The meaty part of NFL free agency ends before you can catch your breath. A week ago, the 2021 league year hadn't even started yet, but a flurry of big deals had already been agreed to and reported. By the time Week 2 starts, the part of free agency that makes all the headlines is over.
By this time, though, we have caught our collective breath a little bit. More importantly, we've had a chance to look at some real numbers -- the true guarantees, the payout structures, the fluff -- and get a sense of who really got the best deals.
We do this every year, and I always feel the need to start with this one point of explanation: Our figures come from the contract summaries the NFL Players Association (NFLPA) sends to agents, which we have obtained. There are, on occasion, errors in these numbers, which get corrected quickly once this piece publishes and suddenly helpful agents call to tell us. For the most part, though, these numbers reflect the new contracts as they are, and serve as a legitimate basis for this analysis.
With that in mind, we present our annual look at who got the best NFL free-agent deals, plus a few other things we found interesting.
Jump to a section:
What was the Patriots' plan?
How "void" years change free agency
Seven more notes that make you think
Who did the best?
A quarterback is almost always the answer to this question, and sure enough, the deal the Cowboys gave Dak Prescott right before free agency opened is a standout. Four years, $160 million with a record $66 million signing bonus and a record $95 million fully guaranteed at signing. A promise not to franchise him again when the deal expires in the 2025 offseason. A March 2022 trigger date for his 2023 salary of $31 million to become fully guaranteed.
Prescott and agent Todd France played the franchise-tag game artfully, and got basically everything they wanted to get from the Cowboys in these negotiations.
But you don't have to be a quarterback to use the franchise tag to your advantage. Giants defensive tackle Leonard Williams -- a player for whom the Giants traded a third-round pick and a fifth-round pick in 2019, franchised in 2020 and franchised again in 2021 -- got one of the sweetest deals of free agency's first week. Franchising Williams for the second year in a row meant the Giants would have had to carry a salary-cap charge of more than $19 million for him in 2021 if they didn't extend him.
The Giants could have executed their offseason around that, but it would have been a lot tougher. Agents Roosevelt Barnes and Brandon Parker were able to secure $45 million in fully guaranteed money for Williams in the first two years of his three-year, $63 million deal.
Williams did better than any of the free-agent edge rushers, though a few of them cashed in nicely. The most stunning deal in the pass-rusher market was the five-year, $82.5 million battleship the Titans gave former Steeler Bud Dupree. Prior to the opening of free agency, more than one team talking to Dupree thought he would have to take a one-year prove-it deal at around $13 million or $14 million because he's recovering from a torn ACL suffered late in the 2020 season and probably won't be ready at the start of the 2021 season.
But Dupree's agent, France, who as you'll see had a big week, was able to secure $33.75 million in fully guaranteed money in the first two years of Dupree's deal. Tennessee feels a lot more certain about Dupree's recovery timetable than some other teams did, that's for sure.
Looking at two-year cash flow, you have to tip your cap to the $34.75 million in fully guaranteed money Shaq Barrett got from the Buccaneers, who spent the past two weeks working hard to keep together their Super Bowl champion roster. Barrett will pocket $20 million this year, and because $14.75 million of his $16 million 2022 salary is fully guaranteed, it's fair to assume he'll earn the whole thing, meaning he'll end up with $36 million over the first two years.
Nice work by agent Drew Rosenhaus, as Barrett was the only one of the edge rushers this year to top the $34.5 million, first-two-years cash flow that Za'Darius Smith got in his contract with the Packers two years ago.
We've put agent Mike McCartney's name in this column a fair bit over the past couple of years because of the work he has done with Minnesota Vikings quarterback Kirk Cousins' perpetually lucrative contract situation. But McCartney hit a home run this year with a different client -- offensive guard Joe Thuney, who left the Patriots to sign with the two-time-defending AFC champion Chiefs for five years and $80 million. Thuney got $31.89 million fully guaranteed at signing, and his $15 million 2023 salary becomes fully guaranteed on the third day of the 2022 league year.
That's a nice early trigger that likely means he's there for at least three years and $48 million, once you factor in his annual workout bonuses.
The 49ers held off the Chiefs and others to keep left tackle Trent Williams, but it'll cost them. Agent Vince Taylor secured Williams a six-year, $138.06 million deal whose average is now the highest ever for an offensive lineman. The deal includes $40.1 million in fully guaranteed money, including a $30.1 million signing bonus, and the payout and guarantee structure effectively ensure he'll get $60.75 million over the first three years of the deal. The last three years of the deal might never happen -- the team has to decide by April 1, 2023, whether to pick up its option for the 2024, 2025 and 2026 seasons.
