NFL's first week of free agency winners and losers: The QB carousel was just as bad as everyone thought for some teams

The game of quarterback musical chairs was always going to get ugly. There were far more chairs in the game than competent quarterbacks to fill them.

And just a few days into free agency, some teams have to be wondering what to do.

The Miami Dolphins somehow worked around the record dead salary cap hit from Tua Tagovailoa to sign Malik Willis, who became the most attractive option by far. He got $67.5 million over three years with just six NFL starts to his name, which tells you how rough the quarterback market was.

At least the Dolphins got someone. Many teams are talking themselves into much less attractive options.

The Arizona Cardinals don’t have anyone. The Cleveland Browns don’t either, and seem likely to talk themselves into another season of Dillon Gabriel and Shedeur Sanders. Or maybe it’s Deshaun Watson.

The New York Jets got a quarterback. They traded for Geno Smith, who was booed out of Las Vegas during his terrible time as the Raiders’ starter.

The Pittsburgh Steelers seem to be hoping that Aaron Rodgers, who will turn 43 next season, plays again. The Steelers said the situation won’t play out like last season when they were waiting seemingly forever for an answer, but free agency started and there hasn’t been a decision. And the Steelers are another team in bad shape if Rodgers, who was just decent last season and is at an age in which only Tom Brady has had any remote level of success, steps away from the NFL.

Kyler Murray was cut by the Arizona Cardinals after seven seasons with the team. He quickly found a new home in Minnesota. (Photo by Norm Hall/Getty Images)

(Norm Hall via Getty Images)

The Atlanta Falcons and Minnesota Vikings needed quarterbacks to back up, or maybe replace, shaky young starters. The Falcons landed Tua Tagovailoa and the Vikings will sign Kyler Murray. The Dolphins decided they’d rather take a $99 million dead cap hit than spend any more time with Tagovailoa, and the Cardinals made the same choice with a $54.7 million dead cap hit on Murray. And, relatively speaking, the Falcons and Vikings were winners in the QB carousel because they picked up two players whose previous teams spent a small fortune to simply get them off the roster. It’s tough out there.

Kirk Cousins will provide a bridge for one of these teams, but that’s not exciting. There’s a reason the Colts held onto Daniel Jones for dear life. There will be some gruesome quarterbacks situations on Week 1 of this NFL season, and that’s before injuries roll in.

The unspoken part of some of these moves, particularly with the Cardinals, Jets and Browns, is that they are waiting on the 2027 NFL Draft. This year’s draft doesn’t have many exciting prospects outside of Fernando Mendoza, but next year should offer multiple quarterbacks who go in the first round. Some teams are leaving their options open until then. That’s a viable strategy, but it is going to be ugly for a year. It’s tough to lose hope for the upcoming season in mid-March. But there weren’t enough good quarterbacks to go around.

Here are the winners and losers from the first week of free agency (we had a full breakdown of the Maxx Crosby/Trey Hendrickson controversy earlier this week):

WINNERS

Running backs: Relatively speaking, it hasn’t been a bad offseason for running backs.

Kenneth Walker III and Travis Etienne Jr. are very good RBs but not necessarily in the elite tier. Still, they were paid well for their position. Etienne got $52 million over four years from the Saints and Walker got a little more than $43 million over three years from the Chiefs. Kenneth Gainwell (to the Buccaneers), Rico Dowdle (to the Steelers) and Tyler Allgeier (to the Cardinals) all signed two-year deals worth more than $6 million per season. None of the three were starters last season.

David Montgomery switched teams, going to the Houston Texans for offensive lineman Juice Scruggs, a 2026 fourth-round pick and a 2027 seventh-round pick, which is a good haul for the Lions.

Even Chris Rodriguez Jr., who looked good at times with the Washington Commanders last season, got $10 million over two years from the Jacksonville Jaguars. That’s not bad for a rusher coming off a 500-yard season.

All in all, it wasn’t a bad week for running backs.

Klint Kubiak and Robert Saleh: The two teams that spent the most, in terms of total contracts, over the first 24 official hours of free agency were the Titans ($294.5 million) and Raiders ($281.6 million), according to Spotrac. Only one other team, the Commanders at $233.8 million, were even over $200 million.

