NFC Free Agent Progress Reports
The Rams are crushing it. The Cowboys are being normal for once. The 49ers are all over the place. A parent-teacher conference is requested for the Packers.
The following assessments are not grades. You went to high school: you know the difference between a “progress report” and a grade. These are just snapshots of how each team is doing after three weeks of free agency.
Teams are categorized into three categories: Contenders, Middleweights and Rebuilders, and then assessed according to the needs of those categories. Contenders must avoid backsliding. Middleweights must make a push to become contenders. Rebuilders must rebuild. You wouldn’t appraise the calculus students and the eraser eaters according to the same criteria, would you? Then why would you appraise the Rams and Raiders that way?
NFC today. AFC tomorrow.
NFC East
Dallas Cowboys
There was nothing disastrous nor hilarious about the Cowboys’ free agent moves. They were pretty good and downright normal.
Replacing Osa Odighizuwa with Rashan Gary is a downgrade, but it rearranges the talent on the D-line (the Cowboys had too many tackles and not enough edges) while improving the team’s draft position in the middle rounds.
Jalen Thompson will be a stabilizing presence at free safety. Cobie Durant is mistake-prone but athletic as hell and an upgrade over last year’s CB2/CB3’s. Otito Ogbonnia replaces Odighizuwa as the defensive lineman with the initials “O.O.” whose name I will always trip over.
Curses. The entire business model of these free agency capsules is built on kicking things off with a Cowboys installment full of roasts and zingers. Now they can’t even be tipsy and weird correctly. MIDDLEWEIGHT PROGRESS: Satisfactory.
New York Giants
Signed TE Isaiah Likely: Solid upgrade over departing Daniel Bellinger.
Signed LB Tremaine Edmunds: Modest upgrade over departing Bobby Okereke.
Signed K Jason Sanders: Significant upgrade over Hamstrings Gano and Bumbles Koo.
Signed CB Greg Newsome: He’s bound to play well one of these years.
Re-signed OT Jermaine Eluemunor: Hooray! The Giants offensive line now has players worth retaining!
Lost a Bunch of Guys to the Titans: Wan’Dale Robinson’s departure may hurt a bit. Cordale Flott was better than Newsome. Shoulda enacted the Joe Judge Protocols and deactivated Brian Daboll’s key fob the moment they fired him.
Re-signed OG-OT Evan Neal: It’s just a tradition at this point. Like Draft Bust Mardi Gras.
REBUILDER PROGRESS: Outstanding.
Philadelphia Eagles
Did you ever know a couple that really needed to divorce but just wouldn’t do it? We’re staying together for the kids, they might say, even though the kids have noticed that their pals Jimmy and Suzie are much happier now that dad is living in Tucson and their house is no longer entombed in icy silence.
Well, the Eagles offense is that couple, and Iggles fans are the kids. JUST BREAK UP, YOU MISERABLE ASSHOLES. But no, no force on earth could dislodge A.J. Brown’s salary from the cap ledger, and Dallas Goedert unexpectedly returned like the son coming back from college because he couldn’t earn a living as a beat poet. (Even Grant Calcaterra returned. In this analogy, he’s Goedert’s pet ferret or something.) Poor Andy Dalton is the Thanksgiving guest invited solely to make everyone act civil. Hollywood Brown is the sweet potatoes.
All the superstars who won the Super Bowl two years ago are back. So let’s sit down to a NORMAL dinner like a NORMAL family and enjoy each other’s goddamned company, OK?
Were those last three paragraphs a little dark? They may have come across as a little dark. My adolescence was weird. The Eagles were dysfunctional back then, too.
Vibe checks aside, the Eagles did well in free agency. Defensive newcomers Riq Woolen and Arnold Ebiketie offset the losses of Jaelan Phillips, Reed Blankenship and Nakobe Dean, especially since successors for Blankenship and Dean were drafted last year and showed some promise. The Goedert and Jordan Davis re-signings will allow the Eagles to focus on the interior offensive line as their one critical draft need. And Brown’s a great receiver when he’s not scrawling pictures of Nick Sirianni and Jalen Hurts getting run over by a forklift in his burn book.
So … hooray? CONTENDER PERFORMANCE: Satisfactory.
Washington Commanders
My opinions of the last two Commanders offseasons:
2024: Hate it! They just burned cap space on lots of old guys!
2025: Love it! Laremy Tunsil, Deebo Samuel and Von Miller are three missing Super Bowl pieces for the price of, well, three. But still!
So I have either been dead wrong about the Adam Peters-era Commanders every year or, as I like to think of it, a year ahead of the curve. The 2025 season, after all, was marred in part by the presence of far too many old guys collected in 2024. Still, there’s a chance that my opinions on the Commanders are poorly calibrated.
