Most Surprising Early Moves of 2017 NFL Free Agency

NFL free agency is nearly a week old, and more than 150 contracts have already been signed. Many of them were formalities, many more were widely expected, but some came out of left field. 

As we turn the corner into the second week of the new league year, here's a look at some of the moves that have come as complete surprises, either because of the fit, the terms or both. 

San Francisco 49ers Sign Kyle Juszczyk

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It's not surprising that the new regime in San Francisco decided that it would be smart to include a 25-year-old Pro Bowl fullback as part of its offensive makeover. What's surprising about Kyle Juszczyk's deal with the 49ers is the price. 

The four-year, $21 million deal with $9.75 million guaranteed makes Juszczyk the highest-paid fullback in football by a silly margin. No other fullback makes more than $8.4 million total, $2.5 million per year or $4.8 million in guarantees. 

In fact, it's the most lucrative deal for a fullback in NFL history. The deal will pay Juszczyk more per year than the one respected slot corner Captain Munnerlyn just signed with the Carolina Panthers. It gives him more guaranteed money than popular tight end Martellus Bennett is getting from the Green Bay Packers.

Only eight running backs—Le'Veon Bell, LeSean McCoy, Jonathan Stewart, Doug Martin, Lamar Miller, Chris Ivory, DeMarco Murray and Ezekiel Elliott—are slated to enter 2017 with higher salaries. 

Juszczyk was graded by Pro Football Focus as the best fullback in football last season in Baltimore, primarily because of his work as a top-notch blocker. He did score an epic touchdown in a key moment late in the 2016 season—“I think that play’s probably a big reason for the money I got,” Juszczyk said, per Peter King of The MMQB. According to Pro Football Talk's Mike Florio, he sees himself as a "Swiss Army Knife" player in that he can do a lot of different things. 

Still, the four-year veteran has just seven career carries and six total touchdowns. He has just one 40-plus-catch season under his belt, and his receiving numbers declined in 2016. 

That'll almost certainly change going forward—King figured he might have "70 rushes and 70 catches in an average Niners season"—but that's still a lot of money for a guy who has never consistently produced as an every-down player. 

Cleveland Browns Sign Kenny Britt

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The Cleveland Browns have developed a reputation as a team that lets good homegrown players walk despite lacking the talent to replace said players and despite having plenty of salary-cap space to re-sign them. 

That's why a lot of folks were disappointed but not surprised when the Browns decided not to slap wide receiver Terrelle Pryor with the franchise tag before letting him get away in free agency. Cleveland gave the former quarterback a shot to remake his career as a receiver, and it paid off when the 27-year-old became a 1,000-yard weapon in 2016. But the Browns took a borderline laissez faire approach to Pyror's impending free agency.

"I think we'd like to have Terrelle back, and that's a priority for us," vice-president of football operations Sashi Brown said prior to the start of the new league year, per ESPN.com's Pat McManamon. "That said, we're not going to panic if he's not back, also."

On the open market, Pryor settled for a more-than-reasonable one-year, $6 million contract with $2 million in achievable incentives to join the Washington Redskins, while the Browns handed a four-year, $32.5 million contract with $17 million guaranteed to the older, shorter and slower Kenny Britt.

Don't get me wrong: I think the 28-year-old Britt is a strong, underrated player. But Pryor objectively has a higher ceiling and—now—a much more team-friendly contract. The Browns are paying more money for a lesser player, which is at least mildly surprising because even blind squirrels find some nuts. 

Washington Redskins Sign Terrelle Pryor

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In the Browns' defense, few would have figured that Pryor—coming off a 1,007-yard season in which he caught an impressive 63 percent of the passes thrown his way by a handful of bad quarterbacks—would have to settle for such a small-potatoes one-year deal on the open market. 

But that's exactly what happened. 

It might not have helped Pryor's cause that one of this free-agent class' top receivers, Alshon Jeffery, settled for a one-year prove-it deal with the Philadelphia Eagles, but that didn't stop Britt, DeSean Jackson, Pierre Garcon and Robert Woods from landing lucrative long-term contracts elsewhere. 