Because Williams will be 34 at that point and 36 when the 2024 season starts, it's possible and even likely that the Niners will cut the deal off after three years. But even if they do, that $60.75 million for three years is a sweet deal for a 32-year-old tackle who hasn't played 16 games in a season since 2013.
Finally, we need to circle back to the Giants and agent France, who did the final massive deal of the week. Wide receiver Kenny Golladay signed with the Giants for four years and $72 million -- an average of $18 million per year that puts him among the eight highest-paid receivers in the league. Golladay gets $28 million fully guaranteed at signing, and as of the third day of the 2022 league year -- less than a year from today -- an additional $12 million will become fully guaranteed. So the Giants are locked in for at least $40 million over the next two years.
This was the cherry on top of a week in which France secured nice long-term deals for pass-rushers Carl Lawson and Leonard Floyd and safety Justin Simmons on top of the others we've already mentioned, and it was a stunning amount of money in a market that didn't seem to be demanding it. The next-biggest wide receiver deal was the three-year, $37.5 million deal (with $27 million guaranteed in the first two years) that the Jets gave Corey Davis, who's a year younger and didn't miss 11 games in 2020 with a hip injury. The Giants are betting big that Golladay is the true No. 1 receiver they coveted. In order to justify this contract, he's going to need to play like one.
The new Patriot Way?
You'll never be able to accuse Bill Belichick of following the crowd. Outside of the occasional Stephon Gilmore contract here and there, the Patriots almost always sit out the big-spending portion of free agency. So, of course, in this year when the salary cap went down and the big money just wasn't there for a lot of free agents, Belichick spent like a dude whose stimulus check hit at 4 a.m. on the day after Thanksgiving.
The Patriots signed pass-rusher Matthew Judon away from the Ravens. Rather than choose between the top tight ends on the market, they signed both Jonnu Smith and Hunter Henry, plus wide receivers Kendrick Bourne and Nelson Agholor. They brought back center David Andrews and defensive end Deatrich Wise and added cornerback Jalen Mills and defensive tackle Davon Godchaux. They made a last-ditch effort to keep Thuney and tried to pry running back Chris Carson away from Seattle, which could indicate that they aren't done adding. All of this after bringing back quarterback Cam Newton the week before. And while Newton's contract doesn't ensure that he'll be the Patriots' starter in 2021, all of this activity tells us that whoever the quarterback is will have a far different group around him than Newton had in 2020.
There are two obvious reasons for this out-of-character spending behavior. First, New England's roster was in bad shape -- thin in all kinds of areas and in need of reinforcements as a result of a series of unproductive drafts.
The second reason is the one that's actually consistent with Belichick's value-based roster-building philosophy. The smartest and most consistently competitive teams know that free agency isn't the way to build a roster, because it leads to overpaying. The wise way to build a roster in a salary-cap league is through the draft. But Belichick identified this year's market as one in which value was available like never before. The players he signed would have cost much more in a year in which the salary cap had gone up by its customary $10 million instead of down by $16 million. The pandemic-depressed free-agent market of 2021 offered teams with plentiful cap space, of which the Patriots were one, to sign two or three players for the price of what one premium free agent might cost in a normal year.
Into the void
We wrote in this piece last year about contract "void" years -- the phantom years teams tack onto the end of long-term contracts so that they can defray the cap cost of a signing bonus as much as possible. With the cap going down in 2021, the practice seems to have become more widespread than ever.
The Buccaneers, who historically have avoided void years and been known as a "cash-cap" team that doesn't float dead money into future years, used void years on the Barrett deal, the Rob Gronkowski deal, the Lavonte David deal and the Tom Brady extension.
Prescott's deal with the Cowboys includes two void years after the four "real years" that will allow them to keep cap costs down in the early part of the deal.
Juju Smith-Schuster's one-year deal with the Steelers has four void years tacked onto the end of it to keep his 2021 cap hit at $2.4 million ($1 million salary plus one-fifth of his $7 million signing bonus).
And you certainly noticed the four-year, $140 million extension the Saints gave Taysom Hill, which is actually four void years that add nothing to his salary but allow the Saints to spread out his cap hit.
The bill comes due on the void years, of course. The Steelers will have to carry four-fifths of that signing bonus -- or $5.6 million -- on their 2022 cap whether or not Smith-Schuster is on the team. But teams do this because they expect the cap situation to improve in future years. In the case of Prescott, for instance, the Cowboys don't expect a $21 million dead-money cap charge to matter much to them in 2025 when they're all swimming together in infinity pools filled with new TV money.
