Free agents rarely worth the expense

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 14/02/2012 (5240 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Free agency is a lot like going to the movie store these days. It’s nice to walk around and look at all of the shiny DVD titles on the shelves (if you can find a movie store that’s still open) but no one is really using them anymore and it’s definitely out of style as a means of building your football team.

Gone are the days when teams would be erected or dismantled through free-agency gains or losses. No general manager of a football franchise wants to be thought of as a guy who slaps a new coat of paint on his house every year when it has a faulty foundation that will eventually need to be addressed. The most common sentiment about free agency right now is it is the place you go to overpay for things, and while it’s OK to lease a player or two, you definitely don’t want to do all of your shopping there.

Here are some reasons why.

It makes sense if the player is a valuable commodity and that the team he is already on has made him an offer. In the CFL, that opportunity to sign a player to a new deal starts from the day after the player signed his last contract all the way up to Wednesday at noon, three months after the end of the season that his contract has expired.

So, a day away from opening up the oceanic fish farm to the circling Orcas, the marquee free agents have already been given their best shot. The ball clubs are mere hours away from potentially losing all of their unsigned players, so the best of that bunch have definitely already found out what their maximum value is to their football team.

This logic tells us then that if the home franchise of a player can only afford to pay an athlete “X” amount of dollars, the very fact that he is choosing to go to free agency means he either doesn’t want to be there anymore or he thinks he is worth more and another team will opt to give it to him.

This progression works better for undervalued free agents, players that are not at elite status yet or whose abilities fit better in certain programs, but the very essence of a highly prized free agent hitting the market means he has already overpriced himself from one team.

So, if the team that probably wants him the most and has the longest-standing ties with him can no longer afford him, in the long run, can anybody else?

If you look at the New England Patriots, like everybody does, you will see they rarely make big splashes in free agency. They sign the odd undervalued player or two, like Andre Carter last year, like Deion Branch, somebody they think would excel in their system and with their coaching, and scoff at teams like the Washington Redskins as they print money to sign players like Albert Haynesworth and Donovan McNabb to bloated deals (yes, I realize the Patriots signed Haynesworth, but not to a $100-million deal. They grabbed him after he had been devalued, just like with Randy Moss). Then they show up in the Super Bowl on an almost yearly basis with half of their team sporting pedigrees as undrafted free agents.

That’s not to say all-stars on the open market can’t help your team. If Peyton Manning is medically cleared to play football again and the Indianapolis Colts release him before his $28-million bonus is due, owners will be tripping all over themselves like soccer moms on Boxing Day at a blowout sale.

I’m sure a player such as receiver Andy Fantuz would look and perform very nicely in Blue and Gold, but if Brendan Taman, the Saskatchewan Roughriders GM — a man who is not afraid to open the purse strings for a Canadian talent he wants (believe me I know) — did everything in his power to retain him, then what is it going to cost your franchise to acquire him?

Unless a free agent explicitly wants to leave a team, does the benefit of what he brings to the table greatly outweigh the costs of getting him there? Especially after he has already out-priced his own team?

This contemplation shouldn’t just be at the management end of the spectrum either. All too often, stars that shined so brightly in one football environment get eclipsed and muted in another. Great players need to realize the coaching, the team and the environment that got them to this elevated status may not necessarily be duplicated elsewhere.

Nothing is more common than free-agent players signing overvalued deals and not living up to the overinflated expectations, and finding themselves without any leverage or even on a team a year later, wishing they had never left the good thing they had going.

Doug Brown, once a hard-hitting defensive lineman and frequently a hard-hitting columnist, usually appears Tuesdays in the Free Press.