$.01--Just when you thought it was safe to project Brock Osweiler as the rightful successor to Peyton Manning in Denver, the biggest bomb of NFL free agency dropped. Osweiler signed with the Houston Texans for $72M over four years, with $37 million guaranteed.

That’s a lot of scratch for a quarterback with a limited track record. Osweiler, a second-round pick out of Arizona State back in 2012, threw a total of 305 passes in his four seasons in Denver. Almost all came last season during a 7-game run as the starter while Manning nursed an injury. He was decent enough, completing 61.8% of his passes with 10 TDs and 6 INTs for the eventual Super Bowl champs, who went 5-2 in his starts.

The Texans are obviously desperate for an upgrade at quarterback. They’re sorely lacked even mediocrity at the most important position ever since Matt Schaub’s foot injury several years ago. From the dilapidated Schaub to Case Keenum to T.J. Yates to Ryan Fitzpatrick (in a bad year) to the death spiral that was Ryan Mallett and Brian Hoyer last year, Texans GM Rick Smith just hasn’t been able to find a big enough finger to plug the massive hole in the dyke.

Osweiler could be that finger. He’s big, with a decent arm and positive experience in leading a playoff team with strong weapons around him. And the Texans do have a solid arsenal with Nuk Hopkins at wide receiver and criminally underutilized former Dolphins RB Lamar Miller, who also signed with Houston on Wednesday.

The Texans made the playoffs last year in spite of quarterback play which fluctuated between streaky and despicable. Osweiler offers very real promise. Both the new QB and the team are in similar situations to when the team brought in Schaub with a trade from Atlanta. That gamble on a promising backup elsewhere paid off well, and Osweiler has a higher ceiling than Schaub ever did.

In order to scrape that ceiling, the 6’8” multimillionaire will need to process the defense quicker on the fly. He took 23 sacks in 275 pass attempts, and he also held the ball too long to throw off the timing of plays. His field vision could be lacking, too. At least his confidence is not…

 

Now the Broncos go from having a Hall of Fame QB backed up by the player who is now paid in the top 10 salaries at the position to having nothing. Okay, technically Trevor Siemian remains on the roster, but nobody really expects John Elway to turn his franchise over to last year’s seventh-round pick out of Northwestern.

Where does Denver turn now? There are rumors of Colin Kaepernick, though I’ll believe Chip Kelly prefers Blaine Gabbert over Kaepernick when I see it. The aforementioned Fitzpatrick is the best available free agent. Picking 31st overall in the draft isn’t exactly the most optimal spot to select an immediate starter, though Connor Cook from Michigan State projects to that range and is the most NFL-ready QB in this class. No matter the eventual solution, this is a big blow for the defending Super Bowl champs…and a high-reward risk for one of their primary AFC challengers. 

$.02--The New York Giants have not made the playoffs in the last four years despite playing in the middling NFC East. The prolonged lack of success since winning Super Bowl XLVI cost longtime head coach Tom Coughlin his job and has Jerry Reese’s pants simmering from the fans carrying torches and pitchforks after the GM.

Reese opted to fight fire with fire…and a whole lot of ownership’s money. We haven’t seen this level of free spending on fixing a broken infrastructure since the TVA, or perhaps Al Davis’ later years.

In desperate need of upgrades all over the defense, thanks in no small part to scads of failed draft picks by Reese himself, the Giants opened the vault and brought in pass rusher Olivier Vernon, nose tackle Damon Harrison and cornerback Janoris Jenkins. They also brought back Jason Pierre Paul on a one-year, make-good deal in hopes he can get back to his old self.

How much did Reese spend?

 

Vernon scored the biggest guaranteed dollar amount for any defensive player in NFL history. He will earn $52.5 million guaranteed of a five-year, $85 million total contract. I’ll say it again, as I’m sure the uninitiated spat their beverage all over their keyboards:

Olivier Vernon earned the highest-paying contract for any defensive player in NFL history.

Perhaps “earned” is a stretch. After all, Vernon bagged just 29 sacks in four years in Miami. Originally a third-round pick out of Miami, Vernon has generally been regarded as a good player but not a dynamic force. He’s going to make more than J.J. Watt or Von Miller. When I relayed this to my wife, she responded, “I should probably have heard of him, huh?”

This is the hospital charging your insurance company $262 for a Tylenol. They do it because they can get away with it, and the Giants had the money to spend.

Harrison, for my money, is a better player than Vernon. He probably will be for the Giants too. He’s arguably the best run-stuffing force in the league and brings his “A” game and intensity on every rep. The Jets will miss him.

Jenkins is perhaps even riskier of a signing than Vernon. He got five years and $62M, an astonishing figure for a player with his high burn rate. Don’t just take it from me, but rather absorb what former NFL DB Matt Bowen said about the ex-Ram:

Jenkins is the classic high risk/high reward cornerback. He is going to jump routes and make plays, but that also opens up the door for opponents to game plan his style with double-moves or multiple breaking routes. This is where we see the negative on Jenkins. At times, he lacks eye discipline and will get caught playing with poor technique (footwork). Because of that, I don’t feel Jenkins has reached his ceiling yet at the position. Is he going to make big plays for the Giants? No doubt. But is he also going to get caught with his eyes in the backfield in certain situations? Yes. And that’s the trade-off for New York.

