Free agency has come and gone (well, not really \u2014 you can still sign whoever you want, but you get it), and we\u2019re now in the season of free agency grades.<\/p>\n
Never mind that nobody knows how these players will fit with their new teams. Never mind that every free agent signing will be augmented by their team\u2019s performance in the NFL Draft. Never mind that a good portion of these new signings won\u2019t even make it to the field, either because of injury or because things didn\u2019t work out how their teams hoped. We must have grades now!<\/p>\n
It\u2019s true that championships aren\u2019t won in March, but to play devil\u2019s advocate, I think you could argue that plenty of them are lost in March. Teams lose key contributors to other teams. Other teams put too many eggs in one basket, dooming themselves not just for this year, but potentially for years to come (Titans, anyone?). From that perspective, maybe we can give out a few free agency grades.<\/p>\n
The thing is, the teams that usually end up grading the highest are those that spend the most money, and that feels like a mistake. John Wooden, the great process-oriented basketball coach, once said \u201cdon\u2019t mistake activity for achievement,\u201d and that feels like a pretty good summary of free agency. There\u2019s a lot of sound and fury, but most of it signifies nothing.<\/p>\n
Grade if you will, but be ready to revisit those grades when we\u2019re playing actual football.<\/p>\n
PFF is especially hard on the Packers\u2019 two trades.<\/p>\n
I disagree with the premise that \u201cno matter how you slice it, the Packers have had a quiet free agency,\u201d but you can\u2019t deny they haven\u2019t spent as much as some other teams.<\/p>\n
20 is a nice round number, but there\u2019s no way there are 20 title contenders in the NFL.<\/p>\n
This is pretty solid evidence that there are still quite a few big stories percolating out there.<\/p>\n
Too late for this year, but you can start planning for next year with an Irish pub that comes to you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Free agency has come and gone (well, not really \u2014 you can still sign whoever you want, but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":819124,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2072],"tags":[52136,7,41,345,2702,2514,2513,6,428],"class_list":{"0":"post-819123","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-green-bay-packers","8":"tag-cheese-curds-daily-green-bay-packers-news-and-links","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-green-bay","11":"tag-green-bay-packers","12":"tag-green-bay-packers-news","13":"tag-greenbay","14":"tag-greenbaypackers","15":"tag-nfl","16":"tag-packers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116250394340577465","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=819123"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819123\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/819124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=819123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=819123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=819123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}