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Learning From Chip Kelly And Other Genius GMs: Free Agency Mistakes The Cowboys Should Avoid
http://www.bloggingtheboys.com/2016...genius-gms-free-agency-mistakes-cowboys-avoid
Free agency officially kicks off in exactly 30 days. At 4:00 pm EST on March 9 (notwithstanding the three-day official tampering period prior to that), hundreds of free agents will be eager to sign new contracts, and all of them share one defining characteristic: their old team did not want to re-sign them, at least not for the price the player is demanding. That in itself should make every acquiring team wary of the free agents on offer.
Unless of course you have a genius running your team intent on proving that Madden Franchise works in real life. Last week, ESPN's Mike Sando went back and reviewed his offseason grades for all 32 NFL teams. His conclusion: Chip Kelly's Eagles had the worst offseason of any NFL team.
The moves Chip Kelly made in his lone season with full control over personnel are threatening to set the organization back for some time, especially because he's no longer around to advocate for the players he added last offseason. DeMarco Murray, Sam Bradford and Byron Maxwell fell short of collective expectations to a degree that seemed almost unimaginable.
Today we'll look at six common free agency mistakes the Cowboys should be particularly wary of in 2016. The first three come courtesy of Chip Kelly's Dream Team as an example of what not to do, the other three are collected from other genius GMs around the league.
1. The veteran running back
The Cowboys will probably draft a running back somewhere in this year's draft, and they could also bring in a veteran running back as extra insurance. But spending big money on a veteran free agent running back is not exactly the sign of a forward-thinking organization. This is a lesson the Cowboys had to learn the hard way when they made Marion Barber one of the highest paid running backs in the league in 2008, only to release him two years later and take a huge cap hit in the process.
But that mistake is not unique to the Cowboys. In fact, it happens every year in the NFL. The table below features the top nine free agent running backs that changed teams in 2015, and how their production changed from 2014 to 2015.
Player/Team/Contract/Yards 2014/Yards 2015
DeMarco MurrayDAL/PHI/5 years, $40 million/1,845/702
LeSean McCoyPHI/BUF/5 years, $40 million/1,319/895
C.J.SpillerBUF/NO/4 years, $16 million/300/112
Shane VereenNE/NYG/3 years, $12.4 million/391/260
Frank GoreSFO/IND/3 years, $12 million1,106/967
Ryan MathewsSD/PHI/3 years, $11 million/330/539
Roy HeluWAS/OAK/2 years, $4.1 million/216/39
DeAngelo WilliamsCAR/PIT/2 years, $4 million/219/907
Darren McFaddenOAK/DAL/2 years, $3 million/534/1,089
Only two of the nine backs managed to improve on their 2014 performance after signing elsewhere. You may think this a fluke, but the results look similar for almost every year. There simply are not a lot of running backs in the league that get better with age, and those that do, or those that are able to maintain a high performance over a long time, hardly ever hit free agency.
If you were paying premium dollar for a 1,000+ yard rusher and only got a fraction of that in return the following year, would you feel you made a good investment?
You could look at free agent performance drops for any position and for almost any stat, and you'd probably end up with similar results (which is exactly what we'll do further down this post). It's called regression to the mean and it occurs in almost all data sets that compare one period to another.
The key heading into free agency is to find players whom you can pay for potential instead of past performance (which they are unlikely to repeat).
Chip Kelly went and signed DeMarco Murray anyway.
2. The veteran defender from a top defense
There probably isn't a single Seahawks defensive starter that wouldn't be considered an immediate and significant upgrade for the Cowboys defense. But would a Seahawks defender really be as effective in Dallas - playing in the Cowboys defensive scheme, next to 10 other Cowboys defenders - as he was in Seattle?
Chip Kelly, looking at the Eagles defense, may have asked himself those same questions about how Byron Maxwell of the Seahawks would fit into the Philly defense. If he did, he probably thought it wouldn't be an issue. Except it was.
The issue with a veteran defender from a top defense is that you're never sure whether the player you're acquiring is good because of his talent, because of the scheme his team employed, or because of the teammates he played alongside. If the Cowboys are looking for a veteran defender, their best bet would be to sign a good player playing on a bad defense.