This might be on Pryor. According to Cleveland.com's Terry Pluto, the Browns offered him a four-year, $32 million deal with $17 million guaranteed, but Pluto reported that Pryor was holding out for a four-year contract averaging $13 million a year. 

Clearly, nobody was willing to offer anything within that range to a receiver who had just two catches in his career prior to a breakout 2016 campaign. 

This leaves Pryor with a chance to prove in 2017 that 2016 wasn't a fluke. If he can do that, he'll become an extremely rich man next offseason. But many—yours truly included—figured that would have already happened by now. 

Chicago Bears Sign Mike Glennon

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This probably shouldn't surprise anybody because Mike Glennon has a pulse and an NFL resume, he plays the quarterback position and he's younger than 30. These days, that's often all you need to land a deal worth $15 million per year and a crack at a starting job. 

And that's what the 27-year-old Glennon is getting in Chicago after signing three-year, $45 million contract with $18.5 million guaranteed in order to take over for the departed Jay Cutler. 

Still, there are three reasons why this is rather stunning:

1. Glennon hasn't started an NFL game since 2014, and he wasn't very good back then either. He completed only 57.4 percent of his passes as a sophomore that year, losing four of his five starts. That was enough to convince the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to use their top draft pick in 2015 on quarterback Jameis Winston.  I know Brock Osweiler was able to land a monster contract with a similarly unconvincing resume last offseason, but that backfired magnificently. It should have served as a cautionary tale, not a precedent. 
2. The Bears aren't very good and would have been better off exercising patience. They have two draft picks in the top 36, and this draft class possesses several talented, groomable potential first-round picks at that position. 
3. Even if the Bears want to think they can be good and didn't want to be patient, there were plenty of better options available this year. Tony Romo, Colin Kaepernick even Jimmy Garoppolo if you wanted to swing the bat with a guy who has a much higher ceiling than Mike freakin' Glennon. Heck, even Cutler—who had the best year of his career when he was last healthy in 2015—would have cost less to keep than it did to bring in Glennon. 

49ers Sign Brian Hoyer and Matt Barkley

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With John Lynch and Kyle Shanahan taking over as the new general manager-head coach duo in San Francisco, I figured a regime with a comically large amount of money to spend would make a splash at the quarterback position. 

But instead of making the Redskins an offer they couldn't refuse for Kirk Cousins or swinging the bat at Garoppolo, Romo or even Cutler, the 49ers settled for not one, but two former Bears quarterbacks—Brian Hoyer and Matt Barkley. 

It's entirely possible this means the Niners—who entered the new league year with zero signal-callers under center—view both simply as "arms" and that they have their eye on somebody in the draft. Indeed, NFL Network’s Aditi Kinkhabwala reported last week (via CSNmidatlantic.com's Rich Tandler) that they view Hoyer as more of a “backup-type” quarterback, and nobody except Barkley's mother sees him playing a larger role than that. 

If that's the case, and Hoyer and Barkley are just on the roster because they can locate the broad sign of a barn, I get it. It's not as though this team should realistically be in win-now mode anyway. 

I just didn't expect them to bother with guys like Hoyer, who is joining his sixth team in a seven-year span, or Barkley, who had an 8-to-14 touchdown-to-interception ratio in seven painful appearances last season. 

I expected something bigger. 

Carolina Panthers Sign Matt Kalil

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The Carolina Panthers desperately needed to improve their pass protection, especially at the left tackle position. It's been a problem ever since Jordan Gross retired following the 2013 season. 

• In 2014, left tackle Byron Bell was graded by PFF as the second-worst offensive tackle in the NFL after surrendering nine sacks in 15 starts. Only one tackle in football gave up more. His name? Matt Kalil. 
• In 2015, left tackle Michael Oher was ranked 59th among 76 qualified tackles. 
• With Oher injured for much of the 2016 season, his replacement, Mike Remmers, surrendered a tied-for-league-high nine sacks, grading out 60th among 76 qualified tackles. 