He’s all sizzle, and while the Giants needed some of that, they needed steak a lot more. He replaces Prince Amukamara, who played reliably but didn’t make plays.

It’s all a huge gamble for the Giants, and an expensive one. They still have major holes on the offensive line, wide receiver, tight end and running back. They still need at least one linebacker. Reese would have been better-served breaking up Vernon’s massive deal and filling two or three other holes with above-average talents. If this fails, and history says overspending in one offseason usually does, Reese will pay for it.

$.03--Normally the poster child for wild overspending in free agency, the Oakland Raiders sure appear to have a better grasp on the shopping list this year. While they did pay big money in luring some new additions, they did so with better prudence than in past years and in comparison to other teams this year (see the Giants above).

Kelechi Osemele is one of the best guards in the game, a proven consistent performer. Raiders GM Reggie McKenzie rewarded him by making the former Raven the highest-paid guard in the league at five years and up to $60M, with $25M guaranteed. There is talk of moving him to tackle, where he played (quite well) at Iowa State. Either way, he’s a major upgrade for a team with an improving young core on offense. If he does stay at guard, he and Gabe Jackson are the best tandem in the league.

Bruce Irvin defected from Seattle as a pass-rushing specialist. He notched two fewer sacks than Vernon the last two years and is still one of the fastest guys around the edge in the league. While he’s not the run defender, Irvin is a very effective rusher. He’ll make a maximum of $37M over four years, with $12.5M guaranteed--all in 2016.

The Raiders are paying Irvin less than half of what New York is paying Vernon. Again, he’s not the all-around player of his New York counterpart, but he’s arguably a more effective pass rusher. And neither guy is being paid tens of millions for their run defense…

Adding CB Sean Smith from hated rival Kansas City is a nice move. He brings size and reliability. Oakland had beau coup cap room to spend, and they’re not done yet. Already they’re one of the big offseason winners even after losing Charles Woodson and Justin Tuck from the defense.

In a division where the Broncos have lost two QBs, their best defensive tackle in Malik Jackson (an egregious overpayment by the Jaguars at $90 million) and could lose top RB C.J. Anderson, where the Chiefs lost Smith, starting offensive linemen Donald Stephenson and Jeff Allen and a lot of depth players, the Raiders are poised to challenge for the AFC West title.

$.04--Trades don’t often go down in the NFL, certainly not in comparison to the NBA or MLB. But there was a pretty big one this week.

Philadelphia traded CB Byron Maxwell, LB Kiko Alonso and the No. 13 pick in April’s draft to the Miami Dolphins for the No. 8 overall pick.

For the Eagles, this is another layer of paint on the Chip Kelly regime and an admission of abject failure in the 2015 offseason. Maxwell signed last offseason for $63 million over six years and wound up being a below-average misfit; the former Seahawk was Pro Football Focus’ 69th-rated CB last year. Alonso played for Kelly at Oregon and was the return bounty for star RB Lesean McCoy in a trade with Buffalo last year. Only 10 LBs scored worse at PFF than Alonso last year, and their grading might have been generous for many Philly fans who watched him continually overrunning plays and reacting late.

Both those players do have potential to bounce back and perform well in Miami. It was a lost season in Philadelphia and the pieces never fit together. The Dolphins are smart to take a chance on them, though Maxwell’s contract is a cinder block.

As for the pick swap, the Eagles desperately need a running back and the No. 8 spot puts them in position to maybe land Ezekiel Elliott. He’s the best offensive skill position player in this draft and a better prospect than Todd Gurley from a year ago. If it doesn’t get them Elliott, a top-flight CB like Vernon Hargreaves or a quarterback like Jared Goff to eventually take over for average-at-best Sam Bradford makes a lot of sense.

Miami gets two guys who project as immediate starters and still keeps a pick in the top half of the first round. They sorely need offensive line help, and at 13 they could land Taylor Decker or Jason Spriggs to bolster the tackle ranks. They could get Shaq Lawson (worthy) or Emmanuel Ogbah (not) to replace Vernon. If either veteran player works out, I like the deal for Miami.

$.05--NFL teams are changing running backs like seagulls at the landfill. Here is an incomplete list of the running backs on the move so far:

  • Chris Ivory from the New York Jets to Jacksonville
  • Matt Forte from Chicago to the New York Jets
  • Lamar Miller from Miami to Houston
  • Demarco Murray traded from Philadelphia to Tennessee for a fourth-round pick
  • Khiry Robinson from New Orleans to the Jets

None of these deals broke the bank. Doug Martin stayed in Tampa Bay for $37.5 million, the top amount for a rusher thus far.

Running back just isn’t the marquee position anymore. Compare it to the wide receiver spot, where Detroit paid Marvin Jones $8 million a year to be the second banana to Golden Tate. It’s not even close to what corners or defensive linemen are pulling. IN many cases, it’s not even what backup QBs are making these days. That’s a bleak harbinger for remaining free agent runners like Arian Foster, Chris Johnson, Alfred Morris and James Starks.

There is not one team in the league that entered this week without a need for at least one running back somewhere in its pecking order. Given the injury attrition and increasing specialization of the position, the supply/demand balance doesn’t seem to be commensurate with the contracts being given. In short, mamas don’t let your babies grow up to be running backs.