The NFL’s free agency frenzy seems to have died down for the most part. There have been a few huge moves, mostly trades, as well some bargains. This offseason, the biggest moves, including for the Cleveland Browns, have come through teams getting aggressive in dealing with each other:
- Russell Wilson to Denver
- Davante Adams to Los Vegas
- Deshaun Watson to Cleveland
- Tyreek Hill to Miami
- Amari Cooper to Cleveland
- Matt Ryan to Indianapolis
- Khalil Mack to Los Angeles Chargers
- Carson Wentz to Washington
- Yannick Ngakoue to Indianapolis
That doesn’t include the expected trades of Jimmy Garoppolo and Baker Mayfield.
Tom Brady also came back from retirement after a very short amount of time and Aaron Rodgers signed a megadeal to stay in Green Bay.
There have also been seven free agents changing teams for $50 or more million contracts. Another seven were in the $40 million range. The Jacksonville Jaguars had three of those 14 big contracts this offseason.
Unfortunately for the Jaguars, they haven’t learned their lesson. The Jags have spent the most and gotten the least amount of wins since 2012:
https://t.co/rt4Wgfk3F6 pic.twitter.com/0HuiPH8Foz
— Warren Sharp (@SharpFootball) March 27, 2022
While the Browns have the second least amount of wins, they are much closer to the league average in spending in free agency than teams like Jacksonville or the New York Jets.
Looking at just the past two years continues to make the Jags and Jets look bad but Cleveland shoots over on the x-axis for wins while still spending a bit more money per win. Most of the best teams fall in the bottom right quadrant with not a lot of free-agent spending but a lot of wins:
The Browns hope to join that bottom right quadrant as they may not be able to spend much money in free agency but hope to improve their win totals year after year.
While celebrated, free-agent spending at a high rate continues to be proven to be an inefficient way of building a team.