Last week, we enjoyed the sunlight and talked about the best deals from the 2021 NFL free-agent period. More showed up after publish time on Friday, including a trio of one-year deals. I like the $3 million contract for Lamarcus Joyner to move back to safety with the Jets, wide receiver JuJu Smith-Schuster's $8 million return to the Steelers and the Broncos getting corner Kyle Fuller for one year, $9.5 million.
Unfortunately, not all of the free-agent signings were as promising as those contracts. I've been monitoring every deal, and I've picked out several of my least-favorite signings from the past week. In some cases, I think a team picked the wrong player. In others, I don't love the structure, max value or guarantees on a contract. I also have one in which I think a team misread the market to come.
Of course, not everyone at ESPN has the same opinion, which is why my feelings on these deals might differ from those of our graders. I'll try to explain why or what has me sour on a contract. I'm not going in any particular order, but let's start with the most surprising spending spree in recent memory:
WR Nelson Agholor to New England
The deal: Two years, $22 million with the Patriots
This deal is an example of why it's important to evaluate players over multiple seasons and value them in the context of their contracts. Go back to last offseason. Agholor was coming off five inconsistent seasons with the Eagles, culminating in a year in which the fan base turned him into a meme over his drop issues. He was forced to settle for a one-year deal with the Raiders for just over $1 million. A Patriots team without much at wide receiver beyond a 34-year-old Julian Edelman and N'Keal Harry didn't outbid them for the former first-round pick.
Agholor greatly outplayed expectations in Las Vegas. Pushed into the starting lineup by injuries, the USC product caught 48 passes for 896 yards and eight touchdowns. He averaged a whopping 10.9 yards per target and 18.7 yards per reception, numbers that blew away his previous career highs. Drops were still a problem, as he ranked fourth among wideouts with an 8.6% drop rate, but the Raiders got a lot more than they expected for $1 million.
At no point in his career before 2020 was Agholor a consistent deep threat, though. He averaged 11.2 yards per reception in Philadelphia with similar drop issues. When teams sign a player off one breakout season that's nothing like the rest of his career, it often turns out to be disappointing. We know the Patriots didn't think Agholor had this or anything close to this in him a year ago, or they would have signed him ahead of Marqise Lee or Damiere Byrd.
Patriots fans will rightly note that the team had to upgrade at wide receiver after seeing Byrd & Co. toil on the outside. Agholor will unquestionably be an improvement there, although he might not get many snaps in the slot with Edelman and Jakobi Meyers on the team (for now). The Patriots got better by signing Agholor, and that should be considered a victory on some level.
Look at the deal, though, and it's clear the Patriots misread the market. Agholor's two-year, $22 million deal isn't very flexible. The Pats guaranteed him $16 million over two years. If Bill Belichick wants to get out of the contract after Year 1, the Patriots will be on the hook for Agholor's $10 million signing bonus, his $1 million base salary in 2021, $5 million of his $9 million base salary in 2022 and up to $1 million in roster bonuses for the 2021 season. This is either a one-year deal for $16 million-plus or a two-year deal for $22 million-plus. That's a lot for a guy who was on the minimum last season.
What makes this even worse is that the top of the wide receiver market didn't develop. The Dolphins gave Will Fuller, a better player with a more productive track record, $10.5 million for one year. JuJu Smith-Schuster took $8 million on his one-year deal with the Steelers. Usually the Patriots are the ones who foresee the market, wait things out and get the right player at the right price. This time, out of desperation, they went all-in on the first day at the market's deepest position and gave out a deal that's difficult to justify.
TE Jonnu Smith to New England
The deal: Four years, $50 million with the Patriots
This could also be Hunter Henry, who signed a pact that is one year shorter. Let's say all the things we have to say about the plan behind these moves. The Patriots were sick of having nothing at tight end after Rob Gronkowski temporarily retired. Devin Asiasi and Dalton Keene, 2020 third-round picks, didn't do much as rookies. The Patriots had success using 12 personnel to manipulate defenses during the Gronkowski era, most notably when it was Gronkowski and Aaron Hernandez in the early part of the last decade.
Signing Smith and Henry helps them disguise their pre-snap intentions, gives them blockers at the point of attack for their running game and lets them create mismatches in the passing game against linebackers. All of that, to one extent or another, is true. The problem is that Henry and Smith aren't Gronkowski and Hernandez, who spent two of their three years together with the Patriots on rookie contracts. Gronkowski signed a team-friendly extension and then later teamed with Scott Chandler and Dwayne Allen, who were on modest deals.
This is a massive amount of money to commit to two tight ends, neither of whom has come particularly close to making a Pro Bowl during their careers. Henry has never played a full 16-game season; he has missed 25 of 80 games and played limited snaps in five more. Anyone who has watched him knows that the Arkansas product has big-time potential, but he has yet to top 100 receiving yards in a single game as a pro or 700 yards in a single season. He now has the third-largest average annual salary of any tight end in football. The Pats are paying Henry like the player they're hoping he becomes, not the player he's been.
