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It's always tough to wrap your brain around the first day of NFL free agency's legal tampering period. Just matching name and team for the first time feels weird. Josh Jacobs of the ... Packers? Falcons quarterback Kirk Cousins? Offensive lineman Robert Hunt becoming a member of the league's nine-figure-contract club? After weeks of rumors and attempts to connect the free agent dots, actually seeing things play out in a matter of hours can be overwhelming. That's why I'm here. Let's try to break down the winners and losers from what amounts to the first day of NFL free agency. What might look like a winner in March could play out like a loser in September and October, of course, but consider this an attempt to evaluate how teams viewed the market, built their rosters and which players and teams got squeezed in the process. Subscribe: "The Bill Barnwell Show" We can start with a position that for once didn't feel like it was being left out in free agency: Jump to a section:
Free agent RBs | RB cuts | Guards
Lions D | Texans D | Justin Fields
Dolphins | Eagles | Panthers | Vikings   Winners: Free agent running backsWith one of the deepest and most viable running back classes ever hitting free agency, there were reasons to be concerned the spring of 2024 could look like the summer of 2023, when a group of well-regarded veterans who had become cap casualties or had been franchise-tagged were hung out to dry for months. When those backs all struggled to live up to expectations in 2024, the market seemed like it could have been even more cutthroat. Owing to a variety of factors, we didn't see that same freeze in the market during Day 1 of free agency. Nine rushers who project to either be the lead back or the 1A in a rotation signed with teams Monday. Of the seven unrestricted free agents in the top four tiers of my look at the free agent running back class, the only one who didn't sign Monday was Derrick Henry, whose role with the Titans appears to have been taken by Tony Pollard.
Why did this class have more success finding opportunities than the likes of Dalvin Cook and Ezekiel Elliott last summer? Timing and talent. Cook and Elliott hit free agency as cap casualties after teams had spent the majority of their free agent cash. They had less tread on their tires than the majority of the backs in this class, several of whom are coming off their rookie deals. Cook and his fellow unrestricted free agents had names that were more notable than their recent performances. You could make that case for some of the backs in this group, but it's easier to expect someone like Jacobs or Saquon Barkley to produce a peak year next season than Cook or Elliott heading into 2023. At the same time, the market of years past took its toll on the top of the class this year. We don't have full contract details for many of these signings yet, and we know the prices that leak during the legal tampering period are almost always too optimistic and include every incentive and unguaranteed dollar. As I wrote about Monday, as an example, Baker Mayfield's three-year, $115 million deal is actually a one-year pact for $40 million with everything else unguaranteed for Mayfield's level of play. Big difference. Even with the best-case numbers floating around, this market still lags behind the growth of the cap and the rises at other positions. Relative to the cap, the largest multiyear deals in terms of average annual salary in recent memory date back to 2011, when Adrian Peterson signed a six-year, $86.3 million extension with the Vikings and Chris Johnson inked a four-year, $54 million deal with the Titans. Those contracts amounted to 12% and 11.2% of the salary cap at the time by average annual salary. The market doesn't come close to those marks anymore. The last Pro Bowl-caliber running back to hit unrestricted free agency and land a significant deal before Monday was Le'Veon Bell, who signed a four-year, $52.5 million deal with the Jets in 2019. You'll note that number is slightly less in raw money than what Johnson signed for eight years earlier. It represented 7% of the cap at the time. To produce a similar-sized deal to Bell's in 2024, a running back would have needed to receive $53.6 million for three years or $71.5 million over four seasons. Instead, Barkley's three-year deal with the Eagles is for $37.5 million, which is 4.9% of the salary cap. That's less than what Gabe Davis signed for with the Jaguars. Jacobs' four-year deal with the Packers is for $48 million, or 4.7% of the current cap. These deals lag well behind what Bell received from the Jets and are narrowly ahead of what Jerick McKinnon got when he signed with the 49ers in 2018 (4.2% of the cap). McKinnon was a backup being signed to play a starter's role. Barkley and Jacobs are former first-round picks coming off a season on the franchise tag. We also have the terms for Jacobs' deal, and they revealed he really is signed to a one-year, $14 million contract. That's $2 million more than a second franchise tag, but it also basically leaves him in the hands of going year-to-year with the Packers after the 2024 season without any leverage to get a new deal. He might have traded a little more up front for the risk of not having a second guaranteed