The 2024 NFL season is officially open as of Wednesday March 13th, but the legal negotiating window has given us plenty to look at over the past 48 hours. Monday got started with a flurry of moves with some of the biggest names getting taken off the market early.
Here’s the top storylines from the early part of free agency.
Kirk Cousins is the (contract) GOAT
Cousins will enter the 2024 season playing for guaranteed money for the 11th consecutive season. He was drafted in the 4th round in 2012 by the Washington Commanders and took over the starting job after Roger Griffin III faltered and dealt with injuries early on in his career. Washington was never set to commit to Cousins after his 4 year rookie deal expired, and had him play for back to back seasons on the franchise tag in 2016 and 2017. Cousins finally signed the long term deal he was searching for in 2018, joining the Vikings on a 3 year, $84 million contract that was fully guaranteed – something that was absolutely unprecedented at the time.
He then re-upped with the Vikings on a 2 year deal in 2020, and then turned that into a 1 year, $35 million dollar extension in 2022.
Now at 36 years old and coming off of a torn ACL, Cousins entered the free agent market as the top available quarterback. He leveraged that to earn himself a 4 year, $180 million contract with the Atlanta Falcons with $100 million guaranteed. According to Spotrac, the deal includes a $50 million signing bonus, and a $90 million dead cap hit in his first year. The money is guaranteed until after the 2025 season, giving him at least 2 more years of guaranteed money. Cousins’ career earnings to date sits at $231,669,486, and if he is able to play out the entirety of this contract, he’ll have made over $400 million after the 2027 season. Not bad for a quarterback who is often criticized for not being good in the big moments and having virtually no record of any kind of playoff success.
The fit in Atlanta makes a ton of sense. The Falcons offense in 2023 was at the bottom of the league in points scored, passing offense and red zone ratings, partly due to Arthur Smith’s perplexing approach, but largely due to Desmond Ridder’s performances – particularly turnovers in key moments. The offense is loaded with talent – Bijan Robinson is already a star at running back, Drake London has all the tools to become an elite WR1, and, while the start of his career has been an absolute disappointment, Kyle Pitts was highly regarded as a tight end prospect for a reason.
The new coaching staff, led by player friendly head coach Raheem Morris and former Rams coach Zac Robinson now have the quarterback to open up the offense and take advantage of the tools they’ve been gifted.
The Falcons also have the luxury of a top 10 pick in the upcoming draft as they’ll select 8th overall on April 25th. With their need at quarterback taken care of, their options with that pick are endless. Quarterbacks are expected to go with the top 3 picks, but many pundits think that 4-5 have the potential to go in the top 10-12. The Falcons are in a prime position to take advantage of other team’s needs and potentially trade down and collect more assets, draft a top 3 rookie receiver, or even take the best defensive player available with their pick.
Atlanta’s division is the weakest in the NFL. The Bucs made a surprising run last season led by Baker Mayfield and Mike Evans, both of whom will be back next season, but lost offensive coordinator Dave Canales (new head coach of the Carolina Panthers) so it’s hard to predict how strong the offense will be in Tampa. The Saints have dug themselves so deep in a cap hole that they can’t make the much needed improvements required for their team in 2024, and the Panthers are just a disaster. Singing Cousins immediately makes the Falcons division favorites and serves notice to the rest of the league that this offense can be one that keeps defensive coordinators up at night – provided that cash Cousins comes back healthy.
The Panthers are a Disaster
The Carolina Panthers were by far the worst team in the NFL in 2023. And if early indications are a sign of things to come, they’ll be even worse in 2024. But hey, at least they have their 1st round pick next year.
By now we’re all aware of the mistakes of last season – trading up for the #1 overall pick for an undersized quarterback who has problems throwing in the middle of the field cost them the #1 pick this year (likely Caleb Williams, a true starting NFL quarterback), a WR1 in D.J. Moore, the 9th pick last year (used to draft starting offensive lineman Darnell Wright), the 61st overall pick in 2023 (used to draft CB Tyrique Stevenson) and still owe their 2025 second round pick to the Bears. Go back a previous year and take into account that the Panthers also traded away the best running back in the league in Christian McCaffrey for four picks (none higher than a 2nd), and that’s now their 3 best players being moved out in the past 2 years.
Their blunders are continuing to plague this franchise, now with the embarrassing return they received from trading star edge rusher Brian Burns on Monday. Verified reports say that there was an offer made by the Los Angeles Rams in 2022 that involved two 1st round picks and a 2nd rounder in exchange for Burns, which the Panthers turned down. Ok, fine. They believed they had a roster that could make a run at the playoffs (spoiler, they didn’t), and Burns was obviously a huge part of their defense. Last season, they had a chance to get an equal return for Burns both before the season and as the trade deadline neared. Despite their season obviously being a waste, they decided to hang on to Burns, who was in the final year of his contract.