Likewise, while Smith is impressive athletically and has improved as a blocker, he hasn't been a top-tier tight end at any point in his career. He averaged fewer than 30 receiving yards per game last season in what was his most productive year as a pass-catcher. He emerged as a red zone threat, catching eight touchdowns inside the 20, but that is a huge outlier. He had eight receiving touchdowns on 73 catches across his first three seasons and then matched that total on 41 catches in Year 4. It's tough to see him sustaining that sort of touchdown rate as a going concern.
Like Henry, Smith will be averaging $12.5 million per season on his new deal. Smith is set to make $37.9 million over the first three years of his new pact, which is the most of any tight end in football history. Teams pay a premium for unrestricted free agents, which is why he will make more over the first three years of his deal than either Travis Kelce or George Kittle will make across the first three years of theirs.
At the same time, paying solid players like they're superstars is often a move that underwhelms, and we shouldn't suddenly assume that Henry and Smith are about to morph into the second coming of a legendary tight end tandem without Tom Brady around to elevate them. The Patriots could have gone much cheaper and addressed tight end; they could have signed Gerald Everett and Jared Cook and traded a late-round pick for Lee Smith for a fraction of what they're going to pay Henry and Smith. These contracts are paying the Pats' two new tight ends like they're All-Pro candidates, and there's little in their collective track record suggesting they are at that level.
RB Kenyan Drake to Las Vegas
The deal: Two years, $11 million with the Raiders
I liked some of the moves the Raiders made, as noted in the first half of my column last week, but the decision to sign Drake is absolutely impenetrable. What are they doing? This is an organization that has already committed a first-round pick at running back to Josh Jacobs and a brain trust that just erased most of its expensively assembled offensive line. If the Raiders were using the savings from moving on from center Rodney Hudson and guard Gabe Jackson on what has been a tragic defense, I would understand.
Committing this much money to Drake, though, is bizarre. I don't mind the idea of adding him as a complementary back, since he can catch the ball and has been effective in a 1A role. Given the transition tag last offseason by the Cardinals, Drake routinely looked like the second-best back on his own team behind Chase Edmonds. He posted a success rate of 50% and averaged 4.0 yards per carry, a mark boosted by a 69-yard touchdown against the Cowboys in garbage time. If this were a one-year, $3 million deal, Drake wouldn't be on this list.
With Drake guaranteed $8.5 million for 2021, though, the Raiders are committing too much to their backfield. There's been talk that they will use Drake as a "joker" and focus more on his receiving skills. Well, last year, the Raiders drafted Kentucky's Lynn Bowden in the third round and tried to convert him into a running back to play the joker role. They gave up on it by the end of training camp and traded him to the Dolphins before he ever played a game in Las Vegas. Now, if they grow sick of Drake in that role as quickly, they're stuck with a much more expensive check.
LB Jarrad Davis to New York
The deal: One year, $5.5 million with the Jets
Who was competing with the Jets to pay Davis this much money? An oft-frustrating middle linebacker under Matt Patricia in Detroit, Davis lost his job gradually over the past three seasons and only played 29% of the defensive snaps in 2020. The 2017 first-rounder struggled both with his tackling and his coverage across his time with the Lions, although he did have six sacks and 10 knockdowns in 2018.
If there's any place the Jets probably didn't need to spend money, it's at inside linebacker. C.J. Mosley is in Year 2 of his massive contract having played just two games in two years, owing to a groin injury and opting out of the 2020 campaign. (His contract tolled because he opted out.) The Jets still owe him $14 million in guarantees over the next two years, and there might not be much trade interest given that he has base salaries of $16 million, $17 million and $17 million between 2022 and 2024. Davis could line up next to Mosley or move to another role, but off-ball linebacker typically isn't a tough position to fill for much money in the NFL.
Let's say Davis breaks out under his first year with new Jets coach Robert Saleh. That's great. If that happens, the Jets ... have to give him a brand-new deal or lose him in free agency. That's not helpful in the long term. If they were going to pay Davis a little over the minimum to rebuild his career, a one-year deal would have been no big deal. They instead committed $5.5 million guaranteed to a guy who wasn't even a starter on one of the league's worst defenses last season. They needed to get at least one team-friendly unguaranteed year tacked onto the contract to gain some leverage if Davis does improve dramatically.
CB Ronald Darby to Denver
The deal: Three years, $30 million with the Broncos
Darby has had a truly weird career. After looking like a total disaster during preseason as a rookie with the Bills, the Florida State product then stepped into the starting lineup in Week 1 and looked like a seasoned pro. He was impressive before taking a step backward in his sophomore season, after which he was dealt to the Eagles for Jordan Matthews. He suffered what looked to be a serious injury in Week 1 but later came back and played excellent football through Philadelphia's unlikely run to the Super Bowl.