season, but if he didn't get a second guaranteed year, it's tough to believe many of the backs below him landed a full guarantee for their second season. D'Andre Swift was one of the exceptions, as his three-year, $24 million deal with the Bears was the first deal of the day. He landed $16.5 million in practical guarantees over his first two seasons in Chicago, suggesting he could end up as the lead back ahead of Roschon Johnson. (A practical guarantee includes the money that is guaranteed for skill in such a way that it's likely to be exercised; in this case, $6.1 million of Swift's $7.4 million salary in 2025 is already guaranteed, making it exceedingly likely he will be in position to both earn the full $7.4 million and compete for his per-game roster and workout bonuses.) Even that deal, though, has an average annual salary amounting to 3.2% of the cap. Swift and Pollard landed starting deals that amount to about what players such as Nyheim Hines and Austin Ekeler signed for when they were 1B receiving backs with their former teams a few years ago. What happened here is the league appears to have found an equilibrium. While the cap kept going up, running back salaries either stayed stagnant or ran in the opposite direction. We're now at a point where even top-end deals for running backs are well behind what middling second wide receivers and solid guards are earning in free agency. Peterson's six-year deal, converted to 2024 dollars, would be for $180 million. No back, not even Christian McCaffrey, is getting close to $30 million per season on a new deal. Barkley, whom I had as a franchise-caliber back in my running back tiers, didn't even get one-third of that figure in terms of average annual salary, and he won't get the same guarantee structure. Are backs still undervalued? Maybe. It's tough to believe former Seahawks backup tight end Colby Parkinson is about as likely to impact games as Swift or Pollard, who landed in a similar price range, but that's what the market suggests. The same issues plaguing backs still apply: There are more useful backs to go around than opportunities for those players, and the league has shifted more of its spending on the running game to the offensive line. I don't see those dynamics going away anytime soon. We're now at the point where the cap has risen high enough for backs to make significant money without limiting what a team can do at other positions. Would a team rather take a one-year flier on Jacobs ($14 million) or the 2023 version of Odell Beckham Jr. ($15 million)? Would it rather sign Barkley or Davis? This is a more extreme version of the tight end arbitrage that has popped up around the league, where the top of the tight end market has led to stars such as Travis Kelce and George Kittle making what amounts to second-wideout money. It's not the future running backs might have hoped for when they got on that Zoom call last summer in terms of compensation, but we're not going to see the nightmare scenario of a half-dozen great backs languishing on the market for months that we ran through last year. That feels like a victory.
Losers: Non-free agent running backsNote: This section was written before the Bengals decided to trade Joe Mixon to the Texans instead of releasing him, and before Aaron Jones signed with the Vikings. One of the reasons nine backs found starting jobs Monday? Two teams opened up jobs by cutting their incumbents. The Packers signed Jacobs and then cut Aaron Jones shortly thereafter, while the Bengals signed Zack Moss and cut longtime starter Joe Mixon. Jones and Mixon now find themselves entering a market where most of the starting jobs are taken and the teams interested in spending money on running backs have made their decisions, which is the same uncomfortable spot Cook and Elliott landed in a year ago. The two decisions seemingly came out of two different scenarios. For the Packers, it was a matter of the league's youngest team getting younger. They'll actually pay more for Jacobs in 2024 than they would have for Jones, who was set to make just under $12 million before being released. Jacobs is three years younger than his counterpart, though, and Jones was entering the final year of his deal. Green Bay might have felt Jacobs was a similar back and preferred the leverage of having him signed to a non-guaranteed deal for each of the next three seasons, even if Jones had been a more productive player in Green Bay over much of the prior few seasons. With the Bengals, they're saving about $2 million by going from Mixon to Moss. Mixon had already taken a pay cut to stay on the roster and avoid the free agent drain last summer, but with Cincinnati franchise-tagging Tee Higgins and further feeling the effects of the Joe Burrow extension, he was a cap casualty. He managed 1,057 rushing yards and 12 touchdowns a year ago, but Moss was more efficient by stats such as success rate and rush yards over expectation. There's going to be pressure on other veteran backs to take pay cuts as well. Nick Chubb's $11.8 million base salary seems unsustainable for a player coming off a serious knee injury. Alvin Kamara is due $11.7 million for the Saints after three middling seasons without Drew Brees. It's tough to envision those players back on their existing teams at the same salary.
