Free Agency

For many, the NFL Free agency is a magical time for teams.  I’ve always viewed free agency as a band aid fix for any team.  For many the idea is to find an area of weakness, look over the list of players who have a chance at being a free agent and then decide who best to go after.  What many don’t take into consideration is at the core of that argument, the best player might not be the best fit.  Each player brings a different dimension to a team and thus can only do as much as their talent can allow.  Football is a team game to the core and thus one big money free agent will not cure all ills as the Redskins have found out for the better part of the Daniel Snyder era.

But there are teams who still understand that its not about the big name but about getting the most value.  Case in point, Jimmy Johnson during the early Cowboy years.  He introduced the point system that many teams employ in helping them understand value in terms of draft picks, and players in general.  Jimmy had a belief that every player has a value and one must never reach in value when there could be someone sitting later in the draft with just as much skill that may be looked at less favorably that presents a better value.  Trusting instinct, a good scout’s eye, and genius he was able to understand that Minnesota really, really, really loved Herschel Walker and since he was taking over a team that was going nowhere fast he went into rebuild mode and got back a team for one player essentially by trading him away.  Understanding value, he used that points system and was able to draft players accordingly.

Back then free agency was basically non-existent but you can take away some of the principles and expand it to fit free agency as well.  If you use that point system to assign value to free agents and draft picks, now you can have an exact science as to who you’re going to pick where and when.  What that does is, once free agency starts and teams knock on doors at 12:00:01 of free agency for that one big player they feel is their best shot at turning things around, they show their hand in what they will do during the draft.  Conventional wisdom tells you that if a team goes after a big name defensive end during FA, then they won’t be reaching for one in the draft.  It makes Mel Kiper’s job a lot easier and also his hair.*

*= mentioning Mel Kiper and not saying anything about his hair should not be allowed.  I guarantee that his hair will be this generation’s Dick Clark during New Years.  Watching him thirty years from now, we’ll still be like “damn doesn’t his hair EVER change?”

But what some teams do during FA and the draft don’t always make sense.  The luster of the big name free agent can make teams go after players that might not have much value any more and then give the illusion that the particular need has been met.  For instance, there’s a reason these guys are out on the Free agent market and if anything its even more apparent during this un-capped year in the NFL.

If you’re going to tell a bunch of owners in the most lucrative sport this country has that they can spend what they want this season and they won’t be penalized for it, you’d expect them to be like bargain hunters in front of Walmart on Black Friday.  But this year is completely different. The difference lies in the fine print which reads like the bunch of forms the bank gives you when you open an account and you generally don’t read but then when you get hit with a charge on your account and you dispute that with a banker they tell you to refer to the charges listed in said forms you probably threw away the moment you got the account.*

*= As a banker I can tell you that its the most degrading experience as a customer to sit down and be told that you got charged $35 dollars for a 3 dollar cup of coffee at Starbucks because you had 2.99 left in your checking account and that it was specifically stated in those forms that you would be getting charged and had you read that manual you would’ve known better also not to mention that you should have more common sense to know NOT to spend 3 bucks when you only have 2.99 and the added humiliation of spending $38 on a “tall”** cup of overpriced coffee beans from Starbucks.  What I like to do is give that speech and then reverse the fee.  Making the customer momentarily feel good until it hits them that they were just given the “dad speech on solid finance” for absolutely no reason which makes them upset but it only hits them later so they aren’t provoked at the branch.  I know I shouldn’t but I can’t help myself, I have to make up the difference in sucky pay somehow right?  As a banker while knowing that this speech sucks to hear, its awesome to give.

**- don’t even get me started on their definitions of cup sizes there.   Count Swithin among the non-elitists that run on Dunkin!

The fine print reads like a book basically and stipulates that players who normally would have been eligible for free agency after their fifth year are no longer eligible because under new rules teams own rights through the sixth year making them team controlled and thus no longer able to strike it rich with another team and hoping that their team wants to sign them long term.  Also, teams can have two tags and tenders and offer compensation levels for players they kind of want to keep but scream that they can be had for such and such a price.   In fact, I get dizzy when seeing how many rules there are in this un-capped season that it makes it seem like this free spending craze we all expected to see isn’t going to happen because its not as free as we thought.*

*= I know where you philosophers want to go with this but no, don’t you do it.

Which brings me to our respective local teams, the Jets and the Giants.  They made big splashes and made headlines but were they good moves?  Well let’s see what they did, didn’t do and couldn’t believe they did.

The Jets had a weird offseason.  Coming off their successful run during the playoffs the Jets decided to say bye bye to their 1,400 yard rusher Thomas Jones for financial reasons.  That’s a bit of a toss-up for me.  Jones was a successful running back who had 3 seasons of atleast 290 carries and 1100 yards.  The Jets had the best rushing attack thanks in large part to his ability to protect the football and convert short yardage opportunities which for me is the key litmus test for an every down back which is becoming an increasingly rare species in the NFL.  Jones is considered a work out-warrior and is in incredible shape and rarely ever misses time which of course are all very good things to have under your belt.

