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Why 2018’s Power Teams Are Sitting Out 2019 Free Agency
The Cowboys—loaded with young talent that they want to be able to take care off down road—are an example of why last season’s playoff teams have mostly avoided making a free agency splash so far. Why spend big (read: overpay) in what’s seen as a weak year for free agents?
By Albert Breer
March 18, 2019
all the craziness.
It is, quite honestly, what the Jones family has learned, through success and failure, about running a team in the NFL’s salary cap era, now in its 26th year.
“The biggest thing is just that free agency, I just don’t think you can make a living there,” Dallas COO Stephen Jones said over the phone around lunchtime on Sunday. “That’s what we’ve always said. I think you’re overpaying in free agency most of the time. [Free agents] are overvalued, because you’re competing in a market where you’ve got teams that don’t have as many players they have to spend on, have to use cap space on.
“And the other thing is, I don’t think you’re ever one player away. It’s a building process. You’ve got to have some really good quarterbacking to win championships, but you’ve got to put a good team around him. That whole theory that you’re one player away, it’s one that we don’t buy into like you might’ve in the past.”
Here’s the genesis of my conversation with Jones and a handful of other teams over the weekend: I spent some time looking at which teams have and haven’t spent since the market opened in earnest last Monday (and earlier than that on street free agents). What I found was staggering. And it’s so simple that you can really explain it in five words.
Most good teams didn’t spend.
https://www.si.com/nfl/2019/03/18/f...l&utm_campaign=themmqb&utm_source=twitter.com
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My big question is why is this argument dumbed down to thinking if you don't go crazy in free agency that you are somehow smart?
There is a thing called a happy medium.
Once you have built the foundation, there can always be a roof added to the top to finish quickly.
People should not get upset that the Cowboys didn't get three or four expensive free agents.
But a well-placed precision strike is not the end of the world either.
The claim made in the article that good teams don't spend is not exactly true.
Teams like New England (Gilmore) and the Rams (Suh) added impact players that aided their cause.
Just call this what it is. Being cheap and thinking you are smarter than everyone else and you can just outwit everyone in April.
The Cowboys—loaded with young talent that they want to be able to take care off down road—are an example of why last season’s playoff teams have mostly avoided making a free agency splash so far. Why spend big (read: overpay) in what’s seen as a weak year for free agents?
By Albert Breer
March 18, 2019
all the craziness.
It is, quite honestly, what the Jones family has learned, through success and failure, about running a team in the NFL’s salary cap era, now in its 26th year.
“The biggest thing is just that free agency, I just don’t think you can make a living there,” Dallas COO Stephen Jones said over the phone around lunchtime on Sunday. “That’s what we’ve always said. I think you’re overpaying in free agency most of the time. [Free agents] are overvalued, because you’re competing in a market where you’ve got teams that don’t have as many players they have to spend on, have to use cap space on.
“And the other thing is, I don’t think you’re ever one player away. It’s a building process. You’ve got to have some really good quarterbacking to win championships, but you’ve got to put a good team around him. That whole theory that you’re one player away, it’s one that we don’t buy into like you might’ve in the past.”
Here’s the genesis of my conversation with Jones and a handful of other teams over the weekend: I spent some time looking at which teams have and haven’t spent since the market opened in earnest last Monday (and earlier than that on street free agents). What I found was staggering. And it’s so simple that you can really explain it in five words.
Most good teams didn’t spend.
https://www.si.com/nfl/2019/03/18/f...l&utm_campaign=themmqb&utm_source=twitter.com
----
My big question is why is this argument dumbed down to thinking if you don't go crazy in free agency that you are somehow smart?
There is a thing called a happy medium.
Once you have built the foundation, there can always be a roof added to the top to finish quickly.
People should not get upset that the Cowboys didn't get three or four expensive free agents.
But a well-placed precision strike is not the end of the world either.
The claim made in the article that good teams don't spend is not exactly true.
Teams like New England (Gilmore) and the Rams (Suh) added impact players that aided their cause.
Just call this what it is. Being cheap and thinking you are smarter than everyone else and you can just outwit everyone in April.