I think I’ve decided that what I like about the NFL is the league’s ability to make it feel like a new season of your favorite show without any of the wayward, Season 2 of The Wire divergences that upset a sizable number of viewers (I happened to love the docks and Frank Sobotka, but know that I am in the minority). Through some kind of mass syndrome, teams trick themselves into different stages of the same disease—Going all in with a rookie quarterback! Spending top dollar to pretend players still want to come here! Trading all the good players for draft picks! Trading all the draft picks for good players!—which means the actual content only passes from locale to locale like a kind of fog. 

We all like something different. I happen to enjoy people getting their hopes up. 

With that in mind, it’s time to dish out our first set of winners and losers from the opening day of free agency … er, the legal tampering period. Because we’ve already seen so many seasons of this show, we can almost certainly make some accurate guesses as to how it will all end up (Prediction: Badly for everyone that isn’t the Philadelphia Eagles, Kansas City Chiefs or the small potpourri of teams with elite quarterbacks.)

I’m on the opposite side of the fence from many others here. The immediate reaction to the first wave of free agency was that the team did not supply Drake Maye with a top-tier target. But I suspect the Patriots hired Mike Vrabel to create a kind of superstar-agnostic roster full of greasy tough guys and durable vets, not to make sure the team broke the bank for Chris Godwin. Prying someone such as Godwin out of Tampa Bay or getting DK Metcalf to prefer your city over the possibility of playing with Mike Tomlin for a team that locks itself into a playoff spot almost every year is difficult. Linebacker Robert Spillane and tackle Morgan Moses are not the kind of moves that will put New England in many other winners’ columns, but they are the kind of moves that help them lock up a super ugly win over the Miami Dolphins in Week 16. 

Obviously, leapfrogging the Carolina Panthers to get Milton Williams, one of my favorite and among the most underrated defensive players in the league, is always going to get a team in my good graces. Recouping a pick for Davon Godchaux and finding an upgrade on their barren defensive line was a massive Day 1 victory. So, too, is taking a lot of pressure off the development of Christian Gonzalez with the signing of Carlton Davis. 

After the Saquon Barkley signing last season, I decided to abandon my judgment of position-specific spending. If a running back is a great, generational player, then pay him commensurate with the top of the market. If it’s an off-ball linebacker, so long as that player aids in your ability to become successful, then so be it. Instead of the typical year-two-of-a-rookie-QB offseason, the Broncos aren’t hurling money at aging veteran wideouts, they are signing tough, physical defensive players—former San Francisco 49ers defensive standouts Dre Greenlaw and Talanoa Hufanga—who can generate turnovers and aid in matchups against an increasingly physical set of divisional opponents. Allowing Sean Payton to cook and then supplying defensive coordinator Vance Joseph with even more artillery is simply good business. 

It’s possible to remake an offensive line in one offseason. But I think that the mistake we’re making here is equating Chicago’s free-agency (and trade season) splurge on Jonah Jackson, Drew Dalman and Joe Thuney to the Detroit Lions’ roster build because of Ben Johnson. No team can match heft with Detroit and Johnson knows this. But, Johnson can aid in the development of the quarterback by sealing up the interior of the offensive line with heady veterans who are, at the very least, going to understand the fundamentals of how to call and set protections. During the moments when the complicated matter was removed from Caleb Williams’s plate last season, he looked like a quasar; a total phenom. The more plate-clearing for Williams, the better.

I’m a big fan of betting on your evaluation process and culture. The Texans, after setting the foundation of the DeMeco Ryans era, have now dealt Laremy Tunsil. At first glance, this presents an uphill optical battle for a team that struggled to protect its quarterback a year ago, giving up 68 sacks including eight in an AFC divisional playoff loss to the Kansas City Chiefs. But this could also be read as a clearing of space for C.J. Stroud to take over the room from an emotional perspective and for Houston to use that draft capital and find an offensive line solution that better fits its changing offensive profile with new coordinator Nick Caley. Caley comes from both a Rams and Patriots background, which means it may be best to get new, more athletic bodies capable and interested in a myriad of inside- and outside-zone concepts. 

I think the Seahawks getting Sam Darnold at $33.5 million per season is a massive victory. I think we’re paralyzed by the way the season ended in Minnesota when I see the reality more closely aligned with this: Darnold struggled over the course of two games in an eight-day period in which a defensive coordinator saw weaknesses in Minnesota’s blitz protection system and took advantage of it (then, another coordinator copied it in the playoffs). If this was any other quarterback, we’d be talking about how the coach needs to adjust in some way. Instead, we’re suiting our own set-in-stone narratives about Darnold, whom we cannot believe has actually grown as a passer. The Seahawks get younger and cheaper, while pairing Darnold with a bootleg-heavy offensive coordinator in Klint Kubiak who will get Darnold throwing on the run, which is what he does best. If Seattle finally crystalizes a run game, we won’t have to worry about how Darnold fares against all-out blitzes every week. 

I am admittedly a huge sucker for quarterback reclamation projects and have long been obsessed with the wayward journeys of former highly drafted QBs. But Wilson and Mike McDaniel legitimately intrigues me. McDaniel has been the architect of the single-most high-profile turnaround of a quarterback in recent memory, taking Tua Tagovailoa from an oft-benched, soon-to-be-replaced-by-Tom-Brady draft error to (kinda) MVP candidate on a long-term extension. If a coach could ever get Wilson to play confidently and in structure, he’d be a legitimate NFL starter. And if one coach could possibly reach Wilson after he fell into the woodchipper with the New York Jets, it’s McDaniel.

