NFL free agency always pretends to be interesting and meaningful, but in reality, there’s a lot of noise with very little impact.
NFL contracts are fake and, in a year when the salary cap is down about $30 million from where it was projected to be, teams are basically just handing out pretend deals. Players, meanwhile, have been OK with signing these deals because the market is constrained — and because a new TV rights deal should make the cap explode again soon.
So it’s ultimately quite difficult to read too much into what has happened during the legal tampering period.
That’s not to say it’s been completely insignificant. Things got better for some people and teams. Things got worse for other people and teams.
Here are a few winners and losers, so far. Charles McDonald has the winners and Steven Ruiz, a natural-born hater, has the losers…
