The NFL’s free agency period is barely three weeks old, and the biggest prizes have all been claimed. A handful of talented players remain unsigned, one or two of whom might yet make a defining impact for the teams that claim them, but with minds already turning towards next month’s draft, this feels like as good a moment as any for a snap review. Here are our winners and losers from the offseason so far.
Winners
Brock Osweiler
One of the central tenets of the 2011 collective bargaining agreement was that new players entering the league should not be able to earn like superstars until they had proven themselves worthy to do so. Caps were introduced limiting how much teams could spend on rookie contracts, and it was stipulated that such deals could not be renegotiated for a minimum of three years.
Top draft picks were hardly about to go hungry. Jameis Winston signed a contract worth more than $25m in Tampa Bay after he was taken with the first pick in the Draft last spring. Even so, that was a substantial step down from the $78m contract awarded to Sam Bradford - with $50m guaranteed - in St Louis five years previously.
As a low second-round pick in 2012, one year after the new CBA came into force, Osweiler had to settle for a fraction of such sums. His four-year deal with Denver was worth just over $3.5m.
Although he only started a total of seven games - all of them last season - you could argue that he more than repaid the Broncos’ investment by winning five and keeping his team on course for an eventual Super Bowl win. But did he truly prove himself worthy of a pay increase to $18m per year?
That is what he will earn in Houston, after signing a four-season contract worth $72m overall (with $37m guaranteed). It is more than Carson Palmer is making in Arizona, or Andy Dalton in Cincinnati. It’s only $2.5m per year less than Tom Brady gets in New England.
Osweiler might well thrive in Houston. He has all the physical tools to succeed and Denver’s head coach, Gary Kubiak, was certainly sad to see him go.
But in an era when most players are obliged to demonstrate their worth before cashing in, Osweiler has skipped a step. He was solid last season in relief of Manning, but not more than that. An 86.4 passer rating was middle-of-the-road. His earnings place him among the elite.
Oakland Raiders
Successful teams tend not to overspend in free agency. It costs a lot less to tweak a winning roster than to build one, but it is also true that ambitious players will often accept a little less money to be part of a project they believe in.
So it speaks to how perceptions of the Raiders are shifting that they were not required to break the bank to acquire Kelechi Osemele, Sean Smith or Bruce Irvin. Each was among the top two or three players available at his position and each should start immediately - at left guard, cornerback and outside linebacker respectively. Better yet, Smith arrives direct from division rival Kansas City.
Osemele might be the pick of the bunch. Still only 25, he has the size and athletic potential to eventually move outside and become Derek Carr’s blindside protector. It was initially thought that he might do so immediately, before the Raiders made another solid offseason move, resigning the reliable Donald Penn on a modest two-year deal.
Tom Brady
This has been a mixed offseason for New England. The Patriots traded away their most prolific pass rusher, Chandler Jones, and overpaid for the underwhelming Shea McClellin, but might not suffer too badly on defense if Chris Long can stay healthy. (A substantial ‘if’, perhaps, but the former Ram was well worth the gamble on a one-year, $2m deal.)
Brady himself, though, ought to be smiling. The Patriots gained Jonathan Cooper - a guard who has thus far lived up to his status as a seventh overall pick in 2013, but remains young enough to believe he could benefit from a change of scenery - from Arizona as part of the Jones deal, and bolstered their offense further by landing Martellus Bennett in a trade with Chicago.
The prospect of pairing the latter player with Rob Gronkowski in two tight-end sets is terrifying. Rex Ryan was candid enough to confess he would have “no idea” how to slow them both down. Bennett, lest we forget, is only one year removed from a 916-yard receiving season with the Bears. Like Gronk, furthermore, he stands 6ft 6ins tall and weighs more than 260lbs.
Arizona Cardinals
If New England might miss Jones, then Arizona will be delighted to have him. The Cardinals’ aggressive blitzing schemes have drawn plenty of praise, but without them Bruce Arians’s team would have struggled to generate much pass rush at all. No Arizona lineman had more than five sacks last year. Jones has never had fewer than six in his four seasons in the league so far.
