All things considered, I think we’ve done very well so far in FA.
New GM Dave Gettleman didn’t (doesn’t) have much money to work with, but somehow he’s managed to improve our roster in my estimation, despite having to make tough decisions on key players. Here are the major moves:
Released/Cut
- LB - James Anderson - UNSIGNED
- CB - Chris Gamble - RETIRED
Restructured
- RB - Jonathan Stewart
- TE - Greg Olsen
- OT - Jordan Gross - PENDING
Re-Signed/Extended
- RB - Mike Tolbert
- DT - Dwan Edwards
- CB - Captain Munnerlyn
- LB - Jordan Senn
- TE - Ben Hartstock
- QB - Derek Anderson
Signed (FA)
- CB - Drayton Florence - DETROIT
- CB - DJ Moore - CHICAGO
- S - Mike Mitchell - OAKLAND
- DT - Colin Cole - NFL
- WR - Ted Ginn Jr. - SF
So here’s what I see… As soon as Gettleman came in, he made the statement “If you’re not improving the bottom half of your roster, you’re not improving.” I think this shines through in all the moves we’ve made. We have not offered any large contracts to any players….not one. What we HAVE done is added veteran experience to a secondary that had none. We’ve also resigned our best defensive tackle from the past 5 years. This move in particular was strong considering he initially passed on our offer, but came back later to accept. This tells me that A. The offer was fair, and B. The GM is confident in his approach and will stick with his approach. We’ve improved our special teams by signing Ted Ginn Jr. We’ve also shown our commitment to key players J. Stew, Greg Olsen, and Mike Tolbert without putting any additional money on the table. We’ve also done a good enough job of filling holes that we can now look at the best player available in the draft with our 14th pick as opposed to looking to fill a need - which was also what Mr. Gettleman says he thinks a team’s draft approach should be.
As for the losses, we lose our #1 corner - but you have to remember that he practically didn’t play last season anyway. We also saved a ton of money by releasing him. We also lost our #4 linebacker, that we were paying a starter’s salary to. I like James Anderson for depth, but financially it simply didn’t make sense to to keep him with the money he’d make.
So when I see that writers like Pat Yasinskas at ESPN are calling us free agency “losers” it really does baffle me. Does he know how BAD our team could have looked following this FA period? He follows the NFC South so he most certainly knows our financial situation and the holes in our roster. He points to replacing our #1 corner with 3 #3 corners as not impressive and that seems to be his sole argument. I can totally understand if you view free agency with blinders and say that Carolina made no big splashes and didn’t move the needle for their team like our counterparts in the division. But once again, all things considered, we’ve really improved as opposed to trending downwards going into next season.