NFL Free Agency Phase IV: Fresh Out of Ideas

Thoughts on Kyler Murray, Osa Odighizuwa, Bradley Chubb, Keaton Mitchell and other second-tier stars of the Post-Maxx Crosby Cinematic Universe

The NFL has really had a hard time pulling its plot threads together since the early-week Crisis on Infinite Maxx Crosbys. It’s as if the league used up all its story beats and knew it had no idea what to do for an encore, so it downshifted into MCU Phase IV territory: second-tier heroes, perfunctory plot points, lowered expectations and audience fatigue. Seriously: creating a “Free Agency 2026” image with Bradley Chubb and Keaton Mitchell photos felt like trying to promote the Wonder Man series on Disney Plus.

(See how seamlessly I integrated both DC and Marvel references into that opening paragraph? It’s a sign that this has been a long week. Lampshading it in a parenthetical second paragraph is another sign.)

Free agency is far from over, but if the NFL is pausing to catch its breath, then so should we. Here are thoughts on some of the smaller moves of the last 48 hours or so.

Vikings sign Kyler Murray

On cue, my social feeds erupted with effusive praise of the Murray-Vikings pairing on Thursday night: Murray just needs a better environment, Kevin O’Connell is a sorcerer, the usual.

Instead of cycling through seven seasons of reasons to be skeptical of Murray, allow me to repeat myself on two points. First, from last week:

Murray’s greatest talent is his ability to disappear when things aren’t going well, a superpower that was enhanced by playing for the Cardinals. Whenever Murray leaves the public consciousness for a few months due to injury or ineffectiveness, he enters a kind of cryostasis, reappearing with his reputation as some sort of toolsy prospect restored to factory default settings.

Next, from December 31st:

Kevin O’Connell: quarterback whisperer. Based on whom/what/when? O’Connell has NEVER developed a quarterback, unless you count Sam Darnold, and the McCarthy decision makes no sense if you count Darnold.

Quarterback whisperers are as real as fairy godmothers, anyway. Show me one, and I will show you a bullseye drawn around the dart. Believing in quarterback whisperers makes for shaky analysis. Believing you have become one can lead to organizational disaster.

The Murray signing makes more sense for the Vikings than, say, a Tua Tagovailoa signing, a Tyson Bagent trade or rolling into 2026 with J.J. McCarthy would have made. It’s cheap, low risk and better than most viable alternatives. Those are the highest bars it clears.

Murray, Justin Jefferson and Jordan Addison, with O’Connell coaching, will be just as successful as Murray, Nuk Hopkins and Hollywood Brown were with Kliff Kingsbury coaching, or Murray, Marvin Harrison Jr. and Trey McBride were with Drew Petzing coaching.

Cowboys trade Osa Odighizuwa, Solomon Thomas

The Cowboys signed Odighizuwa, a former third-round pick who grew into a Pro Bowl-caliber disrupter on the interior line, to a reported four-year, $80 million contract last March. Then they acquired Kenny Clark in the Micah Parsons trade at the start of the 2025 season. Then they traded for Quinnen Williams at the deadline.

The Cowboys had one of the NFL’s worst defenses but three outstanding defensive tackles at the end of 2025. They used some five-man fronts, played Odighizuwa at end at times, and did what they could to protect a putrid secondary from itself. Odighizuwa led the Cowboys with 50 pressures in 2025.

There is some logic to building an extra-heavy line in a division with the Eagles and a conference with the Bears, Lions and Rams: the Cowboys looked like they were loading up for some Cro-Magnon football in 2026.

Nah. The Cowboys were just paddling their superyacht in circles.

The Cowboys dumped Odighizuwa, who turns 28 in August, and his big contract on the 49ers in exchange for a third-round pick. They also sent journeyman backup Thomas to the Titans in a swap of subway tokens. The Niners get a defender who can do many of the things Arik Armstead used to do, though Odighizuwa isn’t a 6-foot-7 hobgoblin like Armstead. The Cowboys get cap relief that they need because they are eating the Quinnen and Rashan Gary contracts, franchise-tagged George Pickens and generally manage their salary cap the way college freshmen manage their pizza budgets.

