How has your team done in FA?

[SalvadorsDeli]

In free agency itself we've only made one outside signing, but we've otherwise been active: 

- Franchised Matt Judon 

- Traded Hayden Hurst and a 4th rounder for 2nd and 5th round draft picks.

- Traded a 5th round pick for Calais Campbell, signed him to a 2 year, $27 million contract

- Traded Chris Wormley and a 2021 7th rounder for a 2021 5th rounder 

- Signed Derek Wolfe for 1 year, $3 million (raising to $6 million if he hits incentives)

- Re-signed Jimmy Smith - 1 year, $3.5 million 

- Re-signed depth guys on minimum deals (Jihad Ward, Justin Ellis, Anthony Levine, Chris Moore) 

Sitting on approximately $10 million in cap space right now, so we have room to make another move if we want it. 

Shoring up the defensive line was clearly a big priority for us and I love the Campbell and Wolfe moves. Re-signing Jimmy at that price was great, as was getting a 2nd rounder for Hurst given he's nothing more than a rotational piece for us.

Going into the offseason a lot of us were holding out hope that we might be able to pull off a tag and trade for Judon and then turn that space into a Clowney or Ngakoue acquisition - both of which could still happen, but looking more unlikely as the days go on. Ultimately having Judon play the season on the tag isn't the worst outcome, particularly with a beefed up defensive line to clear the way for him next year. 

With a little bit of cap space still left to play with my hope is to see us bring in some help along either the interior offensive line or at inside linebacker - maybe even an EDGE piece like Markus Golden if the price is right. Wide receiver is also a need but would rather prioritize that in the draft rather than signing a JAG in FA. 

[MikeT14]

Skins:

[SteelKing728]

16 hours ago, HeydudemanG said:

The Vikings did well and dropped the ball a few times. They got rid of a bunch of over priced players. But didn't do a good enough job retaining more affordable talent and  depth. The places where we needed help we ended up losing depth. All in all we had great depth on our defense and I guess with so many picks in the draft we just really Need to hit on half of those picks and sign one or two more guys.

I give it a C

The only surprising thing was not re-signing Alexander and Griffen honestly.

[Bassomatic]

Steelers gains: Eric Ebron, Derek Watt, Stefen Wisniewski

Steelers losses: Mark Barron, Artie Burns, Anthony Chickillo, Sean Davis, B.J. Finney, Ramon Foster, Javon Hargrave, Johnny Holton, Lavon Hooks, Tyler Matakevich, Roosevelt Nix, Nick Vannett, Leterrius Walton

Overall, I have to give this a B+. The most significant loss is Javon Hargrave, but he's better off playing for a team that can utilize him more. It still hurts to see him go, though, which is why I can't give an A grade. Expect the Steelers to address the NT position in the draft in Hargrave's absence. The Steelers really don't have many holes to fill, and part of that is because of the players who have arrived in free agency. Eric Ebron has the potential to fill the post-Heath Miller void at TE, and Stefen Wisniewski will take over the LG job vacated by Ramon Foster, who retired. Derek Watt will replace Roosevelt Nix at FB. The only starters who departed in free agency are Foster, Nix and Hargrave, and two of them have already been replaced. The other players who left were all reserves, so expect them to be replaced in the draft and the second period of free agency.

[scar988]

Atlanta Falcons

Gains: RB Todd Gurley, TE Hayden Hurst, DE Dante Fowler, LB LaRoy Reynolds, TE Khari Lee, LB Edmund Robinson, OL Justin McCray, WR Laquon Treadwell

Losses: OL Ty Sambrailo, CB Desmond Trufant, RB Devonta Freeman, TE Luke Stocker, TE Austin Hooper, EDGE Vic Beasley, LB De'Vondre Campbell, OL Wes Schweitzer

Comp Pick calculations: Lost Austin Hooper, De'Vondre Campbell, Vic Beasley, Wes Schweitzer vs. Gain of Dante Fowler. Gurley, Reynolds, Hurst, Lee, Treadwell, McCray and Robinson don't qualify due to either being cut or traded or salary under the minimum requirement. Projected comp picks in 2021 are 2 5ths and 1 6th.