Burns, who was still operating on his rookie deal, has been in the middle of trade rumors for what seems like his entire career, and had shown no indications that he was willing to sign an extension with the Panthers.
The wasted season ends, and the Panthers do the only thing they can do – franchise tag Burns to protect him as an asset. Unfortunately there were no teams in the league that believed that gave the Panthers any leverage. An extension for Burns wasn’t going to come out of thin air and tie him to this sinking ship, so their leverage evaporated just like that.
What once could have been two 1st rounds picks suddenly turned into a paltry return on Monday afternoon, as the Panthers shipped Burns to the New York Giants for the 39th overall pick in the 2024 draft and a 2025 5th round pick (which is basically what the Giants got when they traded Leonard Williams at the deadline last season). The Giants then immediately locked up Burns to a 5 year, $141 million deal ($87 million guaranteed), solidifying their defensive line for the foreseeable future.
Is that a rich deal? Yes, of course. Is it an unreasonable, blow up the market deal? Not at all – Burns is still getting paid less than Nick Bosa in San Francisco per season, so it didn’t reset the market for edge rushers by any means. The Panthers have a ton of cap space and virtually no good players – they should have done everything in their power to get this deal done 2 seasons ago, but completely dropped the ball again.
Panthers owner David Tepper is notoriously hands-on with his franchise, and it hasn’t yielded good results, with the Burns deal only the latest in a series of comedic errors. They held onto Burns for far too long, and finally traded him when his value was at the absolute lowest. The Giants are getting a high end player at a premium position who’s only 25 years old that will anchor their defense for the next 5 years, while the Panthers are stuck with nothing to show for their best asset. Their team has no high end talent on the roster whatsoever, and their draft history over the past few years doesn’t lead you to believe that they’ll be able to pick out some later round studs to supplement their roster. Thus far in free agency they’ve added 2 guards (Robert Hunt and Damien Lewis) which was a huge need for the team, especially with Bryce Young at quarterback, but after wasting their cap on older (washed) players last offseason, they aren’t in line to make any major improvements for 2024. Time to start scouting the 2025 draft class.
The Running Back Market Is (sort of) Back
We’ve heard for years that running backs are simply not worth spending money on, so there was plenty of uncertainty entering this offseason with possibly the deepest class of free agents at the position in NFL history. The Chicago Bears opened up the market with the first reported deal of the day, agreeing to terms with former Lion/Eagle D’Andre Swift on a 3 year $24 million deal to start things off, and the deals kept coming from there.
Nine running backs agreed to deals on Monday alone, and while no one reset the market by any means, there was some decent money handed out to the upper echelon of running backs. Saquon Barkley (Eagles) and Josh Jacobs (Packers) both exceeded expectations by signing deals worth north of $12 million per season to top the market, but even the 2nd tier had Swift, Derrick Henry (Ravens) and Tony Pollard (Titans) reaching the $8 million per season mark.
It’s notable that for all these players, the longest deal was for 4 years (Josh Jacobs), with most other contracts settling in at 2-3 years with very easy outs for the team if things go downhill (note that the Packers can also easily get out of the Jacobs deal as soon as the 2025 offseason as only $12.5 million is guaranteed). So while it’s fun to see all these elite talents at a skill position change teams and get paid for their services, there still isn’t the commitment from teams to running backs that we see at other positions.
Another noticeable trend in the running back market is one that was very easy to predict – the NFL is terrified of backs who are approaching their 30’s. Aaron Jones was reportedly asked by the Packers to take a 50% pay cut for this coming season (this is after he already restructured for them last offseason) despite topping 100 scrimmage yards for the team in each of their last 5 games. He refused, and the Packers just simply cut him and signed Jacobs, who is 3 years younger. Jones then signed with divisional rival Minnesota, so he has a chance to show his former team what they are missing out on twice a season.
The Bengals went the same route, parting ways with 27 year old Joe Mixon to get about a year and a half younger with Zach Moss. Austin Ekeler, who is clearly coming off a down season, signed an extremely cheap deal with the Commanders as he approaches his 29th birthday.
The running back carousel was exciting to watch, but it’s like an eclipse – things lined up perfectly this offseason with multiple big names hitting the market and a fairly weak running back draft class (in terms of high end talent at least). Don’t expect this much excitement at the position every year, but enjoy it while it lasts.
The Rest of the Quarterbacks
Quarterback is obviously the most important position in football, and there were plenty of developments that will shape the draft and the 2024 season.
It started over the weekend with Russell Wilson reportedly is set to sign the veteran minimum to join the Pittsburgh Steelers as he’s still being paid just shy of $40 million from the Broncos. He’s coming off of the two worst seasons of his career but is still ranked ahead of Kenny Pickett in almost every metric. He gives the Steelers more options in the coming draft – they weren’t likely to have any viable starting options in the first round with the 20th overall pick, so Wilson gives them a chance to fill a need elsewhere and draft a developmental QB later on.