The previous head coaches of the Raiders and Titans must be wondering where that spending was when they were in charge.

The infusion of talent into two of the NFL’s worst rosters will help new coaches Kubiak and Saleh. Kubiak is a rookie head coach, and still will add quarterback Fernando Mendoza with the first pick of the draft. He isn’t being hung out to dry as he starts his head coaching career. Saleh is trying to prove that his losing career record is the Jets’ fault by doing better with the Titans in his second head coaching job. His roster, particularly on defense, was remade with 13 additions, the most in the NFL in the early portion of free agency. Both coaches got a lot of help as free agency began.

Los Angeles Rams, your Super Bowl favorite: Rams general manager Les Snead had an easier job this offseason than many of his colleagues. He already had a fantastic roster, and he didn’t have any key players about to hit free agency.

Still credit Snead for doing his job as completely as anyone to start free agency.

The Rams seemed like they were a couple of cornerbacks away from not having any clear weakness. That was their only glaring need. So Snead got aggressive, as he has done in the past. He traded the 29th overall pick in this year’s draft, a fifth-round and sixth-round pick in this year’s draft and a 2027 third-round pick to the Chiefs for Trent McDuffie, one of the NFL’s best cornerbacks. That’s costly (also consider the $124 million extension they gave him), but it’s highly unlikely in this unexciting draft that the 29th pick will have an impact like McDuffie, for a team that has Super Bowl dreams.

Then the Rams doubled up on Chiefs cornerbacks, signing Jaylen Watson to a three-year, $51 million deal.

L.A. was already good, but needed cornerbacks. It fixed that, and still held onto the 13th overall pick of the draft. It’s Super Bowl or bust now for the Rams.

LOSERS

George Pickens: Pickens should believe he’s a better receiver than Alec Pierce. He had more receptions, yards and touchdowns than Pierce last season. They’re both 25 years old.

But Pickens got the franchise tag, and Pierce did not.

Pierce cashed in on his best NFL season with a four-year deal that can be worth up to $116 million. That’s $29 million a year for Pierce if it reaches its peak. Pickens got tagged. The franchise tag is for one year at $27.3 million.

That’s a lot of money. But it’s also $88.7 million less than Pierce got. It’s not even the same in terms of average per year. There’s no better illustration for why the union needs to do something to get rid of the franchise tag. There’s a reason players hate it.

Quiet teams, maybe: As usual, NFL free agency hadn’t even officially started and most of the league had committed many millions to players during the contact period with pending free agents.

Almost every team added help, which made it seem bad for the few clubs that didn’t partake in the first wave. But maybe those teams are worth following.

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The final four teams that hadn’t added an outside free agent were the Broncos, Eagles, Seahawks and Jaguars. Those four teams were the last two Super Bowl champions, a team that was the No. 1 seed in the AFC last season and a team that won the AFC South last season. Maybe they’re the teams everyone else should be following?

There are cap reasons for the relative inactivity early on for those four teams, but it’s also easy to look at the list of massive contracts being handed out and understand that almost every one was an overpay. There’s no way around that in free agency. Four of the best teams from last season, some of whom are among the most respected organizations in the sport, sat out that part of free agency. That might be telling.

J.J. McCarthy: After 10 starts for the Minnesota Vikings, the McCarthy era seems close to dead.

The Vikings made it fairly clear that they wanted a new quarterback, very likely as a Week 1 starter. They appeared to have him in Kyler Murray, who signed with them Thursday. They reportedly contacted Murray almost immediately after he was cut by the Arizona Cardinals. The Cardinals took on nearly $55 million in a dead cap hit just to be done with Murray. And the Vikings couldn’t wait to set up a meeting with him, and presumably make him their new starter if he’d sign with them.

That says a lot about McCarthy’s standing with the Vikings. He didn’t play well last season and has dealt with many injuries. It’s still possible McCarthy, who was the 10th pick of the NFL Draft less than 24 months ago, could figure things out and reemerge as a reliable starter in the NFL, maybe even for the Vikings. But it looks bleak at the moment.

NFL’s first week of free agency winners and losers: The QB carousel was just as bad as everyone thought for some teams

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