The Cowboys also signed safeties Jalen Thompson (Cardinals) and P.J. Locke (Broncos) this week. They still possess the 12th and 20th picks in the draft. They’re probably making progress. It’s just a little troubling (or funny, in the Cowboys’ case) to watch a team that allowed 377.0 yards per game in 2025 trade away a core defender in his prime for a mid-round pick.

Chargers sign Keaton Mitchell

When healthy, Mitchell could be the perfect ultra-speedy squiggle on Mike McDaniel’s whiteboard. Mitchell is like a De’Von Achane Lite: get him the ball on the edge, and he’ll get you some explosive plays.

“When healthy,” of course, is a loaded phrase. Mitchell suffered a triad injury in December of 2023, missing most of 2024. The Ravens sometimes seemed overly cautious about Mitchell’s touch total, even accounting for the fact that Derrick Henry was RB1.

Mitchell reminds me of the sort of change-up back I always sought out in APBA or Strat-o-Matic tabletop gaming leagues as a kid. The card games would replicate Bruce Harper’s 6.9 yards per carry for the 1983 Jets probabilistically without any regard for Harper’s low carry total and limited role. A tabletop gamer could turn Harper into an unstoppable 30-carry-per-game Hall of Famer. It was an “exploit,” to use modern gaming parlance. I would scour Street & Smith’s leaderboards looking for players with gaudy yards-per-carry figures, then “happen” to find their cards in the deck when my pals drafted up teams. We would end up arguing and fighting over which cards should be banned from our league. It’s a wonder I turned out so well-adjusted.

Jim Harbaugh and McDaniel surely know that Mitchell is no exploit. Mitchell is so incapable of pass blocking that the Ravens avoided asking him to (taking away much of his value as a third-down back), and he was inactive at the start of last season because he was useless on special teams. (Mitchell eventually took over on kickoff returns.)

Omarion Hampton will chair the Chargers backfield committee, and Kimani Vidal was re-signed to play a utility role. Fantasy owners will overspeculate on Mitchell’s 2026 production and be disappointed. But ten of Mitchell’s 59 rushes netted 10-plus yards in 2025. It’s worth scaling Mitchell up to, say, 118 rushes to see what happens.

Bills sign Bradley Chubb

Chubb had 10 pressures and two sacks in 50 pass rushes in his two games against the Bills last year, per Sports Info Solutions. He recorded two sacks against the Saints and six pressures and a sack against the Buccaneers.

In other words, when the Dolphins were actually trying, Chubb was effective. When they weren’t trying, he may have gone with the flow.

Folks on my social feeds ripped Chubb and the Bills for this deal. But $29 million in guarantees over three years is not much in the 2026 edge rusher market; it’s Kwity Paye money, for heaven’s sake. The Bills should do a better job of maintaining Chubb’s enthusiasm, and providing pressure opportunities, than Mike McDaniel and his Doomer Dolphins did.

Chubb’s a mercenary edge rusher earning mercenary edge rusher money for a team that could use (and often uses) mercenary edge rushers. This deal is fine. I have a hard time parsing crowdsourced wisdom anymore.

Colts re-sign Daniel Jones for $88 million over 2 Years

The Colts are the most B-minus organization in professional sports history. Every time I think I have underestimated them, it turns out that I perfectly estimated them.

Transition-tagging Jones looked silly last week. Ha! The joke’s on us! An extension was just days away! And that extension revealed that the Colts found a slightly different way to overpay Jones that provides a small amount of cap relief.

It looked like Alec Pierce was long gone. Ha! He’s staying! All it cost was a top-dollar guarantee that other teams were wary of matching. And Michael Pittman, Braden Smith, Zaire Franklin, Kwity Paye, Nick Cross …

The Colts just spent a lot of money and energy to cling to the glory of their 8-9 season in 2025. They won’t be a bad team in 2026. But they will be a very, very Colts team.

Cardinals may enter 2026 with Jacoby Brissett and Gardner Minshew at QB

Brissett and Minshew are not a quarterback room. They’re a podcast. Probably a very entertaining one.