Baker Mayfield then re-upped in Tampa Bay, turning his 1 year, $4 million dollar prove it season into a healthy 3 year, $100 million deal, taking away a viable option for many of the QB needy teams who believe they’re in win now mode.
Cousins, as discussed, was the big fish in the small pond, and after he signed with the Falcons, all the other quarterback needy teams started to make their moves.
The Las Vegas Raiders signed Gardner Minshew to the second richest QB contract this offseason (2 years, $25 million) to compete with either Aiden O’Connell or an incoming rookie quarterback. Their other free agent signings show that they’re clearly striving to become a true contender as soon as possible, and it really feels like they’ll be gunning to move up in the draft and take a quarterback if the opportunity presents itself. If they can’t make a move to get a day 1 starter, Minshew gives them some reliability at the position while they develop someone like 21 year old J.J. McCarthy.
Minnesota, who was forced to move onto plan B, snagged Sam Darnold to (temporarily) replace Cousins, and, like the Raiders, now have a stop gap in place if the draft doesn’t fall their way.
Sitting with the 3rd overall pick, the Patriots, who recently traded away 2023 starter Mac Jones for a 6th round pick, signed a solid veteran in Jacoby Brissett, giving them flexibility in the draft. Early rumors have them taking Jayden Daniels (assuming Caleb Williams and Drake Maye go in the first two picks), but if they aren’t enamored with the undersized athletic quarterback, they can certainly trade back for an absolute haul, or take a franchise changing wide receiver in Marvin Harrison Jr. and worry about finding their long term option at quarterback later on.
A couple of teams in desperate need of a solid backup also made some shrewd signings. The Cleveland Browns cannot be even remotely impressed with what they’ve gotten from Deshaun Watson thus far, but after giving him a fully guaranteed contract, they have no way out of the deal. Joe Flacco proved to be a better option at running Kevin Stefanski’s offense, so the Browns went out and got themselves another high risk gunslinger in Jameis Winston. We know what Winston is at this point of his career – a high risk high reward player that founded the 30 touchdown 30 interception club, but don’t be surprised if Winston ends up getting some starts in 2024.
The Jets also went and found a solid backup quarterback (only a year too late) in Tyrod Taylor. Taylor could never break through to be a true starter, but has been a top tier back up for the past few seasons and gives the Jets insurance in case 40 year old Aaron Rodgers isn’t back to full health after tearing his achilles last season.
While all of this is going on, the trade market for Justin Fields remains absolutely barren. The Bears have all but declared that they’re ready to move on from Fields, but there doesn’t seem to be any suitors for him at this point of the offseason. Maybe the Bears asking price is too high, or maybe teams just truly don’t see him as a starter, but it looks like he’ll have to wait until later in the offseason to see what jersey he’ll be wearing in September.
While not a headlining grabbing free agent class, there are plenty of interesting moves to take away from the quarterback signings that could play big roles as we move towards the season.
Interior Lineman are Getting Paid
Just hours before the legal negotiation window opened on Monday, the Philadelphia Eagles announced that they had signed Landon Dickerson to a massive 4 year, $84 million extension that will keep him with the club into his 30’s and give him the highest AAV for a guard in league history. Dickerson is a very, very good player, but he was just the 7th ranked guard in pass blocking and the 17th overall ranked guard in 2023 (per PFF), so the scope of the deal was surprising to say the least.
However, once free agency opened up, it was obvious that this was a trend across the league. The Panthers threw 5 years and $100 million at Robert Hunt (6th overall per PFF) and 4 years and $53 million at Damien Lewis, the Rams extended Kevin Dotson (3 year $48 million, 2nd overall) and signed Jonah Jackson (3 years $51 million, 34th overall). Jon Runyan (47th overall) got 3 years and $30 million from the Giants while the Patriots kept Mike Onwenu for 3 more years at $57 million (although he spent more time at tackle in 2023 than at guard).
Add in the massive deals for centers Lloyd Cushenberry (4 year, $50 million) and Tyler Biadasz (3 year $30 million) and it’s clear that the free agent interior linemen this year seemed to be some of the biggest benefactors of the massive bump in the salary cap.
Each of these massive deals are easily explainable as well – the Rams clearly need to do whatever they can to keep interior pressure away from Matthew Stafford as he’s becoming less and less mobile the older he gets, the Panthers need to do the same for Bryce Young if he has any hope of showing some promise as an NFL quarterback, and the Eagles rely so heavily on their interior blocking as a major part of their run game. Playing guard in the NFL is a nasty, under-appreciated role, so it’s nice to see this wave of free agency finally throw some financial support towards these key cogs of the offense.
-Devon Gallant
Twitter: @DevGallant
Photo: All-Pro Reels. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.