A Long Way From Lambeau
The Difficult Business of Free Agency
by Mark Lyne-Austen
21/2/2008
 
Free agency is a difficulty business for NFL teams. It kicked off this year with a raft of cuts from teams near the base of the power hierarchy. The Miami Dolphins announced a series of cuts that included franchise favourite linebacker Zach Thomas while the Atlanta Falcons responded with a roster purge that saw star tight end Alge Crumpler become a casualty. These two teams are both in desperate need of rebuilding following a disastrous series of events that has them both picking early in this year's draft.
 
For the Falcons, their series of events pirouetted around the Mike Vick saga with the former first overall pick in the 2001 draft falling from grace with spectacular speed thanks to his felonious off-field interests. The disaster that was head coach Bobby Petrino did very little to help ease the sense of crisis and undoubtedly a radical rethink was necessary. Similarly the Dolphins near-futile 2007 season and the claiming of just 1 win marked the team out as in need of major change.
 
The Dolphins and Falcons have both responded to their respective crises by axing players at the start of the free agency period with a view to a rebuilding programme. In each case, the team has new players at the helm – the Dolphins' new guru Bill Parcells has an explicit remit to mould the team into a new image and that can only be done by making space out of some of the existing player set. The Falcons have new blood as well including new head coach Mike Smith and GM Thomas Dimitroff.
 
That Dimitroff and Smith have been able to make cuts to rosters that they had limited personal stake invested in is not a surprise. New personnel in decision-making positions can be more ruthless with players than those who have a longer relationship with their staff. The GM role at Atlanta had previously been held by Rich McKay who is himself a long-time ally of team President Arthur Blank. Whether McKay could make the same cuts now is debatable as he has years invested in the building of a team.
 
Ruthlessness is an unfortunate requirement of the free agency era. A player such as Alge Crumpler who was the team's standout receiver during his seven-year tenure with Atlanta but that was not enough for him to be a part of the Smith/Dimitroff future. Equally, sentiment is not enough to keep a player on board and that was the case in Miami where the release of Zach Thomas was clearly upsetting to Dolphins supporters but had been expected a long with the rumours of his talks with the New England Patriots. Thomas has been a monster tackler but the 35 year old struggled with injury last year. Being a fan favourite is not enough to keep a player on board when they take up the roster slot of a younger option, and expose the team's salary cap to their typically higher wages.
 
Team sentiment and coaching loyalty are both admirable qualities that seemingly have little place in free agency. A degree of loyalty is necessary to stand by players through ups and downs and has to be part of building a franchise around key personnel. The New England Patriots have shown that loyalty to players such as Linebacker Teddy Bruschi despite his stroke in 2005 but even that loyalty can not last forever.
 
Coaches and GMs have a very difficult line to tread in how long they keep star players and favoured veterans on the roster. Players, especially ones with strong reputations are major salary cap hits and where that salary keeps rising, it becomes harder for the team to justify keeping an older player around even if they might have been once a cornerstone of the franchise.
 
It is easy to see when a team makes a mistake by releasing a player who goes on to do great things elsewhere or when a team makes a mistake by paying well over the odds for a high profile free agent who just does not have the right skill set for his new side. The San Diego Chargers are mentioned in passing anytime Junior Seau performs well for the New England Patriots but their defense is strong and they have star players in that unit who have an impact that Seau does not for New England.
 
The most obvious mistake that franchises make is highlighted when a team overpays for an overhyped free agent. Every NFL fan should be aware of Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder's chequebook and his spending on players who are poor fits for his team's schemes. Not being from within the sport himself, Snyder bought the headlines about players such as Adam Archuleta who was a featured player on the defensive side of the ball during the successful years of the St. Louis Rams but was manifestly not the player that was needed to cover in the Washington defensive backfield.
 
Releasing players too early and lavishing cash on overly hyped players are just the high profile end of the difficulty that is free agency. Carefully constructing a team over years using the draft and a solid core of veterans requires both stability and finely tuned awareness of the cap. Stability in those responsible for personnel decisions matters to ensure a consistent plan is followed, and stability within the veteran core of players matters for chemistry and to keep on track with a particular style of play.
 
Stability among the playing staff is the key difficulty of free agency. The balance between a need to hang on to key players while squeezing every last drop of value out of the salary cap has changed in recent years thanks to the raising of the cap to $109m with around $116m in 2008. The jump from $85.5m as a cap figure for 2005 meant a drastic revision of the value maximisation formulae that franchises have to employ. Each move of the cap does not change the quality of the players involved but changes the balance involved in weighing up veteran versus rookie players.
 
Rookie players under the higher cap figures just earn a lot more as they will come in straight away to a league in which not all veterans have restructured their contracts to meet the new ceiling. Rookies such as JaMarcus Russell, the Oakland Raiders QB who was selected first overall in the 2007 draft can cash in. In Russell's case it was cashing in to the tune of around $68m over 6 years including £31.5m guaranteed. Those numbers are staggering but for the purposes of managing a team through the free agency era, they are a significant hit on the salary cap to just one player.
 
The number one pick in the draft this year can expect a contract somewhere in the region of that offered to Russell and the proportion of the salary cap taken up by one untested rookie will impact the remainder that can be offered for other stars in the squad. In funding high value draft picks and other stars, coaches and general managers are inextricably linked to their success. It is not just a reputational link but one that ties a good portion of a team's value to a handful of playing personnel. When that goes wrong as it did with Vick in Atlanta, the team as a whole struggles because other players are under-valued as a result and can find gainful employment elsewhere for closer to their own perceived dollar worth.
 
In the NFL market there will always be a buyer who falls victim to paying over the odds which means that for players with some pedigree, history, and hype their own perceived value can often be matched somewhere even if that somewhere is Washington rather than the team they featured for.