Odafe Oweh, K’Lavon Chaisson and Charles Omenihu provide an influx of edge talent. Tight end Chig Okonkwo is a more dynamic playmaker than his Titans numbers suggest. Nick Cross is a feisty young box safety. Now that I have done more draft research, I understand why teams like the Commanders are stocking up on RB2-types like Rachaad White and Jerome Ford. They’re better than the fumble factories who will be available in the middle rounds.
There’s an almost palpable humility to these moves when compared to the last two offseasons. No one is too old or too expensive. The Commanders are being aggressive without being foolish. They’re better now than they were three weeks ago, and they are also built to escape the binge-and-purge cycle of the last two offseasons. MIDDLEWEIGHT PROGRESS: Outstanding.
NFC North
Chicago Bears
The Bears lost more than they would have liked in the last few weeks, especially factoring in center Drew Dalman’s retirement. Garrett Bradbury is a downgrade from Dalman, and the departures (Kevin Byard, Nahshon Wright, Jaquan Brisker, C.J. Gardner-Johnson) outweigh the arrivals (Coby Bryant, Cameron Lewis) in the secondary.
The Bears moved DJ Moore on their own terms, but he wasn’t chopped liver, while incoming receiver Kalif Raymond is essentially a return man.
Overall, however, the Bears are an on-the-rise team that wasn’t pillaged too badly and acquired some draft capital for their efforts. And just wait until you see what happened to the rest of the NFC North! The Bears’ offseason MVPs may turn out to be Brad Holmes, Brian Gutekunst and that suit-filler who took over the Vikings. CONTENDER PROGRESS: Satisfactory.
Detroit Lions
The Lions signed an edge rusher!
He’s D.J. Wonnum, who finished fourth on the Panthers with 25 pressures, and whose pressure rate of 7.6% ranked 149th among the 160 defenders to record 20+ pressures. (Source: Sports Info Solutions.) But Wonnum is indeed an “edge rusher,” in that he lines up on the edge and rushes. The Lions now employ four of them, two of whom have recorded more than one NFL sack.
The Lions replaced their old injured offensive linemen (Graham Glasgow, Taylor Decker) with young injured ones (Cade Mays, Larry Borom), swapped out useful David Montgomery for less-useful Isiah Pacheco, suffered some depth losses to an already shallow defense and appear to be hiding under the blankets until Karen Cisco comes to take Terrion Arnold away.
It really feels like the Lions are grasping at straws. This is what “losing the plot” looks like. They are being assessed as “contenders,” because that’s what they were as recently as Thanksgiving. CONTENDER PROGRESS: Unsatisfactory.
Green Bay Packers
Free agency was an unmitigated disaster for the Packers. Anyone claiming otherwise is freebasing black-tar cheddar-flavored copium.
I’ve seen Packers fans/media frame the Rashan Gary/Elgton Jenkins/Nate Hobbs dismissals as “addition by subtraction.” Fine. There was also some subtraction by subtraction of young core players (Quay Walker, Romeo Doubs, Rasheed Walker). The Packers have quasi-replacements for some of these players, though they let some bench players walk too, so maybe that’s addition by long division? And they added some guys, like a defensive lineman who was too injury-prone for the 49ers (Javon Hargrave) and a special teams disaster waiting to happen (Skyy Moore).
I won’t mention losing the backup quarterback that they needed to get through the last two seasons, lest I prompt much performative huffing and puffing. (No, the Packers couldn’t keep Malik Willis, but they still must spend resources to replace him.) Oh, and the only defensive coordinator Packers fans ever liked is gone.
The Packers offseason so far has been so bad that Cheeseheads cannot compartmentalize its badness, resulting in a eerie, blissful catatonia. They are like Tokyo citizens sifting through the wreckage after a Godzilla attack. Ah, I found my coffee mug, only slightly chipped and irradiated. All shall be well.
Anyway, I placed an Internet wager with ranking Cheesehead Aaron Nagler. If the Packers win the NFC North, I will be forced to humiliate myself. When my bold, controversial, losing lots of starters when you are barely a playoff team is bad and have no first-round pick theory proves to be correct, Nagler will be forced to supplicate himself before me on behalf of his whole fanbase.
Until then, think of my commentary on the Packers not as trolling, but an intervention. Cheeseheads are careening toward a horrible crash-and-burn. I am just trying to sober them up so they can face reality in a rational way. CONTENDER PROGRESS: Unsatisfactory.
Minnesota Vikings
Kyler Murray is the perfect choice to fuel the Vikings quarterback cult. We’re already seeing some mystical metafiction about how quarterback guru Kevin O’Connell (he has never developed a quarterback, EVER) can unlock Murray’s “potential” (he’s an eighth-year veteran with 87 starts).
Carson Wentz will return as well, and I am not sure if Murray is Short Carson or Wentz is Tall Kyler. Stack their work habits and big-moment reliability atop each other, and you get one guy who you might actually be able to trust.
