Great Article about NFL Free Agency Spending/Winning

[*TheLeonardLeap*]

(02-24-2017, 03:02 PM)Shake n Blake Wrote: Correlation vs causation. It's not that free agency causes teams to lose. Teams that typically lose, typically have fewer players worthy of retaining - and hence more money to splurge in free agency. Using FA to fix a bad team overnight rarely - if ever - works, so it's likely that these types of teams continue to lose. This does not mean that FA should be avoided like the plague, or that a few calculated and intelligent FA moves can't help a good team get over the top.

This article is about teams that "win free agency". I've yet to see anyone asking the Bengals to do that. Pretty much every championship team over the last 25 years has benefitted greatly from a FA acquisition or a trade. This is undeniable really. It's not about "winning free agency", it's about dumping dead weight and making a smart move to get a solid player or two that greatly benefit the team. Think of the Patriots renting Revis for a championship run. Or renting a Martellus Bennett as a great insurance policy for their oft-injured star TE. These are just a couple of the hundreds of examples of successful pickups through the years.

Basically what I came in here to say. I know we're both solidly on the same page on this topic.

Bad team + Big FA = Still a bad team.
Good team + 1 great FA/a few good FA = Great team.

Adding to your examples of the Patriots, the Seahawks when they won theirs had signed both of their DEs in FA. The Broncos signed quite a few people in FA for their two recent SB appearances and one win (Manning/Welker/Sanders/Talib/etc).

The whole key to that article is it was about teams coming off back-to-back losing seasons. Of course they are going to lose, they suck. FA just pushes you from good to great, not from gutter to great.... but I am sure that won't keep a couple people from telling others "derp da derp Haynesworth" or something like that when people express a desire for the Bengals to actually improve for once in FA rather than get worse, or at best maintain their level.