 Incomplete: The EaglesOf all the teams to take a swing at the top of the running back market, the Eagles might have been somewhere in the bottom quarter of the likely suitors for Saquon Barkley. Outside of Chip Kelly's lone season usurping power from general manager Howie Roseman in 2015, which saw Philadelphia sign DeMarco Murray and Ryan Mathews and attempt to add Frank Gore, the Eagles have been the quintessential example in a league that has valued offensive linemen as the driving forces of the ground game over running backs. Roseman signed LeSean McCoy to an extension in 2012, but under the longtime general manager's tenure, the Eagles have treated running back as a position they can fill on the cheap. They have either drafted their backs (Miles Sanders), traded for players on the cheap (Jay Ajayi, Darren Sproles and D'Andre Swift) or signed backs to modest deals in free agency (LeGarrette Blount and Jordan Howard). They've also typically gone with a committee approach, which would steer the organization away from making a big investment in one particular player. Well, seeing what happened to the Eagles at the end of 2023 made a lot of people reconsider how they felt about the franchise. One of those people appears to be Roseman, who made a decision I never would have expected Monday in signing Barkley to a three-year, $37.5 million pact. We don't yet have the full details of this deal, but even if it's just a lone guaranteed year in the $13 million range like Jacobs', that would be a shocking investment from a franchise that both doesn't spend this sort of money on backs and doesn't have a lot of cap room to address its flaws on both sides of the ball. So, why do the Eagles get an incomplete grade? Even beyond the lack of clarity on the actual money involved, the Barkley signing seems at odds with how they have used their backs in years past and what their plans are with the 2024 version of this offense under new coordinator Kellen Moore. There's a scenario in which Barkley will be an essential piece of the offense and justify this deal, but I have questions about how the Eagles get there. In a vacuum, we've seen Barkley be an elite back with a modern skill set. He's a good receiver and pass-blocker, so he doesn't have to be taken off the field. He averaged only 3.9 yards per carry last season, but stats like rush yards over expectation were more optimistic about his impact. He's about to go from one of the league's worst offensive lines to one of its best; the average carry by a Giants running back a year ago was expected to gain a league-low 3.5 yards, per the NFL's Next Gen Stats model, while the average carry by an Eagles back was projected to be a league-best 4.7 yards. The Eagles lost center Jason Kelce to retirement, which will be a huge blow, but you get the idea: Just by swapping offensive lines, Barkley's rushing efficiency should spike in 2024. Every back would improve behind the Philly line and with Jalen Hurts' gravity as a rusher changing the numbers up front, though, so that's not enough to justify a new investment in a top back. For Barkley to make sense, he has to contribute as a receiver. And that's where I wonder about what happens next for the Eagles stylistically, because with Hurts under center, their running backs have not been part of the passing game. It isn't for a lack of talent, either. Sanders came into the league as a promising receiving back and caught 50 passes for 509 yards as a rookie. Once Carson Wentz fell apart and Hurts took over the following season, his receiving role cratered; he had only 74 catches for 433 yards across his final three seasons in Philadelphia. Likewise, after averaging 30 receiving yards per game in Detroit, Swift had 13.4 receiving yards per game in his lone season with Philadelphia. There are lots of reasons backs haven't been involved in the passing game. The Eagles have run a lot over the past three seasons, especially when they've been ahead in games, which limits their passing volume. They have three great pass-catchers in A.J. Brown, DeVonta Smith and Dallas Goedert, who collectively demand about 22 targets per game when healthy. Even allowing for that, however, the style of offense they play simply hasn't called for many throws to backs, in part because there isn't much of a slip screen game. Hurts has thrown just 14 screens to a running back coming out of the backfield over the past two seasons. That's the third fewest of any team, ahead of only the Falcons and Bills. The 49ers, who ranked 29th in the same category, obviously get McCaffrey involved in the passing game, but he's more often been part of the passing progression while running a route out of the backfield or while split out. The Eagles didn't often do that with their backs. Of course, that was with a different series of offensive coordinators. Moore's offenses haven't hesitated to throw the ball to the running back, as Pollard had a meaningful receiving role in Dallas. Ekeler's receiving role decreased in Moore's lone season with the Chargers, but he still averaged more than 31 receiving yards per game, which is well beyond where the Eagles lead backs have landed recently. This move seems to suggest the Eagles will throw the ball more to their lead back, which would then change the way they play on offense. I don't believe