| Teams will be looking to avoid adding free agent busts like Albert Haynesworth when free agency starts March 13th. |
Tomorrow, teams around the NFL will begin a feeding frenzy when free agency officially starts and it becomes legal to sign players without contracts. It’s one of the most exciting events in the NFL offseason, and teams rise from chumps to champs on the back of free agency every year, but is dropping millions upon millions of dollars on free agents really worth the risk?
I’ll be upfront about this issue. It’s all a matter of perception and football values. Some teams use free agency only as a temporary patch to get them through the upcoming season. Those teams find the vast majority of their long-term solutions through drafting and keeping the players they pick.
Other teams use free agency liberally. The Patriots are notorious for picking up an aging free agent, getting a couple of years out of him, and trading him away for a few additional draft picks in the upcoming season. They’ve been able to master their own balance between the draft and free agency, and they’ve benefited from such strong personnel moves on the field every fall.
Free agency is the closest thing to gambling teams can do without actually heading to Vegas to throw a bet down. Remember Albert Haynesworth? How’d he work out for the Redskins? It remains as true today as it’s ever been that free agency is a dangerous game with great rewards and terrible costs.
In my not-so-humble-yet-still-true opinion, the proper way to build a consistent playoff team is by drafting smart. A team doesn’t need to hit home runs with every pick of the draft, but they need to be able to consistently pick solid players that will make up the core of the team down the road. The Pittsburgh Steelers may be the best example of that philosophy. They’re not always one of the best two or three teams in the NFL, but they’re constantly in the playoffs, and they’re always in the Super Bowl discussion.
That’s not to say that spending big in free agency doesn’t have it’s place. There are times and circumstances that call for a team to throw some money at a problem area. Teams that are close to being elite, or at the very least extremely good, often only need to fix one or two problem areas to push them over the top. There’s always a heavy risk when signing big-name free agents, so teams have to choose who they want wisely. That doesn’t mean they should be scared of the process altogether.
There are a laundry list of teams that stand to gain or lose big in the next couple of weeks. Free agency begins tomorrow, March 13th, at 4 PM EST.
