Free agency doesn’t begin for two more days, but that won’t stop NFL teams from placing calls and beginning negotiations early. The NFL’s legal tampering period — the point when teams can contact pending free agents early — begins Monday at noon ET.
For the Baltimore Ravens, this is a blessing and a curse. It’ll allow them to start contacting pending free agents themselves. With a strong free safety market and a huge need at wide receiver, Baltimore could work out a deal before free agency even begins. But the flip side is that any of their pending free agents could do the same thing with other teams.
Linebackers C.J. Mosley and Za’Darius Smith, along with wide receiver John Brown, are all players the Ravens would like to re-sign this offseason. But with some teams having more than $100 million in available cap space, the bags of money they could earn could significantly outweigh whatever Baltimore could throw at them.
While free agency doesn’t begin until Wednesday at 4 p.m. ET, it really begins in earnest in just a few hours.
