Digesting 2024 NFL Free Agency: Day One

Kirk Cousins shifted franchises, the running-back market was on fire, and Brian Burns gets an elite contract in a new location

I’m going to write up longer blurbs on this year’s transactions in free agency, and will have the Improvement Index up-and-running later this week. Apologies for the delay in getting all the modeling and code up to date (I’m writing this from the hospital with a son recovering from an appendectomy), but, perhaps, my longer thoughts on the transactions will be more useful than the projected numbers for points/wins that teams have improved from the prior year.

I’m going to group transactions by position, so keep in mind my prior research on how the offseason phases (free agency, trades and draft) should be dictated by the positional value available in each, and which specific positions are best to target in free agency on the offensive and defensive sides of the ball.

QUARTERBACKS

Atlanta Falcons: Kirk Cousins - 4 years, $180 million, $100 million guaranteed

Quarterback certainly isn’t one of the positions to traditionally target in free agency, mostly because legitimately good ones never hit the market. Cousins was the only legitimately good starting quarterback to play through multiple franchise tags and hit the free market. For the old Washington franchise, Cousins was just good enough to keep around with big one-year checks post-rookie contract, but not good enough to deserve a monster contract extension. The Vikings felt differently, as a great team outside of quarterback that needed one more piece to become a perennial playoff team and open up a (small) Super Bowl window. If you can go 13-3 and make the conference championship with Case Keenum, you’re likely thinking “win now”.