Seven more notes that I found interesting
Their signings didn't get the attention of the Patriots' signings, but the Texans have so far added 22 free agents from outside their organization. They're almost all one- or two-year deals, but they are trying to fill a roster during a tough time when they don't know who their quarterback will be and don't have a first-round pick or a second-round pick in April's draft. Tyrod Taylor wasn't a random quarterback signing for them. New Texans quarterbacks coach Pep Hamilton was the Chargers' quarterbacks coach last season and knows Taylor well from their work together there.
Why did the Bengals give former Saints defensive end Trey Hendrickson a four-year, $60 million deal and let their own edge rusher, Carl Lawson, leave to sign a three-year, $45 million deal with the Jets? The devil is in the details. Hendrickson was willing to do a deal on the Bengals' preferred contract structure, which guarantees nothing beyond the signing bonus.
Lawson's deal with the Jets guarantees him his $1 million signing bonus, $14 million in salary and bonuses in 2021 and his $15 million 2022 salary for a total of $30 million fully guaranteed over two years.
Hendrickson's deal with the Bengals guarantees him his $10 million signing bonus, a $6 million roster bonus that was due Monday and that's it.
Not even Hendrickson's $3.8 million 2021 salary is guaranteed. If he plays 2021 and earns all of his per-game roster bonuses, he'll have pocketed $20 million in Year 1, which surely could convince the Bengals to keep him around and pay him his non-guaranteed $12 million in 2022 salary and bonuses. But they don't have to, and that's the way they like it. The Bengals don't like to be tied down.
JuJu Smith-Schuster spent the weeks before free agency telling anyone who'd listen on social media that there was no chance he was going back to Pittsburgh -- presumably because he knew what the Steelers were offering and was sure he'd get more elsewhere. He did not. Smith-Schuster is returning to Pittsburgh on a one-year, $8 million deal that surely falls well short of his expectations. Heck, it doesn't even appear to include a clause that prevents the Steelers from franchising him next year.
Smith-Schuster is an example of a high-profile player who found the landscape of free agency a lot rougher than he expected in a really rough year. It's only going to get rougher for the Sammy Watkins types who still haven't found new homes.
Other than Golladay and Davis, the receivers haven't found much, and part of the reason might be that April's draft is perceived by people in the league as deep with wide receiver talent. Evaluators to whom I've spoken over the past couple of weeks thought the draft depth at receiver and cornerback could hurt the markets at those positions and that the inverse could be true of the edge rusher market (which actually did end up better than many expected).
Most underrated signing? Keep an eye on the 49ers' addition of center Alex Mack. Not only was Mack the Falcons' center during Matt Ryan's MVP season in Atlanta when current Niners coach Kyle Shanahan was the Falcons' offensive coordinator, he was the Browns' center when Shanahan was the offensive coordinator there in 2014 -- the year the Browns started 7-4 and then lost their final five games after quarterback Brian Hoyer got hurt. Hoyer threw for more than 3,330 yards that season.
The Colts entered free agency among the teams with the most cap space and basically haven't spent any of it. This is in keeping with the philosophy of general manager Chris Ballard. I spoke to Ballard a couple of years ago in training camp, after another offseason in which the Colts had a ton of cap room but didn't make any big spends. He told me that was intentional and would always be the case. "We will never have to cut a guy for cap room as long as I'm the GM here," he told me.
To that point, when we went through teams last month and projected possible salary-cap cuts, I couldn't find a single one for the Colts. They know they have big extensions on the horizon for players such as guard Quenton Nelson and linebacker Darius Leonard. Quarterback Carson Wentz was their big spend of the offseason. They like their roster and didn't see the need to participate in the high-spending early portion of free agency. Fans might see that as no fun, but it works. Most of the consistently good teams don't hit free agency very hard. Teams such as Seattle and Green Bay are examples again this year.
The Chargers' offensive line signings of center Corey Linsley and guard/tackle Matt Feiler drew some praise around the league for their judiciousness. Linsley got what reads as a five-year, $62.5 million deal, but only $17 million of that is guaranteed -- his $13 million signing bonus and his $4 million 2021 salary. He does have an injury guarantee on his $9 million 2022 salary, but if he's healthy and the Chargers decide to move on before next March, they could do so easily, with only about $10.4 million in 2022 dead money.
This is why one salary-cap expert described that deal to me as the one most likely to be "next year's Kyle Van Noy" in reference to the linebacker the Dolphins just cut one year after signing him to a "long-term" deal.
Oh, and in case you thought Belichick was off his game? The Patriots got a fourth-round compensatory pick in April's draft because Van Noy signed a "four-year, $51 million contract" with the Dolphins a year ago. The Dolphins cut him, and the Patriots just re-signed him for $6 million. And yes, they get to keep the pick.