Team success can often obscure the view of individual performance. And the same holds true for a veteran defender from a high-caliber defense: Make sure you're buying a top quality product, not an average player with a big-name pedigree...
http://www.bloggingtheboys.com/2016...genius-gms-free-agency-mistakes-cowboys-avoid
Free agency officially kicks off in exactly 30 days. At 4:00 pm EST on March 9 (notwithstanding the three-day official tampering period prior to that), hundreds of free agents will be eager to sign new contracts, and all of them share one defining characteristic: their old team did not want to re-sign them, at least not for the price the player is demanding. That in itself should make every acquiring team wary of the free agents on offer.
Unless of course you have a genius running your team intent on proving that Madden Franchise works in real life. Last week, ESPN's Mike Sando went back and reviewed his offseason grades for all 32 NFL teams. His conclusion: Chip Kelly's Eagles had the worst offseason of any NFL team.
The moves Chip Kelly made in his lone season with full control over personnel are threatening to set the organization back for some time, especially because he's no longer around to advocate for the players he added last offseason. DeMarco Murray, Sam Bradford and Byron Maxwell fell short of collective expectations to a degree that seemed almost unimaginable.
Today we'll look at six common free agency mistakes the Cowboys should be particularly wary of in 2016. The first three come courtesy of Chip Kelly's Dream Team as an example of what not to do, the other three are collected from other genius GMs around the league.
1. The veteran running back
The Cowboys will probably draft a running back somewhere in this year's draft, and they could also bring in a veteran running back as extra insurance. But spending big money on a veteran free agent running back is not exactly the sign of a forward-thinking organization. This is a lesson the Cowboys had to learn the hard way when they made Marion Barber one of the highest paid running backs in the league in 2008, only to release him two years later and take a huge cap hit in the process.
But that mistake is not unique to the Cowboys. In fact, it happens every year in the NFL. The table below features the top nine free agent running backs that changed teams in 2015, and how their production changed from 2014 to 2015.
Player/Team/Contract/Yards 2014/Yards 2015
DeMarco MurrayDAL/PHI/5 years, $40 million/1,845/702
LeSean McCoyPHI/BUF/5 years, $40 million/1,319/895
C.J.SpillerBUF/NO/4 years, $16 million/300/112
Shane VereenNE/NYG/3 years, $12.4 million/391/260
Frank GoreSFO/IND/3 years, $12 million1,106/967
Ryan MathewsSD/PHI/3 years, $11 million/330/539
Roy HeluWAS/OAK/2 years, $4.1 million/216/39
DeAngelo WilliamsCAR/PIT/2 years, $4 million/219/907
Darren McFaddenOAK/DAL/2 years, $3 million/534/1,089
Only two of the nine backs managed to improve on their 2014 performance after signing elsewhere. You may think this a fluke, but the results look similar for almost every year. There simply are not a lot of running backs in the league that get better with age, and those that do, or those that are able to maintain a high performance over a long time, hardly ever hit free agency.
If you were paying premium dollar for a 1,000+ yard rusher and only got a fraction of that in return the following year, would you feel you made a good investment?
You could look at free agent performance drops for any position and for almost any stat, and you'd probably end up with similar results (which is exactly what we'll do further down this post). It's called regression to the mean and it occurs in almost all data sets that compare one period to another.
The key heading into free agency is to find players whom you can pay for potential instead of past performance (which they are unlikely to repeat).
Chip Kelly went and signed DeMarco Murray anyway.
2. The veteran defender from a top defense
There probably isn't a single Seahawks defensive starter that wouldn't be considered an immediate and significant upgrade for the Cowboys defense. But would a Seahawks defender really be as effective in Dallas - playing in the Cowboys defensive scheme, next to 10 other Cowboys defenders - as he was in Seattle?
Chip Kelly, looking at the Eagles defense, may have asked himself those same questions about how Byron Maxwell of the Seahawks would fit into the Philly defense. If he did, he probably thought it wouldn't be an issue. Except it was.
The issue with a veteran defender from a top defense is that you're never sure whether the player you're acquiring is good because of his talent, because of the scheme his team employed, or because of the teammates he played alongside. If the Cowboys are looking for a veteran defender, their best bet would be to sign a good player playing on a bad defense.
Team success can often obscure the view of individual performance. And the same holds true for a veteran defender from a high-caliber defense: Make sure you're buying a top quality product, not an average player with a big-name pedigree...
