, one year. People don't remember that because they won games. So people don't remember that they actually tanked. Like they didn't lose games, but they tore it down in the same way some of these other teams did. They just happened to win a few more games than some of the other teams.

than some of the other teams that have really torn the financial element down to the studs. And I think that people really lose sight of that. Yeah, it's a very different story, I think, than any other team that's been there. You know, they were in the same spot as the Jaguars. They were in the same spot as the dolphins. They were in the same spot as the Raiders were many years ago that the jets have been at times. The Giants have been in. And they're the only one that's been able to navigate it.

you know, the dolphins maybe will. You know, they're kind of in that process right now of rebuilding. But when you look at them just compared to the other teams, I think the big thing was they just didn't go out there and look for that short-term, you know, splash. It wasn't like, we're going to go out there and we're going to sign three or four guys that make $13, $14 million a year. We're going to have to find a way to sign 20 guys who make, you know, $3 million a year. And I think they've just done a really good job with doing that. I think the approach they take, even if the quarterback does actually come back down a little bit, I think it is somewhat sustainable.

I think it's very similar to what they've done in Indianapolis, except I think they've been more of a risk taker in Buffalo. And they've gotten, you know, higher end play out of the quarterback position as well. If you look at it over the last two years, no one on the bill's roster has made more than 6.7% of the cap. And I just think that's a really shrewd way to use the space and money afforded to you by, a rookie quarterback contract. Just because your quarterback is on a rookie deal and not making any money doesn't mean you need to go out and be spenders on the first day of free agency. You can use that money to fill holes, and that's how you think about it.

Not we're going to get difference makers in free agency. We're going to get solutions in free agency. And I think that's the way that Bean has approached it. Yeah, they've done that very well. They've used this kind of this rookie time as well. If you look at some of the contracts that they've extended, they've been able to kind of front load some of those deals, both cap and cash-wise, to kind of make use of whatever budget that they have now knowing that next year, the same type of budgets, you know, might not exist.

So get those guys locked up. You know, people might complain a little bit about the number that Dawkins signed for, for example. Given where they are as a roster, it made perfect sense to do that deal when they did, you know, to get that done and just to get that out of the way. And I don't know. I think they've done a tremendous job. I've liked what they've done really since the day they came in.

You know, I pretty much said I thought that they should have won the executive of the year award then just based on future planning. Just being able to navigate some of these deals, you know, getting somebody to take Marcel Darius off your hands, for example. You know, I just thought it was a tremendous job that they did all the way back then. And, you know, that's continued forward. So I think they're arguably the, if not the best, one of the best organizations in football right. I think so too. I think in free agency it's not even close. Also, Dionne Dawkins is making $11.4 million this year. You do that 100 times out of 100, especially when you consider the landscape of the left tackle spot that we talked about before. So, I mean, that you'd never think about that deal again that he signed. I think it's really, really smart for them to do what they did there. Is there anything else that you think people should know? Just general rules of thumb, general takeaways you have about how teams can use free agency in their favor in smart ways. Yeah, I think you just have to use. You know. utilize it more as, you know, kind of like you said, it's more supplanting your roster. It's more about filling those holes rather than looking for these big solutions somehow in free agency.

You know, what I wish more teams would do, and some of the smart teams, I'm sure, do this. But when you start to look at, you know, the kind of the prices that you'll see in free agents, the return that you get on those prices and the availability of those players, you should be able to really build that into your drafting process as well to where you should kind of focus your draft on those handful of high-priced players rather than saying, well, you know, this linebacker here, you know, he grades a little bit higher than, say, the, you know, the left tackle. It's like, well, maybe so, but you're not going to find yourself another left tackle. You'll go and find yourself a good linebacker. And I don't know if a lot of teams have kind of this, this understanding.

of the way that you kind of merge the two together. I almost think that if things were run the other way around, it would probably happen more often, like if you ran the draft first and then you did free agency after the draft, I think that would actually kind of get teams to probably operate better. But I think having more of an understanding of the types of players who are actually going to be available and what you're going to pay for them, I think that could help you both with your draft and in free agency.

And I think that would be one of those ways for, for teams to kind of game a system right now to take advantage of, I don't know, some of the teams that are still drafting a running back in the top 10 or something like that. By the way, we didn't talk about running backs here, and there's a reason for that. The history of a creative running back deals are horrendous. I mean, it's not fun to talk about. It's kind of a bummer, but if you look at it, you just think about them. Levion Bell, Chris Ivory.

I mean, those deals just have been horrible for teams. So there's a reason we didn't spend any time on it. Yeah. The only reasonable running back contract to do is like a one year to $3 million contract, run a guy for a year. So you can get some value out of that and that's it. Anything long term. Or like random pass catcher, like signed Shane Vareen for $3 million. Yeah.

You know, there's nothing wrong with that. But making these, you know, $5.5 million for Carlos Hyde and that kind of stuff, I mean, it's just a waste. Well, on that note, thank you very much. Jason Fitzgerald, the road with the cap. please go check out all the work they do. Please check out the free agent guy that they recently put out. Again, super interesting resource. I read it front to back before doing this.

I learned a ton. You will too. Thanks a lot for the time, man. It's always good to chat with you. Thanks for having me. All right, guys, that's all we got today. Thank you so much to Jason Fitzgerald for stopping by to talk about free agency. Thank you, as always, to Lindsay Jones.

We'll be back on Friday. So please come back for that show. In the meantime, please rate and review the podcast on your podcast. platform of choice. I would really appreciate that. Please subscribe to The Athletic. There's an endless stream of free agency coverage happening on the site right now. Theathletic.com slash football show. I promise you will not regret it.

We'll be back on Friday. Thank you guys so much. Talk to you soon. This was The Athletic Football Show.