NFL Free Agency 2022 - Part 2
QB Movement
The late, great, Chris Wesseling once coined the phrase “the Dalton line”. A mythical line that stated, if your QB is worse than Andy Dalton (one time starter for the Cincinnati Bengal) then you needed to find a new QB, if your QB was better than Andy Dalton then you had someone who could bring you to the Super Bowl, but if you had Andy Dalton then you are in NFL purgatory.
I mentioned last week that the value of a free agency class is partly determined by the quality of player that would be available in the draft, well the action around QBs right now is a damning report on the quality of QB in the upcoming draft. The QBs that were actually out of contract was minimal. The current highlight would be Mitchel Trubisky being the attempt number 1 to replace Big Ben in Pittsburgh, while Jameis Winston has resigned with the Saints - more on that in a moment. The majority of the action happened in the trade department.
It kicked off with the departure of Carson Wentz. After Colts owner, Jim Irsay, called in his coaches after their week 18 defeat to the one win Jaguars. Irsay was reportedly furious at the QB play, but also handing out multiple F-bombs to all those present. He wasn’t happy and it’s not hard to understand why. The Colts had just beaten the Patriots about 3 week prior and all they needed was to close the deal against the Jaguars who had nothing to play for. Wentz’s play had been a major reason for why the Colts were playing so poorly, he couldn’t be trusted to throw the ball, but he also is routinely disliked where ever he plays. Irsay wanted him gone, fast. One of the more interesting outcomes for Wentz, was the fact someone was willing to trade for him, rather than wait for him to get cut, and when you need a sucker in the NFL, Washington is happy to play the part! They stumped up a 2nd round draft choice in this coming draft for Wentz, way more than the Colts could have hoped for, especially when people were not willing to even enquire about his trade value.
Next on the list was a decision from Aaron Rodgers, would he retire, would he ask to be traded (and to who?) or would he resign with the Packers? As you could imagine, you can’t just let the back-to-back MVP walk out the door without looking like a fool. Even if he’s a little odd (did he really need a Panchakarma cleanse? does anyone?), and perhaps he can be a little loose with the truth (COVID), but you still have to put feelings aside when it comes to winning, and the Packers did, they offered Rodgers a $150M 4 year extension. Now, as I mentioned last week, the proof is in the pudding, the real numbers are the guaranteed numbers. And that’s just as good, he gets $101M fully guaranteed that includes $42M this season and $59M next season, after that, well, if he decides to retire, the Packers are in a bit of trouble. Their cap is taking a hit, paying the best when you don’t have much cap space requires pain, you either take the pain now, or push it down to road, and just like any other insane person, they pushed it down the road. The majority of the guaranteed money is coming via a bonus, which is being prorated for the next 5 years, that includes 2024, 2025 and 2026. If he’s not on the team, the Packers will have $22.7M in dead money in each of those years. You can look at at this is two ways: it’s worth it to win the Super Bowl… or… that’s a lot of faith in someone who’s not been to the Super Bowl since 2010! The only guaranteed winner in all of this is Aaron Rodgers.
After Rodgers went off the board, most people were wondering who’d be next, it turned out to be Russel Wilson.
The main suitor for Rodgers was the Denver Broncos. Rodgers’ former offensive coordinator, Nathaniel Hackett had been snatched from Green Bay by Denver, partly in the hope that it would tempt Rodgers, but also because Hackett had proven to be an excellent coach. Rodgers was gone, so they went and paid big for Russell Wilson. It cost Denver two 1st round picks, two 2nd round picks, one fifth round pick and 3 players, two of whom are good players, Noah Fant and Shelby Harris. In soccer terms, this is like trading for Kevin De Bruyne, but having to give up Ollie Watkins, Bukayo Saka, Mateo Kovačić, Raúl Jiménez and Lucas Digne. Sometimes it’s hard to see one player being worth so much, but for teams with QB trouble, fear is a hell of a drug. The Broncos were looking into 2022 with Drew Lock as their QB, and that was not going to put bums in seats or wins on the stat sheet. Denver paid big, but there are a lot of questions that Wilson will have to answer in 2022.