Overall, the Falcons did a good job with positional replacements. Gurley is an upgrade over Freeman. Hurst has the potential to be an upgrade over Hooper. Fowler is an upgrade over Beasley. Losing Trufant and Campbell won't be super easy to replace, but they've already been grooming replacements in Kendall Sheffield and Foye Oluokun. They also enhanced some depth. The Falcons still have around 6-7M in cap space and bringing in someone isn't out of the question. Especially when an additional $10 million is opened up after June 2 from the Trufant release.

They also have the following current free agents that they could re-sign or eventually see a Comp pick qualifying deal for: 

OL Ty Sambrailo

RB Devonta Freeman

P Matt Bosher

TE Luke Stocker

DL Adrian Clayborn

DL Jack Crawford

LB/S Kemal Ishmael

CB Jamar Taylor

RB/RS Kenjon Barner

S Jonathan Cyprien

S J.J. Wilcox

WR Justin Hardy

DT Michael Bennett

TE Alex Gray

DT Ra'Shede Hageman

[Jakuvious]

Tough question to answer for KC, honestly. We were destined to be inactive in free agency. We went all in last year with how we structured deals, pushing a lot of the money going to Clark, Hill, and Mathieu into this year and beyond, and we're also stomaching some dead money this year for the Eric Berry situation (next year we'll finally be done paying Dorsey's dead money.) We moved a little bit of Clark's money around to stay cap compliant as we explore options and work with Jones and Watkins. But it's basically been planned that this would be the year where we start paying for the talent we've accrued, and stop delaying it. And I think it's clear from how we've paced this offseason, that the goal is to keep as much of the championship winning squad together as possible. On offense, we've lost Matt Moore, Blake Bell, Stefan Wisnieski, and presumably LeSean McCoy. Wis is really the closest thing to a loss, there, as he played well ahead of Wylie in the post-season run. But we keep our top 12 offensive guys in terms of snap count last year. On D we lost some more legitimate contributors, with Fuller, Ragland, and Ogbah all gone, with Suggs and Lee presumably so. But there's optimism from some that Breeland may return after not getting the market he expected. If so, we'd have our top 11 guys in snap count from last year left on D. So we'd lose some key rotational pieces, but the core would remain intact.

So I think they've done well in terms of what we could do, and what the goal was. I won't pretend our roster has improved this free agency period, or that we're in a great place cap wise. But I think Veach has done well at using the limited resources available after a successful all-in season to make sure that we don't fall apart immediately afterwards. The fact that we're as tight as we are, and there's really only one guy we've lost that I think would need an urgent replacement (Ragland, Ogbah, McCoy, Bell, Wis, are all fillable losses, just the CB position is tough), is impressive, IMO. Ultimately though, there's work still to be done, so my opinion could change drastically pending news on Breeland, Watkins, and Jones. Moving Jones for subpar compensation would disappoint me. Letting both Fuller and Breeland walk without replacement while keeping Watkins would seem like poor prioritization. So we'll see.

Ultimately, TBD. Maybe a B? I dunno. Hard to put a letter grade on, they did what they could.

One shoutout I will give to Veach, is he structured what few contracts we have given out such that they don't impact the comp pick formula, and they minimally impact that cap this year. So we've retained Robinson, Sherman, and Pennel, while signing Remmers and Hamilton, at borderline no cost. They're each counting for like $900k against the cap. Given that they kicked some $600k level guys off the top 51, we only took a cap hit of like $300k from each of those resignings.

[CriminalMind]

20 hours ago, SteelKing728 said:

The only surprising thing was not re-signing Alexander and Griffen honestly.

But these are\were 2 significant peices. On top of the other known projected holes 

 

[J-ALL-DAY]

The Niners definitely haven't made any roster improvements from the prior season and lost two key pieces from a team that just went to the SB. Of course, they added a top 15 draft pick and we won't know how well this team has done until after the draft. There were a few nice signings I did like in terms of bringing back Ronald Blair on a cheap one year deal as well as bringing back Jimmie Ward who was one of the best safeties in the game last season. Overall, like 19 or 20 of prior year's starters will be returning. Can't complain too much even though it sucked losing a player of Buckner's caliber. 

[berlin calling]

On 30.3.2020 at 7:59 PM, BleedTheClock said:

Browns get an A for me. 
 

We brought in top shelf young talent and have left us with only 2 holes to fill. 1–LT    2–FS      

Outside of that, the roster is loaded. If we can bring in another pass rusher or LBer before it’s all said and done, I don’t see any weaknesses. 

offseason champions, again. gratulations.

[berlin calling]

we didn't spend any resources on Clowney, thats a + for me.

