NFL Teams That Overspent in 1st Week of Free Agency

The NFL offseason is all about getting better and bringing in talent to win a Super Bowl, but it appears that each year that concept leads to general managers being overactive and overly loose with their spending out of fear of letting a talented player slip through their fingers.

Teams need to start recognizing that no matter how talented a player is, everyone has a price point at which his contributions to the team are overshadowed by the cost of acquisition.    

When it comes to a successful team-building strategy, acquiring positions of need in free agency for the right price is the ideal approach, whereas simply spending the most money for the best talent in free agency doesn’t guarantee any success.

Throughout this article, we will take a closer look at three teams—the Jets, Dolphins and Eagles—who overspent on free agents during the first week.

New York Jets

Darrelle Revis	5 yrs	$70 Million	29 years old
Antonio Cromartie	4 yrs	$32 Million	30 years old
Buster Skrine	4 yrs	$25 Million	25 years old

The Jets appear to be taking the opposite approach to the 49ers in terms of spending on cornerbacks. Where San Francisco appears to have no problem letting talented starting CBs walk, the Jets have gone all in at the position.

Gang Green’s commitment to cornerbacks this offseason feels a bit like an overcorrection from last year’s complete disregard of the position, much to the disapproval of then-head coach Rex Ryan.

There’s no denying the talent of Darrelle Revis, who is one of the best CBs in the NFL, but his age is a concern. Revis will turn 30 years old in July and is guaranteed $39 million over the next five years.

Bill Kostroun/Associated Press

His average salary over that period of time is $14 million. His cap hit will peak in 2016, when he counts $17 million against the cap. Revis will be 31 years old, which is up there for the position. In the last three years, Antoine Winfield, Charles Tillman and Champ Bailey are the only players over 30 to be rated top-10 CBs by Pro Football Focus.

That brings us to Antonio Cromartie, who is going to be 31 years old for 2015, yet he signed a four-year deal worth an average annual salary of $8 million.

Pro Football Focus ranked Cromartie as 45th out of the 108 CBs who played at least 25 percent of their team's defensive snaps in 2014.

But the Jets didn’t stop there. They also brought in the young and talented Buster Skrine at the fifth-highest average salary of any CB during this free-agent period at an average annual cost of $6.25 million over four years. Two of the four contracts more lucrative than Skrine’s are mentioned above.

Let us not forget that former first-round draft pick Dee Milliner is still on the roster.

Jets	$30,693,251
Broncos	$22,243,094
Seahawks	$21,662,391
Browns	$20,401,949

According to Over the Cap, the Jets have committed the most money to the CB position for the next two years. Much of that is being spent on guys exiting their prime years.

Miami Dolphins

The question about Miami signing Ndamukong Suh is less about how talented he is and more about the cost of his acquisition.

Suh’s cap hit for 2015 will be incredibly manageable. He’s slated to count just over $6 million this season, but that cost will balloon beyond $28 million in 2016, which currently stands to be the largest cap hit of any player in the entire NFL for that year.

Let that sink in for a moment.

The only other guys in the $20 million cap-hit club that year are quarterbacks and receiver Calvin Johnson. Suh will take a bigger piece of the cap pie than all of them. This could prove to be problematic—especially when you consider the three defensive players who were top-10 overall cap hits in 2014 yielded a 46 percent win percentage. If you were wondering if this was just a one-year anomaly, I checked.

Teams that had defenders in the top 10 in cap hits combined for a losing record in three of the last four seasons under the new collective bargaining agreement.

Year	# of Defender in top-10	Win %
2014	3 defenders	46%
2013	5 defenders	44%
2012	4 defenders	67%
2011	4 defenders	44%

We’re not even talking about making the playoffs or winning Super Bowls here—just to be clear, no team during those four years won the Super Bowl with a defender being a top-10 cap hit. It was hard enough for these teams just to turn out a winning record.

Of the 16 teams that had defenders make that list since 2011, only six managed a record above .500.    