There was a notable power struggle going on in Seattle before he left, he felt that the offence wasn’t giving him the best chance to win, while the coaches in Seattle didn’t think he was willing to play to the strength of the team, in the end, the players who were left behind in Seattle after Wilson was traded made a lot of noise by not saying much at all, a sign that all was not well! Wilson’s play was poor in parts of 2021, he had a 5 game spell with an average of 150 yards/game and when he rushed back from a broken finger, he looked like a player with a broken hand. Russell Wilson comes with a ‘buyer beware’ sign that Kevin de Bruyne doesn’t, Wilson is a ‘me’ first guy, and if it’s not about him, you better be thinking of a way to make it about him soon before he turn to social media to remind everyone just how important he is… it gets old quick, if winning cures everything, he better win, or things could get ugly in Denver.
The next major sticking point in the QB market was a QB that didn’t play in 2021. Deshawn Watson wasn’t suspended by the NFL, he wasn’t suspended by the Houston Texans, he just didn’t like to play for them, and wanted to be traded. However, no one wanted to trade for him, even though he is arguably one of the top 5 QBs in the league. Turns out, if you have 22 accusations of sexual misconduct filed against you, and you’re facing jail time, then teams might not want to get involved. However, if a grand jury decide that there isn’t enough evidence to convict, and so no jail time is forthcoming, then teams will sell their grandmother and their soul for you.
To be clear, Watson has not been cleared, the cases are still ongoing, they have just moved to a civil case. 22 accusations of sexual misconduct is a lot of accusations. Maybe they are not all true, but they are not all false. You can read a summary of the accusations »HERE« So now that teams knew he wasn’t serving jail time, they lined up; the New Orleans Saints, Caroline Panthers, Cleveland Browns and Atlanta Falcons are the ones we know about. While this was ongoing, fans around the world were not happy, they didn’t want their team running with a blank cheque to Watson. Never in the history of sports has a team put fans before profit, and that wasn’t about to change with Watson. At first it seemed that Cleveland was out of the running, Watson was from Georgia, and played college football in Carolina, both seemed like front runners. The Saints were in there too, but while they all pursed, Watson wanted to wait. He now had all the leverage. The Texans had committed to trading him, but Watson had a no trade clause in his contract so he could pick his team. Offer and offer came in, and while he initially turned down Cleveland, ‘no’ doesn’t mean ‘no’ to the Browns’ owner. They came back with an offer that Watson couldn’t turn down. Not only was this offer the most in NFL history, it was also the most lucrative for Watson in the face of a suspension. The Browns offered $230M fully guaranteed. FULLY! But, the worse part of this is how they will pay his contract. He will get $46 million in his first year, but while players lose money from their base salary when they are suspended, Watson wont have to worry much. Only $1 million of his $46M in year 1 is base salary. The Browns intentionally structured his contract knowing he was getting suspended in 2022 for a significant period of time, so that he wouldn’t suffer financially from it. The NFL is going to lose many fans over this, and the Browns are already losing a lot of fans. None of this is good for the league, but none of this is new. Washington owner Dan Snyder is working overtime to hide his own sexual misconduct issues, while Dolphins owner Stephen Ross is being investigated for racial discrimination and offering bribes to coaches to lose games. The NFL says that ‘football is family’, well, you can’t pick your family but you can pick your players and owners. In this league, moral value is lacking, they have the option to vote out owners and suspend players, will the NFL do the right thing? It’s hard to say. Ray Rice was suspended for 2 games for domestic violence - he punched his fiancé to the floor, while Josh Gordon was suspended for over 30 games due to his ‘substance abuse’ violations (weed).
Now that the Watson issue is no longer a QB issue, those who failed to land him are now left trying to fix their relationships with fans and in-house QBs. The Saints have angered their fan base, as did Carolina and Atlanta. The Saints resigned Jameis Winston, their best hope of some continuity after Sean Payton resigned as head coach. Atlanta had more questions to answer, while pursing Watson, they still had long serving Matt Ryan on the books, and while his play was either average or bad in 2021, they were due to pay him a $7.5M roster bonus if he was on their books at 4pm ET on the 21st of March 2022. They traded him to the Colts at 1.51pm ET on the 21st March 2022.
There are still more dominos falling in the QB rooms around the league, but don’t expect to see too many coming in from the draft.
Next:
Next time we’ll cover the last dregs of Free Agency (basically anyone one who’s not a QB) and start to look forward to the good parts of the draft.