that the Eagles are about to shift from the run-pass option and quarterback run game that unlocked the best from Hurts to start throwing the ball around like they're the Cowboys, but some changes are going to be made. I wouldn't be surprised if they relied less on Hurts as a designed runner; he is their most expensive player, has improved as a passer and has dealt with injuries each of the past two seasons. Barkley can absorb more of that rushing workload. They could even have Barkley take over as the man under center on the Tush Push, which should still continue after Kelce's retirement. If Barkley is going to get significant work in the passing game, it's going to come as a result of an increase in pace and/or by taking work away from the team's three top pass-catchers, all of whom are more efficient than the former Giants standout. Brown has already exhibited a habit of complaining about not seeing the ball frequently enough; it's tough to see the Eagles keeping everyone fed on a week-by-week basis, although injuries might inevitably narrow that issue as the season goes along. Barkley's struggles staying healthy also make this risky for Philadelphia. He endured lost seasons in 2020 and 2021 due to ankle and knee injuries, issues that seemingly sapped his explosiveness. He got back on track in 2022 but missed a month in 2023 with another high ankle sprain. Every free agent comes with injury risk, but when a team is paying for what amounts to a top-of-the-line talent at any position, that team is pricing in an expectation that the player will be healthy for the full season. I'm inclined to think the people seeing this move and expecting Barkley to become the transformative player McCaffrey has been for the 49ers are probably wrong. Barkley's skill set is as close to McCaffrey's as just about anybody else, but he has never been that caliber of receiver. That's the absolute best-case scenario for this deal, and it's really the only way the Eagles could realize surplus value given how successful they've been at finding useful backs at much cheaper prices. With that being said, the most likely scenario is the deal doesn't move the needle. Barkley will probably be an efficient runner, producing impressive totals on the ground. He likely won't make as much of an impact as a receiver as people are hoping and could miss time in each of the next two years without being absent for long stretches. That's likely not the most efficient use of $12.5 million for the Eagles, but it's also not likely to sink them, either. If the move to sign Barkley was stunning, Roseman signing Jets edge rusher Bryce Huff was about as on-brand as possible. Huff broke out in 2023 with a 10-sack, 21-knockdown campaign and looked like the most explosive edge rusher on a great Jets defense. Huff turns 26 next month and still has some untapped potential, so it was no surprise the Eagles came calling with a three-year, $51.1 million pact. Huff doesn't solve one problem for the Eagles: They need to be able to stop the run. At 255 pounds, Huff is a little undersized to play defensive end, let alone in a Vic Fangio scheme where Philadelphia will be living in light boxes. That was a problem for the team last season with former linebacker Haason Reddick, listed at 241 pounds, in the mix. I'd expect Huff to be the replacement for Reddick, who could be a cap casualty if he isn't traded this offseason. The price tag suggests the Eagles view Huff as a primary edge defender over the next two years, but it remains to be seen whether opposing teams punish them on early downs by attacking him on the ground.
Winners: Guards!It was a good day to be a big man in the NFL. Eight interior offensive linemen signed deals with an average annual salary of $10 million or more Monday, which is remarkable given that nary a single interior lineman was making north of that figure as recently as 2016. As Jason Fitzgerald of Over the Cap pointed out before free agency, spending at the top of the guard market has risen at the third-fastest rate of any position over the past decade, trailing only right tackle and quarterback. That has come at the expense of center and running back, so it probably shouldn't be a surprise that six of the eight linemen making eight figures on their new deals are guards. In one fell swoop Monday, we saw virtually all of the talented guards coming off rookie deals in the prime of their careers sign for significant money. Take the Rams, a team that typically hadn't spent money on the interior of the line in the Sean McVay era. They committed more than $30 million per year in combined AAV to a pair of guards, as they followed up the re-signing of Kevin Dotson before the legal tampering period by inking Lions guard Jonah Jackson to a reported three-year, $51 million pact. For the Rams and for other teams across the league, their newfound interest in investing at guard is a product of how the offensive meta has changed. As recently as a few years ago, NFL running games were built around the zone concepts McVay and Kyle Shanahan had employed to great success. As their coaches were hired across the league, defenses were forced to adapt. We saw the Patriots famously run a 6-1 front to shut down the Rams in the Super Bowl, but we also saw defenses grow more familiar and comfortable handling the outside