The down side to that equation is if he’s had 931 carries over the last three seasons and averaged 308 carries over the last 5 seasons at the age of 32 that generally means that he’s due for a downturn in his statistics.  That of course is conventional wisdom* accepted by all general managers.  Having a back who is set to enter his decline and paying him a $5 million roster bonus is a bit much when you think of it in those terms and thus the Jets having been rebuffed in their efforts to get Jones to restructure his contract had no choice but to release him.  Also, the Jets reasoning behind the move also had to do with their excellent offensive line who were regarded as one of the best and the belief that they could fill in any competent RB at the position and achieve the same results.

*= Conventional wisdom on running backs state that after 30, they begin to decline especially if through their 20’s, they were featured backs.

The odd part was when the Jets reacting to fan disapproval and locker room disagreement with the move to not keep Jones, tried to talk Jones into resigning with the club at a reduced rate which given the way he was released had about 0% chance of working but seemed more like a Metsian move* to please the public.  Thus the Jets enter 2010, as it stands,** with Shonn Greene an unproven yet promising second year running back and Leon Washington the explosive play maker coming off  a devastating leg injury.  Thus, the signing of a dependable running back is imperative not only for the running attack but also for Greene’s progression.

*= By Metsian, I mean moves that are generally described as public relation moves to stop negative perception while still leaving a hole in the process and thus creating further questions which means that nothing was achieved in the end.

**= At the time this was published the Jets were reportedly close to a deal with LDT for 2 years which they were unwilling to do for Thomas Jones a player who has never had durability issues and hasn’t seen such a huge decline in production.  Although I think Jet fans will take the 12 TD’s he scored any day of the week.

But the Jets were not done surprising their fans, as they reached an agreement to acquire troubled corner Antonio Cromartie from the San Diego Chargers, the same team they beat last January in the divisional round of the playoffs.  While on paper Cromartie still has a reputation as a good cover corner, its been tarnished by a mix of lack of results and off the field problems that suggested to the Charger brain trust that he was not worth it to them to keep.

What’s interesting about that is the Jets saw up close and personally some of Cromartie’s weaknesses when he whiffed on tackling Shonn Greene on his way to what would be the game deciding touchdown run.  Of course that didn’t stop Cromartie from running him down on the play to offer a cheap shot to Greene as he was celebrating in the end zone.  What’s the equivalent you ask?  Imagine two kids playing basketball and one of them making great play after great play and finally the other kid in frustration just punching the kid on the arm.  That’s what that was.  No need for it and completely pointless but hey, I guess at the time it totally was.

The Jets acquired him under the guise that they would get the very best out of him and unlike the Jones move I thought the Jet brain trust handled this brilliantly.  They gave up a third rounder that could become a second rounder in 2011 based on playing time and in turn got a player who could potentially reform under coach Rex Ryan a player’s coach.  In Ryan’s defensive scheme they play mostly man defense which allows Ryan to send his blitzers and with Darrell Revis now considered the best corner in the game, Cromartie will be picked on early and often.  The Jets got him without having to offer Cromartie a long term deal considering he was entering the final season of his rookie contract.  They got a troubled guy who has loads of talent.

But could his past catch up to him?  He fathered seven children by 6 different women in five different states.*  That clearly had something to do with the Chargers willingness to trade him in conference to whomever wanted to accept the headache.  The new free agency rules restricted the Jets, because they were one of the final eight teams left in the playoffs, from signing free agents unless one of equal value left their team, thus the Jets had to be creative in filling holes during this period.

*= I promise you, I didn’t make that up because it sounded good.  Say this for Cro, he sure does know how to diversify his portfolio.

For me this is a low risk, high reward kind of thing for the Jets.  If the Jets surrender a 2011 second round pick (which generally is a highly valued pick because teams are no longer restricted to the slotting system that first rounders are by agents and because many times you find just as good talent in this round as the first round), it was a rousing success because it will have meant he played significant time on the team.  Add to it that he’s entering a contract year, generally considered the best motivation in all of sports, and the fact that his reputation in the league depends on how he behaves this season in New York of all places and this adds up to a pretty good haul for the Jets.

But the best move in my opinion was when it was released that the Jets fronted Cromartie $500,000 of the $1.75 million he was set to make this season so he could make child support payments.  Basically this put even more pressure for Cromartie to be successful this season because of the leap of faith the Jets were showing in their newest player and making it imperative for him to ever have any financial success in the league to play well on an already stacked defense in New York.  The Jets had the number one defense in the NFL last season under rookie head coach Rex Ryan who is beloved by his players.  Ryan will give Cromartie every chance to be successful and if he fails he will be viewed as a high risk which would cost him millions on the open market that he would love to enter in 2011.  The Jets obviously would love to see him succeed and have leveraged this opportunity to make sure that he understands that everything is contingent on him.

