New Years NFL

The official year in the NFL is set to change at 4pm eastern time today. Meaning that free agency has officially begun. Around 4 o'clock today there will be a frenzy of reports coming out of ESPN, mainly Adam Schefter. A lot of interesting things will happen this year in free agency. I expect the Phili Eagles to be very active in free agency. They have already made three huge moves for their roster. Two you can call huge, the other is huge in another sense.

Demarco Murray traded to Titans, huge for the Eagles because it clears cap space, and you get a talented yet unproductive super star out of your locker room. The second move is they have agreed to a deal with former Rams safety Rodney Mcleod. Mcleod is a super young safety at the age of 25. He is a body hawk. He has great closing speed and can play the centerfielder over the top. The problem is he not good at playing the ball in the air and he does not have good hands. But he is a good run stopper also. I think Mcleod is a good young player and will make the Eagles defense better. The huge part of this move is the contract they gave this kid. 5 year $37 million. It is a huge contract for a 25 year old safety that does not have the stats to back it up. His play and his stats do not add up to almost 8 million per year but he is young and has some room to grow. Another factor is the market for safeties is high. With a lot of young talented safeties coming into the league the cap numbers have been rising at the position. I would not be worried about the high number they gave the kid, he looks like a very good player and he looks like he has some potential. The final move they made before the new league year was a huge trade sending Byron Maxwell, Kiko Alfonso, and the 13th overall pick to Miami for the 8th overall pick.  This move is clearly to get rid of two high cap number guys with injury problems and in Maxwells case production problems. He received one of the worst Free Agency contracts of all time. 6 years $63 million, $25 million guaranteed, $6 million signing bonus. It seems like the Dolphins are absorbing the whole thing. I want to say this is a terrible trade, but I do not think I can. What I can say is that this is a bad deal for both sides. The only good that comes out of this for Phili is more cap space and the 8th overall pick, and the only good for Miami is you got Kiko Alfonso. Miami is in a bad position because they now have to pay in full the Maxwell contract and there is 0% chance he plays up to the number. He has never and will never be worth $11 million annually. Plus both players they got are injury prone. Alfonso has bad knees, having torn his ACL twice now. Maxwell has shoulder problems. I doubt that they will play every game in their Dolphins career. For Phili, you gave up a Linebacker that has the potential talent to be a top 5 player at his position. Plus you only moved up 5 spaces. I have not looked at the draft yet this year so 5 spaces may be huge or meaningless, I will know more as we approach the draft.

But yea, I mean Phili is definetly headed in the right direction as they start their rebuild. Expect a lot of noise early and often in Free Agency today. Good luck and have fun!