zone game and the boot concepts off it over the past few seasons. Shanahan adapted by moving toward more gap- or man-based blocking schemes in his run plays, which typically require heavier linemen. The Rams noticed, and while McVay tried to follow suit in 2022, the changes didn't really stick until 2023, with Kyren Williams taking over in an offense built to his strength as a gap runner. While zone schemes usually require lighter and quicker linemen, gap schemes ask linemen to be more powerful while pushing defensive linemen directly backward on their double-teams. The Rams responded by trading last August for the 322-pound Dotson, who had been stuck spending his career in a zone scheme with the Steelers. Dotson subsequently put together a Pro Bowl-caliber season. Now, the Rams will team him with the 311-pound Jackson, who was widely regarded as a mauler and excellent run-blocker during his time with the Lions. We saw the Patriots bring back Mike Onwenu and the Giants add Jon Runyan, but the most notable pair of moves on the interior came in Carolina. The Panthers signed former Seahawks guard Damien Lewis to a four-year, $53 million pact and teamed him with Dolphins lineman Robert Hunt, whose deal came in for an eye-watering amount at five years, $100 million. Hunt has to be the most unheralded player in league history to sign a deal with eight zeroes. Unheralded doesn't mean bad or ill-advised. I certainly understand the logic in Carolina trying to build infrastructure around Bryce Young, who endured a lost season a year ago. Because of his size (5-foot-10), Young is likely more susceptible to interior pressure than other quarterbacks, which creates more of a need to keep pass-rushers from collapsing his pocket. The Panthers had arguably the league's worst interior line a year ago, so changes were inevitable. I also like the combo of Lewis and Hunt. Hunt's agility played up in Miami, where the Dolphins were so aggressive with getting their linemen out in space on screens and misdirection runs. That should be part of the offense in Carolina. At the same time, he just spent the past two seasons in an offense that got the ball out quicker than any other in the league. It's going to be very tough to translate his pass blocking from Miami to any other offense, if only because he is going to need to block for longer stretches of time. We have the actual terms of Hunt's deal, and the three years and $63 million he is practically guaranteed top what Jackson and Onwenu have as the maximum unguaranteed value on their contracts. If you want an example of the Panthers needing to pay a premium to bring in talent after the past few years (or how desperate they were to get the guards they wanted), Hunt's contract is the clearest indicator.
 Loser: The 2022 (and 2024) PanthersThe anchoring effect is real. When the 2022 Panthers turned down a trade offer from the Rams that reportedly included two first-round picks (in 2024 and 2025) and additional draft capital as part of a trade for edge rusher Brian Burns, it set into motion the end of his time with the franchise. He rightly anchored his value around the idea he was more valuable than two first-round picks, and when trades involve that amount of capital, they usually produce a market-resetting deal for the young player going the other way. Burns and the Panthers never got close on an extension after the 2022 or 2023 offseasons, leading Carolina to franchise-tag him. Perhaps more critically, Carolina fans were anchored to the idea that return on a Burns trade would look like what the Rams had offered two years ago. When the newish regime led by Dan Morgan finally decided to trade Burns on Monday, the actual return felt like a punch in the stomach. The Panthers failed to land a single first-round pick from the Giants in the deal, instead picking up second- and fifth-round picks. When country music stars are calling you out for your trade returns, something has gone wrong. Obviously, landing two first-round picks and more two years ago would have been better than keeping Burns for a lame duck season and then trading him for second- and fifth-round picks. It's also not a realistic alternative at this point. The regime under former GM Scott Fitterer should have traded Burns then, or after the 2022 season, or at the 2023 trade deadline, but those opportunities have come and gone. Unless the current regime turned down a first-round pick for Burns, there wasn't a better offer on the table. What gave to produce the disparity in offers? For one, the initial offer wasn't quite as good as it might sound, and this offer is a little better than it seems. The Rams were reportedly offering their 2024 and 2025 first-round picks as the primary value in the return, so the Panthers wouldn't have picked up a 2023 first-rounder from a slumping Rams team. (Reports have also suggested the Rams would have sent a second-rounder, but there's been conflicting information about in which year it would have landed.) That initial first-rounder came in as the 19th pick this year without any impact from Burns, who might have helped the Rams win more during the regular season and/or beat the Lions in a close postseason game. The second-rounder the Panthers landed from the Giants will be the 39th pick. There's a gap between the 19th and 39th picks -- and