[BleedTheClock]

1 hour ago, berlin calling said:

offseason champions, again. gratulations.

Umm it’s the thread title, doofus. 

[ColGerBear]

Ryan Pace did everything he could for Ryan Pace. His coaches were bad last year, Trubisky is a back up QB, not sure he gets another chance if this year is bad.

IMO it's not the best he could've done for the Bears though.

[Zalixar]

Committed highway robbery in broad daylight and got away with it.

Also, resigned a couple of our own guys and added a couple low-key players.

Nothing big, other than the highway robbery part.

[Tugboat]

Between FA, releases, trades...and the impending Ngakoue trade...i'd say the Jaguars have managed to make themselves massively worse.  Which isn't great, considering the team stunk almost unbearably in the first place.

 

Out: 2 Pro Bowl caliber DEs, best CB left on the roster, and a massively overpaid backup QB carrying a ton of dead cap penalties.

In: Some utterly underwhelming depth guys, and Tyler Eifert who will likely break almost immediately.

[THE DUKE]

Bengals finally did something, so that was nice

DJ Reader: Love this signing.  The Bengals run defense was atrocious last year and Reader was one of the best run stuffing DT's in football last year.  He'll take away double teams from Geno Atkins, who is still an animal, if not quite what he once was.

Trae Waynes: We overpaid, but he brings some postiives too.  He's 2+ years younger than Dre, tackles better than Dre (going back to that run defense issue last year), and is penalized less than Dre.  Pass coverage grades are similar, and both Dre and Waynes lack some ball skills so that tradeoff is pretty even.  We're paying more for Trae than Dre, but cap space isn't that much of an issue for the Bengals, although it looks like we will end this season at or very near the cap for the first time in a while.

Makensie Alexander: Good signing. Not quite as good a slot corner at Darqueze Dennard, but still a good slot corner and on a 1 year $4 million deal, a great value.  Dennard is hell bent on getting a shot as a boundary CB, so much so that his deal with Jacksonville fell apart.  He needs to embrace that he is a slot CB, because he is one of the best in the NFL in that role.  Alexander is a suitable replacement, if a slight downgrade.  Also a good run defender, if you are noticing a theme yet.

Vonn Bell: One of the better run defending safeties in the NFL (there it is again), he is a box SS that is a solid pairing with Jesse Bates, who is best playing deep.  A great value at 3 years $18 million, these next 3 years are Bell's prime years at ages 25-27 on a very reasonable deal.

Josh Bynes: Another one year deal, and yet another good run defender (the Bengals have seriously upgraded their run defense this offseason), he'll be primarily a run down LB as most expect the Bengals to bring in a coverage LB through the draft sometime in rounds 2-4 to pair with him, with 2019 3rd rd pick Germaine Pratt being the primary LB as he really started coming on the last 4-5 weeks of the season last year.  Bynes is a bridge player on a 1 year deal that filled a very specific and needed hole on the roster.

Xavier Su'a-Filo: Brought in for depth and competition at RG (conventional wisdom is that Michael Jordan has a leg up for the LG spot, he was supposed to be groomed last year before Clint Boling's sudden retirement), but is also being paid like a backup, so I see nothing wrong with this signing, even if it doesn't move the needle much.  The Bengals are likely to address the oline in the draft, perhaps multiple times, but I think they are at least in a position to where they won't need to reach if the value isn't there with what they have.

AJ Green: Franchised, although he REALLY did not want to be franchised.  I can't blame the Bengals though, AJ has missed 24 of the last 32 games and wasn't injury free before that either.  I can still see an extension being worked out, but I won't be shocked if they don't either.  AJ will be 32 this season, has had extension lower body injuries over the last 4 years, and still wants to be paid like one of the game's top WR.  This could possibly be his last year as a Bengal.  I don't think he'll be traded, mostly because I don't think Mike Brown would let him go for anything less than a 1st round pick, which teams understandably would be hesitant to do give the injury issues outlined above.

Writing this out, I can't give the Bengals anything less than an A for this free agency.  They still have money to extend Joe Mixon (hopefully not an unreasonable deal or he could be the one being franchised next year) and William Jackson.  They focused on a major issue with run defense bringing in 5 new starters who were all graded as above average or better run defenders last year, brought in depth for the oline, and still have a bevy of offensive weapons for Joe Burrow's rookie year.

Edited April 3, 2020 by THE DUKE