The loss of Cooper, meanwhile, is more than offset by the signing of Evan Mathis at guard. True, the latter player is 34 years old, but quarterback Carson Palmer is 36. After reaching the NFC title game last year, this team can justifiably focus on trying to win now. Their other noteworthy addition, safety Tyvon Branch, is better than the man he replaces, Rashad Johnson, too.
Carolina Panthers, Minnesota Vikings
Sometimes the best thing a team can do is simply to maintain continuity. The Panthers went to the Super Bowl last year, while the Vikings won their division and came within a fluffed kick of making the last four in the NFC. The biggest loss that either team made was a veteran player - Jared Allen for Carolina, and Mike Wallace for Minnesota - whose production can be compensated for. Elsewhere, they each improved their depth.
Losers
San Francisco 49ers
If we can praise good teams for standing still, then it is still possible to criticise bad ones for doing the same. The 49ers have more free space under the salary cap than any other team, and quite possibly the longest list of needs to fill.
Quarterback is the most glaring, with Chip Kelly thus far unable to dissuade Colin Kaepernick from seeking to be traded elsewhere, but San Francisco also needs investment to shore up the offensive line, reinvigorate the pass rush and plug gaps at cornerback and wide receiver.
So far, very little has been forthcoming. The 49ers made one important move, tying nose tackle Ian Williams to a new five-year deal, but their only notable addition has been guard Zane Beadles - a clear downgrade on Alex Boone, who left for Minnesota. None of this bodes well for a team that went 5-11 last year.
Denver Broncos
Allow me to preface this segment with a caveat: last season I awarded the Broncos a D grade for their moves in free agency, and wrote that it was “hard to see how this team will go further than it did [in 2014]”. So you can feel free to ignore this, and all other opinions, should you choose, but Denver did lose a lot of talent this offseason.
Once again, the most glaring concern is at quarterback. You can make a case that Peyton Manning’s retirement was no great loss, given the sharp decline in his arm strength and on-field production, though I am not convinced that any old geezer could have steered the Broncos through the games that mattered at the end of last year.
Likewise, I cannot judge Denver too harshly for refusing to grant Osweiler a 2,000% pay rise. (Then again, when the alternative is Mark Sanchez, perhaps $18m a year is a snip after all.)
But it would be easier to feel OK about the Broncos’ quarterback situation if the defense that carried them to the Super Bowl was still intact. That is not the case. Human wrecking ball Malik Jackson has been allowed to walk out the door, and so too linebacker Danny Trevathan. My colleague Mike Coppinger had the pair ranked as the second- and 11th-best free agents hitting the market this year.
The Broncos were always in a tight spot this offseason, having barely any room to work with under the salary cap. They are hardly the first Super Bowl winning team to be asset-stripped in such a fashion. Right now, though, they look weaker than they did at the start of free agency. Which might sound like a more damning verdict, if I had not said the same thing at this time last year.
Cleveland Browns
There was a part of me that wanted to list Cleveland among this year’s winners, for no other reason than the decision to wash their hands of Johnny Manziel. I also think that Robert Griffin III - a one-time Pro Bowler and rookie of the year, lest we forget - is a solid value bet at $15m over two years, even if some of his former team-mates were unimpressed with his attitude in Washington.
But really, there is not much else to cling onto. Two of the best offensive linemen to hit free agency this year belonged to the Browns - Alex Mack and Mitchell Schwartz - and both wound up signing elsewhere. So too did starting free safety Tashaun Gipson and No1 receiver Travis Benjamin. A team that was hardly overloaded with talent now has even less. But at least there is no more Johnny Football.
To be determined …
Ryan Fitzpatrick and the New York Jets
An intriguing stand-off remains in New Jersey, where Fitzpatrick is holding out for what we might now describe as ‘Osweiler money’. The Jets are said to be offering something closer to $10m per season.
Does Fitzpatrick deserve more? You could make a case that he does, as a player whose average production over the last four seasons looks similar to that which Osweiler produced during his brief window as a starter. Then again, you could also argue that Fitzpatrick lacks his counterpart’s arm strength and - at 33 years old - offers none of the potential upside.
The Jets would prefer to keep Fitzgerald around, but they also have very little room under the cap. He is not going to get the deal he wants in New York. With so few viable alternatives available to quarterback-needy teams, will he yet find a suitor willing to overspend? Or has he already missed his moment?