The Cardinals have not named Brissett their 2026 starter, because why would they? They have, however, signaled a disinterest in signing any other veteran quarterbacks, and you don’t bundle two journeyman spot starters if you plan to draft a rookie challenger.

This is the sort of crap the Cardinals can pull because no one pays attention to them. If the Jets did this there would be a Congressional hearing. Though Jacoby + Minshew may be better than Geno + TBD, especially if “TBD” turns out to be “Carson Wentz.”

Kyler Murray + J.J. McCarthy is probably a better quarterback room than Jacoby + Munchy. But it’s closer than any Vikings fan or the folks with Memento-memories when it comes to Murray would care to admit.

I … am actually talking myself into what the Cardinals are choosing to do this year.

Commanders Sign Nick Cross, Chig Okonkwo, Rachaad White and K’Lavon Chaisson

Cross developed into a useful box safety and slot defender for the Colts in 2025. He turns just 25 in September.

Okonkwo is Isaiah Likely Lite, a toolsy tight end who got force-fed a lot of micropasses (20 screens in 2025) in terrible offenses over the last few years. Okonkwo has spent his whole career catching passes from beta-test Malik Willis, Joshua Dobbs, Mayo Levis, Mason Rudolph, Cam Ward and Zombie Tannehill.

Chaisson is exactly the sort of player a team like the Patriots should let walk: a journeyman who got hot in the playoffs for his third team in three years. It’s easy to overcommit to a player like Chaisson, but the Commanders got him on a one-year, $10 million deal. The Commanders also signed Odafe Oweh, so they clearly see Chaisson as a complementary piece.

White is like the Anti-Keaton Mitchell. He provides little explosive play capability, but will pick up some tough yardage, avoid negative plays and can block a little bit. White was stuffed on just 11.4% of rushes in 2025, a fine figure for a back pressed into RB1 service at times behind an injury-riddled offensive line.

White is of particular interest to fantasy owners because he and Jacory Croskey-Merritt are the only running backs on the Commanders payroll right now. The Commanders pick seventh in a weak draft, have their franchise quarterback and just loaded up at edge rusher, the draft’s biggest position of strength. I’d love to speculate on their draft strategy, but I won’t go on a jeremiad about it.

Chaisson and Okonkwo are just 26. The Commanders are spending money to get younger, unlike 2024 and 2025, when they seemed determined to assemble a 2030 Hall of Fame quarterfinalists roster. This was a trio of solid little moves for a team trying to escape a binge-and-purge cycle.

Broncos retain lots of guys

To be specific, the Broncos re-signed Alex Singleton, Justin Strnad, Ja’Quan McMillian, Adam Trautman, J.K. Dobbins, Tyler Badie, Adam Prentice, Lucas Krull and others. They lost John Franklin-Myers (Titans), P.J. Locke (Cowboys) and Dre Greenlaw (cap cut).

I planned to write about the Broncos when I wrote about contenders holding onto their players on Tuesday, but:

• The Greenlaw release muddied the storyline just as I started working,

• The Jets traded for Geno Smith, shifting my priorities, and

• I keep waiting for the Broncos to do something interesting, like sign an offensive playmaker who matters.

In-house free-agent retention is almost always a good thing, especially for a playoff team. McMillian, Singleton and Strnad would be hard to replace. Dobbins and Badie add up to one healthy RB2. Trautman is Sean Payton’s comfort object.

One advantage of in-house free agent retention is that it allows a team to take more risks in the draft. The Broncos won’t have to look for many depth pieces in later rounds, because they retained so many veteran role players. Instead of drafting dime-package defenders or backup blocking tight ends who can play immediate smaller roles, the Broncos could take big swings on any playmakers or long-term projects who slip to them.

At least, that’s what they should do. The Broncos did a fine job making sure their depth charts weren’t pillaged, particularly on defense. But Broncos fans can be forgiving for wanting a little more sizzle.

That’s it for the first week of free agency here at Too Deep Zone. Barring a blockbuster, let’s reconvene on Monday morning.