The truth about free agency

[McC]

(03-23-2019, 12:50 PM)Shake n Blake Wrote: Is that a lot of the "bad" signings turn out like this:

https://www.profootballrumors.com/2019/03/this-date-in-transactions-history-charles-clay-joins-the-bills

Imo, Mike Brown has a good portion of the fan base convinced that free agency is the bogeyman, but terrible deals like Redskins/Albert Haynesworth are pretty rare. Usually 1 guy gets massively overpaid per off-season. Sometimes none. Sometimes people think teams overpaid, but then come to realize the market has changed due to cap increases, etc.

The truth is that the most common "bad" deals look like Charles Clay going to the Bills in hindsight. It didn't turn out great or ideal, but he he plugged that spot for a few years. They probably "overpaid" a bit, but maybe not considering the cost of TE's increased over the duration of the contract.

I'm sure someone will want to chime in with worse deals. Players that got injured or something like the Suh deal in Miami, but those are the exception. When you examine most of these deals in hindsight, they weren't so bad, and sometimes they work out quite well.

Some teams lose their minds in free agency and that allows some other teams to use it as an excuse to stay out.  Other teams use it wisely and improve their team.

I know people have had a lot to complain about because the Bengals didn't do more.  But the holes on our team and that available players didn't really line up all that well this year.  There were some players we might have gone after but none of them were without question marks.  Hopefully the draft lines up better.

And the real truth is we were not gonna fix our situation in free agency this year.  Maybe next year we'll be close enough to get that one guy who will put us over the top.