Carolina would have landed another first-round pick in 2025 -- but the gap between the first-round pick the Rams would have sent and the second-rounder the Giants sent instead isn't as exorbitant as it might seem. Burns is also in a different position than he was at the trade deadline in 2022. At that point, he had five sacks in his first seven games. Crucially, he still had most of 2022 left on a rookie deal and 2023 on his fifth-year option, meaning the Rams would have been trading for four years of potential cost control given the possibility of two franchise tags. That sort of runway helps create cost flexibility and saves significant money. Had the Rams traded for Burns then, they would have been on the hook for about $71.2 million over four seasons while going year-to-year with him, which would have informed their negotiations on a new deal. Instead, Burns racked up 15.5 sacks over his ensuing 26 games, which is solid but not the sort of massive breakout teams might have expected. He's now a year-and-a-half older than he was at the 2022 trade deadline. The leverage provided by his rookie deal is gone; the Panthers had franchised him once for $24 million and would have needed to franchise him again in 2025 for an additional $28.8 million. The Giants are the team that decided to take a swing on Burns, and we know what they'll be on the hook for over the next four years: $111.5 million, over $40 million more than what the Rams could have used as the baseline in negotiating his prior pact. He has $90 million in practical guarantees over the next three seasons, which tops the $88.2 million mark Nick Bosa set on his deal with the 49ers. Burns has a smaller average annual salary than the San Francisco star, but the leverage afforded him by being so close to free agency helped him take home more guaranteed cash in the first three years of his new deal. I've taken it easy on the current Panthers regime for most of this section, but I have to wonder: Why wasn't Carolina willing to give Burns this deal? This is a lot of money for him, but I'd much rather pay Burns $90 million over three years and find a cheaper guard than pay Hunt $63 million over three years and use the savings (and second-round pick) to go after an edge rusher. It's possible the terms between Burns and the team had gone too far south to get a deal done, but $90 million in practical guarantees goes a long way in smoothing over a sticky situation.
 Winner: The Lions' defenseI liked what the Lions did to upgrade their secondary in free agency last year, but the moves didn't really pan out. Cameron Sutton was solid at cornerback, but Emmanuel Moseley and C.J. Gardner-Johnson were both injured early in the season and combined to play 189 defensive snaps during the regular season. Draft pick Brian Branch emerged as a playmaker and helped keep the Lions afloat, but the best-case scenario did not involve starting Kindle Vildor in the postseason, and it came back to bite them during that 49ers comeback. While the Lions will miss Jonah Jackson up front, they made a pair of much-needed additions on the defensive side of the ball. The most notable move was trading a third-round pick to the cap-strapped Bucs for cornerback Carlton Davis, who should immediately step in as the best corner on the roster. Davis has one year left on his deal and had an up-and-down season last year, but he's just 27 and has held up as a man corner behind Todd Bowles' blitz packages in years past. Landing Davis should allow coordinator Aaron Glenn to be more aggressive sending pressure in 2024. General manager Brad Holmes also took a swing on a much-needed secondary pass-rusher behind Aidan Hutchinson by signing Marcus Davenport to a one-year, $6.5 million pact. It's a less expensive version of the deal the Vikings inked with Davenport last year before he missed most of the season with an ankle injury. There's some risk here given Davenport's struggles to stay on the field, but he's a solid two-way defender who had a nine-sack season in 2021 as a 25-year-old. I wouldn't trade two first-rounders for Davenport or want to sign him to a huge contract, but this is the right term and price for his upside.
 Loser: The DolphinsIt wasn't a pretty day for Miami, which had already cut linebacker Jerome Baker and cornerback Xavien Howard as part of its cap concerns. The Dolphins lost three valuable contributors to the opening day of free agency in offensive lineman Robert Hunt, linebacker Andrew Van Ginkel and defensive tackle Christian Wilkins, the latter of whom signed a massive deal with the Raiders. The three players will be making a combined average annual salary of nearly $58 million per year on their new deals, pricing them out of Miami's budget. The moves the Dolphins made instead seemed confusing. They replaced free agent center Connor Williams by signing the Titans' Aaron Brewer, who had been the pivot on the league's worst offensive line over the past two seasons on a three-year, $21 million deal. Their replacement for Baker was former Seahawks linebacker Jordyn Brooks, who joined on a three-year, $26.3 million pact. Brooks was a liability in coverage during his time with the Seahawks, and while he had his best season in 2023, this seems like one of the positions where Miami could have waited and found a cheaper option later.