The second-rounder's two subsequent seasons in Philadelphia combined injury and subpar play, leading Washington to sign him to a one-year, $3 million deal last offseason. Darby had an excellent bounce-back year, starting all 16 games while holding opposing receivers to a passer rating of 81.0. He was one of the best players on what was quietly the league's second-best pass defense by DVOA.
The Broncos are committing two years and $19.5 million in guarantees to Darby, which seems dangerous given his inconsistency and injury history. It's just enough money to be troublesome if he disappoints in Year 1. The Broncos needed help at cornerback, but I would have preferred spending up a bit to go after William Jackson, who landed a three-year deal with Washington.
DL Leonard Williams to New York
The deal: Three years, $63 million with the Giants
We should have known this one was coming. Giants general manager Dave Gettleman made a totally unexpected trade to acquire Williams from the Jets in 2019, months before Williams would have become a free agent. After an anonymous half-season, the Giants then franchised him before the 2020 campaign. He responded with the best year of his career, racking up 11.5 sacks to go with 30 knockdowns. Having made his general manager look like a genius, Williams has been rewarded with $45 million guaranteed over the next two seasons. If the Giants thought he was worth a franchise tag after a half-sack in eight starts, it makes sense that they would give him a massive deal after a breakout year.
To put Williams' deal in context, the list of defensive linemen who top $63 million over the first three years of their deal isn't long, as Joey Bosa, Khalil Mack, DeMarcus Lawrence, Frank Clark and Aaron Donald are the only guys who qualify. They each had more impressive track records before their respective deals than Williams. Sacks don't tell the whole story, and he has always had impressive knockdown totals, but this is a player who averaged 3.5 sacks per season before his 11.5-sack total in 2020.
Six of those 11.5 sacks came across two games in the second half, with Williams racking up three sacks against both the Seahawks and Cowboys. Two of those sacks were cleanups on pressures created by other players. Another was a coverage sack against Russell Wilson. He went totally unblocked on a twist to get Wilson for a third time and was let to roam free on a direct path to Andy Dalton for another. On five of those six sacks, he was the guy who recorded the statistic but not the one who created the opportunity.
Williams is a good player. Few linemen can bounce around the line, hold up against the run and threaten offensive linemen from any sort of alignment. He can do that at his best, which is why the Giants were so interested in him in the first place. This deal pays him like he's a perennial Defensive Player of the Year candidate, though, and I'm not even sure he was that guy in 2020.
Edge Trey Hendrickson to Cincinnati
The deal: Four years, $60 million with the Bengals
Before last season, Hendrickson had been a lesser-known member of the vaunted Saints' 2017 draft class. A rotational edge rusher with 6.5 sacks across 30 games and three seasons, he was nearly buried into a role as the team's fourth defensive end when the Saints tried to use another team's cap space to sign Jadeveon Clowney.
Instead, with Clowney on the Titans and former first-round pick Marcus Davenport struggling to stay healthy, Hendrickson started 15 games and blew away his prior numbers as a pass-rusher. The Florida Atlantic product had 13.5 sacks, 12 tackles for loss and 25 knockdowns last season, each of which topped his career totals heading into 2020. The breakout campaign priced him out of New Orleans and earned him a big new contract with the Bengals.
In many ways, all is not what it seems. Let's start with those juicy sack numbers. Just about every closer look you can find toward Hendrickson's pass-rushing production suggests that total to be very generous. ESPN's pass rush win rate has Hendrickson 26th out of 46 qualifying edge rushers and suggested he created 7.5 sacks, which was 24th in the league. Pro Football Reference's charting data pegs him as having generated just seven hurries last season, which ranked 78th among all defenders. Those numbers are fine, but no player is getting $15 million for that sort of production.
What gives? Well, take a closer look at his sacks and you'll see a lot of plays in which he was the guy a scrambling quarterback ran into when his receivers were covered. I counted 4½ coverage sacks for Hendrickson and several others where he cleaned up after another Saints defender created an initial pressure. He created four sacks for himself, by my count, and while two of them were against Chiefs left tackle Eric Fisher, I tend to side with the skeptics when it comes to Hendrickson's pass-rushing production.
The structure of this deal, too, seems to suggest that the league was skeptical. The four-year, $60 million deal is really a one-year, $20 million deal with the opportunity for the Bengals to get out of the contract after one year with $7.5 million in dead money on their 2022 cap. If Hendrickson looks more like the solid rotation end of 2017-19 than he does the paper superstar of 2020, Cincinnati can move on without too much damage.
At the same time, though, the franchise tag for edge rushers in 2020 is only $16.1 million. The Bengals could have used the franchise tag to keep one of their own in Carl Lawson, who doesn't have the same sack numbers as Hendrickson did in 2020, but who has a much better track record of creating knockdowns and hurries over his career. Lawson has generated a knockdown once every 22.6 snaps to Hendrickson's once every 32.0 snaps. Lawson has produced hurries and created sacks at a higher rate than Hendrickson. Lawson also seemed open to signing with the Bengals on a multiyear deal and took an identical average annual value to sign with the Jets. I would rather have given him this contract.