Now say he does succeed, the Jets could potentially tag him and try to work out a long term deal with the player if they feel that he has changed his ways.  If not, they would let him go and while it would stink to lose a 3rd rounder, this is the kind of move that will be looked upon favorably by the media.  He’s still 26 and given the right situation he could turn out to be a steal.

The Jets also have to be sure the perception that he’s soft doesn’t carry over into this season.  The locker room is no place for softies and you need only to see the example of Kerry Rhodes the former Pro Bowl Safety of the Jets.  The Jets, a day after GM Mike Tannenbaum said didn’t see anything happening that would keep Kerry from not being a Jet, shipped “Hollywood”* to the Cardinals for draft picks of inconsequential value.  While the Jets will say they got value, they just pulled what the Chargers had done to them to the Cardinals which of course brought out the ire in Kerry who said the Jets basically dumped him and he was a scapegoat.**

*= If your teammates nickname you Hollywood, they probably don’t like you.  I’m just saying.  Hollywood is as coded as athletes get without going off the cliff with the offbeat remarks of teammates.

**= Kerry Rhodes interview in Arizona just went to show you that the Jets made the right move in dumping him.  He had a personality that could be poisonous to a team that could have a sustained run if all the pieces fall into place as they should.  Any feelings of remorse that they made a mistake probably went out the window with that interview.

The Giants on the other hand decided to go a different route this year.  A year ago this time they were big players in free agency, signing a few players which was against their norm.  GM Jerry Reese who had pulled all the right moves up until that point was to be trusted.  If he felt these were the players he needed then they were.  This was the same guy who drafted 7 players who ended up playing key roles on the eventual Super Bowl Champion team in 2007.  But when everything fell apart after week 6, that strategy was being re-thought.  Chris Canty was a huge disappointment as was Rocky Bernard, two players the Giants had inked to big money free agent contracts.  Overall their defense was horrendous and changes had to be made all the way down the board.

Out went Bill Sheridan the replacement for Steve Spagnuolo who left the Giants to coach the St. Louis Rams, and in comes Perry Fewell.  Fewell is the former interim head coach of the Buffalo Bills but he’s more well known for overseeing some of the better secondaries in the league and thus the Giants targeted their area of needed improvement.  Of course the Giants, during the first day of free agency, would go out and target someone that played in the secondary to improve despite the need for a middle linebacker after releasing Antonio Pierce the former leader of the Giants defense.  They got Antrell Rolle the former safety of the Arizona Cardinals.

While the contract was long, the Giants thinking was that they got a young athletic safety to help out on the back end.  Rolle said it was a very difficult position he was put in because he wanted to give the Cardinals the opportunity to counter any Giants offer because he felt he owed it to them* but said in the end the Giants made him feel like he did when the Miami Hurricanes recruited him to come play for them.**

*= He allowed them to counter?  Yeah.  And I’d let Kim Kardashian have her way with me.  I’m just saying, I think it was a win win for Antrell.

**= I can’t imagine what being recruited for Miami would be like but I’ve said it over and over, is there anything cooler than saying you’re from “the U”?  In fact, my plan was to get a Kenny Phillips jersey just so I could say that I have the Kenny Phillips jersey…from “the U.”  It sounds cooler in my head.

But the signing did raise eyebrows.  If the Giants were actively pursuing a safety it warrants paying close attention to Kenny Phillips, their safety star in rising, as he rehabilitates from an arthritic condition in his knee that sidelined him for most of the season last year and left the defense without one of its more important playmakers.  Giants officials are secretly worrying that he may not be ready for the start of next season and worse, not be the same again.  Its weird, at his age, to have this condition, and that perhaps played a role in the Giants wanting to make sure they were protected on the back end in the case that Phillips would not be available.

This of course offers clues that the Giants will not reach for a safety in the first round with the 15th pick in the draft.  They may go ILB now most definitely and since by the second round, one of the four safeties that are projected as immediate contributors will be gone by that time, they felt it necessary to secure the services of Rolle who should fit in well in New York.

The Giants do have other concerns which should be addressed in draft but as a fan, I am glad to see them not throwing money around on say a Julius Peppers who stands to gain a lot of money for a guy who had a reputation for not always giving it his all.  While certainly learning their lesson from last year, it goes without saying that the improvement of their defense will be helped by a better game plan than what Bill Sheridan, who’s basic defenses were shredded by high powered offenses.

It does bear noting that as free agency continues along the trends do too.  Has free agency been good?  Sure.  It helps teams improve dramatically and reduces the pressure placed on teams who have a bad draft.  Will it help our local teams?  Who knows.  But we do know this: no one raises a trophy in the offseason so its still too early to say.