And thus on the first official day of free agency, the Panthers committed $55 million with $25 million guaranteed over five years to a new left tackle. 

His name? Matt Kalil. The same guy who was even worse than Bell in 2014, was hit with 10 more penalties and surrendered six more sacks during a terrible 2015 season and missed most of the 2016 campaign due to a hip injury. 

By all indications, the 2012 No. 4 overall pick is a bust. 

Wouldn't a team like the Panthers—a contender with a franchise quarterback who was the league MVP in 2015—be better off paying an extra couple of million dollars a year and less guaranteed cash to an older yet more accomplished left tackle like Andrew Whitworth? Whitworth was a Pro Bowler each of the last two years, yet he signed elsewhere for $10 million less in guaranteed money.

The Vikings also could have saved money signing Riley Reiff or Kelvin Beachum, both of whom have done more with less in their careers than Kalil. 

But Kalil's brother, Ryan, is Carolina's starting center. I hope that didn't factor in here, but the contract is so ridiculous that little else makes sense. 

Green Bay Packers Sign Martellus Bennett

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It's not necessarily surprising that the Green Bay Packers signed a new starting tight end on the free-agent market, because Green Bay did the exact same thing a year ago. The Packers also must know that they have to keep franchise quarterback Aaron Rodgers surrounded by enough weapons to remain competitive during Rodgers' prime, and they entered the offseason with more than $40 million in salary-cap space. 

Their new tight end, Martellus Bennett, is arguably an upgrade over last year's new arrival, Jared Cook. And Cook's contract expired after the 2016 season. So, again, it made sense on the surface. 

That said, it was odd to see the Packers sign Bennett with Cook still lingering on the open market. Green Bay loves taking care of its own, and Cook became one of Rodgers' favorite targets during last year's remarkable late-season run. 

From Week 11 on, including the playoffs, Cook averaged 55.3 yards per game. That included a 103-yard performance in an unforgettable divisional-round victory over the Dallas Cowboys. 

Bennett was also a force late in a Super Bowl 2016 season for the New England Patriots, but he's an outsider who wasn't really linked to the Packers until they suddenly signed him despite the fact they had been negotiating with Cook. 

Also surprising—but in a good way if you're a Packers fan—are the terms. It's just a three-year, $21 million deal for a guy who is coming off a 701-yard, seven-touchdown season, despite the fact he was a backup for a quarter of the year. 

Guys named A.J. Klein, Marcus Cooper, Rhett Ellison and Dion Sims received more guaranteed money as free agents this offseason than Bennett's $7.2 million. 

Everything Patriots

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When it comes to the Patriots, we've learned to expect the unexpected and anticipate the unusual. Still, this is a team that appeared pretty damn complete after winning Super Bowl LI, so few saw a shakeup coming. 

A shakeup came. 

In a matter of just a few days, the Patriots...

• Committed a 2017 offseason league-high $40 million in guaranteed money to cornerback Stephon Gilmore, making him the seventh-highest-paid corner in the game despite the fact they already have a blue-chip cover man in Malcolm Butler. 
• Traded their fourth-round pick to the Indianapolis Colts in exchange for tight end Dwayne Allen, who will replace Bennett as second fiddle to Rob Gronkowski (they also got a sixth-rounder from Indy). 
• Traded their second-round pick to the Panthers in exchange for defensive end Kony Ealy and a third-round pick. 
• Traded their first- and third-round picks to the New Orleans Saints in exchange for speedy receiver Brandin Cooks (and a fourth-rounder), despite the presence of Gronkowski, Julian Edelman and Chris Hogan in the passing game.

Nobody saw that coming. And frankly, few likely imagined that while all that was happening, a team that already dealt away key front-seven defenders Chandler Jones and Jamie Collins last year would let Jabaal Sheard and Chris Long walk while Dont'a Hightower remained unsigned. 

So, yeah, everything Patriots. Surprise!