 Winner: The Texans' defenseWhile I'd expect Houston to add a running back to replace departed free agent Devin Singletary, general manager Nick Caserio added two of my favorite free agents to the roster Monday. Both deals appear to be reasonably priced and even take a pair of free agents away from a division rival in Tennessee. The Titans weren't a great team a year ago, but two things they did well were stop the run and generate pressure up the middle. Some of that was star tackle Jeffery Simmons, but he was aided by the wildly underrated Denico Autry, who posted a career-high 11.5 sacks in his age-33 season. Autry was never going to have a wild market given his age, but I was surprised to see him sign for two years and $20 million this early in free agency. That's a great deal for a player who has been remarkably consistent and can play outside on early downs and rush from the interior in passing situations. Houston added to the mix by upgrading at linebacker and signing Azeez Al-Shaair on a three-year, $34 million pact. Al-Shaair has always been rangy, but he never seemed to get his just due in San Francisco behind Fred Warner and Dre Greenlaw. Given a chance to lead in Tennessee last season, he had his best season as a pro. He posted one of the NFL's lowest missed tackles rates for an off-ball linebacker and recorded nearly 25% of Tennessee's tackles on run plays when he was on the field, the second-highest rate of any player. In reuniting with former 49ers coordinator DeMeco Ryans, Al-Shaair gives Ryans some much-needed speed and quickness at the position.
 Winner: The Vikings' defenseI also liked what the Vikings did on the defensive side of the ball. They're the team that signed Van Ginkel, who was a wildly underrated player for Miami as a pass-rusher and off-ball linebacker and should be a chaos creator for defensive coordinator Brian Flores in a hybrid role next season. Getting him for two years and $20 million is an easy victory for general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah. The Vikings also signed away two players from the Texans' defense. They replaced Danielle Hunter by adding Jonathan Greenard on a four-year, $76 million pact, landing an edge rusher who broke out with 12.5 sacks and 22 knockdowns a year ago. It's a big risk given that Greenard had 1.5 sacks in eight games across an injury-hit 2022 campaign, but his tape, underlying performance and advanced metrics all suggested he was an impactful pass-rusher a year ago. They added Blake Cashman, who played his best football under Ryans, on a three-year, $25.5 million deal.
Loser: The Vikings' offenseFor most of the day, it seemed like the biggest move the Vikings were going to make on offense was re-signing backup tackle Blake Brandel to a three-year contract. Late in the evening, though, news broke they had found their new quarterback in former Jets and Panthers starter Sam Darnold, whose one-year deal is reportedly worth about $10 million. At this point, Darnold is thriving almost entirely through hope and draft capital. There has been virtually nothing in his body of work suggesting he is an NFL-caliber starting quarterback. In his best stretch of football as a pro, the six-game run he went on with the Panthers at the end of 2022, he completed 58.6% of his passes and posted a 49.1 QBR. The Panthers asked him to throw the ball more than 25 times once over that period. When the conditions are perfect, Darnold has been fine. The conditions have not and do not project to be perfect for any quarterback as often as he requires. After he struggled with the Panthers in 2021, Fitterer suggested he had been a good NFL passer when protected. This was not true: Darnold had ranked last out of 34 qualifying passers over the prior four seasons when unpressured, both with the Jets and Panthers. Since entering the league, his 41.2 QBR ranks last in the NFL among passers with at least 1,000 attempts. Darnold spent last season with the 49ers, where his 46 pass attempts in garbage time and a meaningless Week 18 produced a 60.9 completion percentage and 6.5 yards per attempt. This somehow appears to have earned him a raise and a path to a starting job in Minnesota, although the Vikings could and should bring in competition. It's unclear who would and would not have taken Minnesota's offer, but there had to be better options out there. Jacoby Brissett has been a much better quarterback than Darnold. Joe Flacco looked much better last season than Darnold ever has, and that was with two backup tackles and no running game. Russell Wilson was better and would have played for $1.2 million. All of those quarterbacks are much older, but the Vikings have a playoff-caliber roster if they can get competent play under center. They nearly got there with Joshua Dobbs and Nick Mullens at quarterback for half of the 2023 season. The Vikings need a quarterback because they apparently weren't willing to compete with the Falcons for Kirk Cousins, whose second foray into free agency produced another significant deal. Atlanta gave Cousins $62.5 million in 2024 as part of a four-year, $180 million contract, a move that made the