My full thoughts on the Jets are here, but in short: I think signing Justin Fields is a display of organizational competence in a tough spot. This game of quarterbacking musical chairs is going to flat-out embarrass a handful of franchises this year, and the Jets lined up a high-upside QB at a bargain rate without preventing themselves from adding in the draft. 

Garrett may be happy with his new contract, but his team has ended up in the losers’ column. / Tommy Gilligan-Imagn Images

The Browns are in such a perilous place optically that they were forced to sign Myles Garrett to a market-topping extension that affords him a complete no-trade clause simply to create the perception that all is well there. With the team wholly incapable of competing for a playoff victory right now, and very unlikely to do so during the meat of Garrett’s contract, this signing was simply a vehicle to ensure that a Hall of Fame player doesn’t walk away from Cleveland totally dejected, like so many other players who were important to the Browns’ rebooted franchise. A Garrett trade could have helped the team solve the pick deficit created by the horrific Deshaun Watson deal, but instead it looks as if the team is spending simply to keep the house in order. Leaning into the Watson mistake and recognizing that Garrett could have helped the team dig its way out would have at least felt bold enough to be admirable.   

I also don’t love the fact that this team has cycled through plenty of opportunities to develop some kind of backup quarterback option. The team had to trade Joe Flacco because he was too popular and now has to pay for the privilege of another team taking Dorian Thompson-Robinson away just to get a suitable No. 2 on the roster in Kenny Pickett. 

While I am choosing to dismiss the seriousness of the latest New York–area tabloid fodder—that former Giant Amani Toomer is suggesting no one wants to play for the Giants because the team is viewed as a sinking ship—the reality is that the Giants have been disturbingly behind the pace group when it comes to getting themselves a veteran quarterback. If the final result is Russell Wilson, this will be a predictable disaster—at that point, the Giants would have been far better off keeping Daniel Jones and trying to rehabilitate his confidence. The Giants needed a targeted offseason in which they were able to pick off a Rolodex of stable stars, starting with the quarterback. Instead, they seem to be like a foul ball chaser at a Major League Baseball game hoping something plops into their lap. I don’t envy Joe Schoen and Brian Daboll, whom I believe in as football people. The pair survived the axe this offseason, watched as Matthew Stafford climbed back on board with the Los Angeles Rams and are going to have to win games without the luxury of perception on their side. Having Darius Slayton as the most memorable offseason move, after the franchise had tried to part ways with him so many times, is the definition of starting the season off on the wrong foot. 

I absolutely loathe the all-in maneuver from teams that had a successful first year with a quarterback on a rookie contract. I understand that’s what we do, but I feel like the talent-gobbling process robs the quarterback of a kind of organic growth and ability to take over the locker room. Sure, it’s never a bad thing to get a Laremy Tunsil, but the Commanders shouldn’t be in any kind of rush. This team was dismantled by the Philadelphia Eagles in the playoffs and, had it not been for a few very fortunate victories, may not have even made the playoffs at all. This suite of high-mid-round picks that was forked over for a left tackle in his 30s who led the NFL in penalties a year ago could have been used to craft a team more in tune with what Jayden Daniels will become. Deebo Samuel, who can, at times, be a malcontent and whacked his kicker upside the head last year and sustained a heavy amount of mileage as a running back and receiver hybrid in a tough 49ers offense, also feels like he could have been recreated statistically through a good draft. 

Maybe part of this is my own perception of the situation matching with reality. But when you have an omnipresent figure like Brady, who has unique power and access, one would expect that the offseason would have had a more notable highlight than … whiffing on Stafford and Ben Johnson. And, again, maybe that is an error in our own perception, but this is someone who was billed as a game changer who was going to alter the course of both the coaching search and free agency, having drawn from his clandestine Patriots background when, in fact, he may just be a famous person.

Daniel Jones is now in the driver’s seat and has the opportunity to choose between two of the most gifted play-callers in the NFL—Kevin O’Connell and Shane Steichen. While I agree with the Giants ultimately letting Jones go, just like I did with Barkley, I can also very easily see a scenario where Jones blossoms in a role spelling either J.J. McCarthy or (more likely) Anthony Richardson. The rosters are different. The offenses are different. The entire ecosystem is different, but it would not alter a series of damning narrative chapters for the Giants, where two of their most recognizable recent players found career-altering success elsewhere. 

The theme of last season was bully ball and overall destruction (see: the Lions and Eagles). Of course, that’s difficult to replicate in one offseason, especially when Vrabel is back in the NFL trying to siphon each and every headbanger he can out of free agency. The same can be true of Jim Harbaugh, who will seemingly not rest until he has the Four Horsemen in his backfield (he’s reportedly interested in Najee Harris). The race is on for teams to try to get bigger, tougher and more physical, but unless clubs have been committed to it for a number of years, it’s going to be difficult to close the gap between, say, Jacksonville and Detroit. It’s a great idea in theory, but these players are not in deep supply and neither are the coaches who can coax out the best in them. We’re seeing massive payouts for even upper-middle-tier interior linemen like Aaron Banks. 

Javonte Williams! Congrats guys! Another totally committed offseason from totally committed owner Jerry Jones.