According to Over the Cap, the Dolphins are currently allocating the highest percentage of their cap funds to the defensive side of the ball in 2016, spending a little over $82 million. For context, the Seahawks are second on that list with $65 million and some change.

Just over $50 million of that money on defense is going directly to the Dolphins’ defensive line. The Rams are next in line for investing in the defensive line and will allocate just over $29 million—that’s almost half the amount.

If the Dolphins are looking to build around Ryan Tannehill, the time to pay him his market share is quickly approaching. This is a contract year for Tannehill, and the team is currently getting him at a bargain-basement price. That will all change after this season if they end up re-signing him.

Philadelphia Eagles

DeMarco Murray	5 yrs	$40 Million	27 yrs old
Ryan Mathews	3 yrs	$11 Million	27 yrs old
Byron Maxwell	6 yrs	$63 Million	27 yrs old

In terms of average salaries, the Eagles now own three of the top-15 highest-paid RBs in the NFL with DeMarco Murray, Ryan Mathews and Darren Sproles.

Murray is now the fifth-highest-paid RB in the NFL in terms of average salary despite only having played a full 16-game season once in his career. He led the league in rushing last year, but he also benefitted from the Dallas Cowboys perhaps having the best offensive line in football.

It’s possible that Murray was a contingency plan when the team failed to bring in Frank Gore after trading LeSean McCoy to the Bills.

Murray’s five-year contract guarantees him $21 million with a total value of $40 million.

Ryan Mathews is another back who has only played a full 16-game season one time in his career, and he sat out most of the 2014 season with injuries. He was actually given a very reasonable contract, and it was a bit of a surprise he was willing to sign considering he understood he was not going to be the featured back in Philly once he knew Murray was on board as well.

Alex Brandon/Associated Press

When it comes to these signings individually, they make a lot of sense, especially with the surprising trade of McCoy. However, adding both of these guys together on a team that already has Darren Sproles seems excessive and irresponsible from a financial standpoint.

It would have made more sense to pay for one and bring in an RB in the draft, especially considering it will be loaded with talent at the position.

If the RB position is being devalued, nobody told the Eagles.

As expected, Byron Maxwell became the second-highest-paid free-agent CB this offseason, behind only Darrelle Revis. But equally as expected, thanks to supply and demand, Maxwell was overpaid.

The cornerback class in this year's free-agent market is thin compared to other positions, so the demand for quality corners somewhat forced teams to compete in a bidding war for the guys available and, ultimately, overpay for them.

Patrick Peterson	$14,010,000
Richard Sherman	$14,000,000
Darrelle Revis	$14,000,000
Joe Haden	$13,500,000
Byron Maxwell	$10,500,000

The Eagles dished out a six-year deal worth $63 million, and $25 million of that is guaranteed. His average annual salary is $10.5 million, making him the fifth-highest paid at the position behind Patrick Peterson, Richard Sherman, Darrelle Revis and Joe Haden.

Does he really belong among these names from a talent standpoint?

Short answer, no way.

Byron has been a consistent and reliable starter in one of the best defenses in NFL history. He has played in the last two Super Bowls and is still young at 27 years old. 

Maxwell was the beneficiary of a talented supporting cast and a fantastic defensive scheme. With Richard Sherman locking down the opposite end of the field, Maxwell could play with confidence and in the knowledge that help would be sliding his way on almost every play. Sherman’s dominance allowed the coverage to slant toward Maxwell’s direction, which made his job easier.

This is not to suggest that Maxwell isn’t a quality corner, but rather to illustrate how he will be unjustly paid as an elite NFL corner with a slim chance the Eagles will ever see that level of elite production.

If any of the three teams mentioned in this article make it to a Super Bowl in the next two years, I will completely eat crow. In addition, there is a high likelihood that each player highlighted in this article will not meet the expectations of his new team.

With that said, I can see the Eagles’ new running additions being productive, but the argument in their case is that too much money is being allocated to one position, which will turn out to be limiting for that roster over the next few years.

Note: All cap numbers came from Spotrac.com unless stated otherwise. 

Ryan Riddle is a former NFL player who writes for Bleacher Report