Falcons overnight favorites to win the NFC South. In reality, as Gregg Rosenthal noted, this isn't an exorbitant contract. Unless the Falcons cut Cousins after one season and $62.5 million, they'll pay him $100 million for two years or $135 million for three years, with the latter figure seeming most likely. That's $45 million per year. Even if Cousins is done after two years, $100 million guaranteed isn't far from what Daniel Jones got on his deal with the Giants (two years and $82 million) after adjusting for the rise in the salary cap. Minnesota hasn't been in great cap shape for a while, and it knows more about Cousins' medicals coming off a torn Achilles than anybody else. If the Vikings weren't willing to compete with this deal, maybe that should be a warning for the Falcons. If it's not about the medicals, though, are the Vikings sticking themselves in an impossible bind? They're getting younger, but a significant deal for Greenard and the record-setting deal expected for Justin Jefferson aren't going to mean much unless Darnold's a totally different player in Minnesota. While again acknowledging they could still add a quarterback in April's draft, should the decision to move on from Cousins have triggered more of a substantial rebuild? I can understand not wanting to move forward with Cousins, who had the Vikings in what felt like a competitive purgatory at times over the last few years, but I'm not convinced by the decision to replace him with Darnold.
 Loser: Bears QB Justin FieldsLet's end with a quarterback whose market might have closed before it ever opened. Heading into the weekend, it seemed as if Fields might have been the solution in a number of places. He's in limbo, as the Bears appear destined to draft a quarterback with the first overall pick. Cousins was going to be the most prominent domino, but there were a handful of teams that could easily justify taking a shot on Fields' upside versus the other options available. One by one, those options fell by the wayside. Before the tampering period opened, the Steelers signed Wilson and the Bucs brought back Mayfield. Two potential landing spots for Fields were gone before Monday even began. It got worse. The Falcons, who had been perhaps the team most heavily linked to Fields, won their bidding war for Cousins. The Raiders, who hired former Bears offensive coordinator Luke Getsy, signed Gardner Minshew to a two-year, $25 million deal. The potential of a bridge job in New England went by the wayside when the Pats added Brissett. The Vikings loomed as an unlikely-but-logical trade candidate, but they seemed to signal their desire to go in a different direction by signing Darnold. If we assume the top three teams in the draft are taking quarterbacks, there's only one starting job left. That's in Denver, where the Broncos saw Fields complete his first 16 passes and throw for four touchdowns last season before eventually fumbling away a late lead. Most observers have linked Sean Payton & Co. to a quarterback in April's draft, and they already have Jarrett Stidham on site as a potential bridge starter or primary backup. I haven't spoken to many people around the NFL who felt like Fields was a great fit for a Payton offense, and Denver doesn't seem to be a likely landing spot. If not Denver, though, where does Fields end up? You could suggest the Giants and Titans should consider bringing him in as part of a potential quarterback competition in camp, although they're both invested in other quarterbacks and aren't likely to give up the sort of draft capital the Bears were hoping to land as part of a Fields pact. Maybe you stretch that idea further and consider the Browns or Seahawks as possible landing spots, but that would really be more as a backup. None of those teams are going to be picking up his fifth-year option, which means he's coming in as a one-year rental. Is there a point when the Bears should just consider holding onto Fields? Maybe. He has his supporters in Chicago, although it's difficult to imagine the fan base clamoring for him to step back in during Caleb Williams' rookie season. The Bears would decline Fields' fifth-year option and pay him $3.2 million to serve as the backup in 2024 before losing him in free agency; that could produce a modest compensatory pick, although I would suspect they would offset that pick by signing free agents themselves. Having Fields as the backup would be useful, but it would only be the best use of resources if they weren't able to land any sort of meaningful draft compensation for him via trade. Unfortunately for Fields, the best thing for the Bears to do might be to wait. While he isn't going to get a Sam Bradford-style first-round pick for Fields, general manager Ryan Poles might want to hold onto the quarterback until after the draft to see whether a team such as the Broncos fails to land a rookie quarterback or into camp to see if someone loses a signal-caller to injury. That's not going to be the best thing for Fields' development, but at this point, I'm not sure he has a clear path to regular work anywhere.
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