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dan graziano
multiple authors
You know we love our overreactions. And there’s no time of year that’s better for overreactions nfl free agency.
Your favorite team goes out there on the first day of the negotiation period and spends big, adding players You know what situations he needs help in, and it’s easy to let your offseason fan dream. The fact is that some of these tricks It is possible it’s 2024 Saquon Barkley-The impact of level on the teams that make them… but most of them will not live up to high expectations. Some may flop completely. The fact that we don’t know which ones are which is a big part of the entertainment.
I picked out a few situations that played out during last week’s frenzy and tried to predict whether they’d live up to the hype. So please enjoy this special mid-March edition of Examining Overreactions – where we sort out which of the big findings are legitimate. And forget what I said in the second sentence, when I say the same thing nfl draft Six weeks from now.
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McCarthy, Penix drafted as QB1s?
Steelers losing season?
Ranking Walker RB1 in fantasy?
Brown, Crosby staying put?
Rams to the Super Bowl?
vikings Put signature on kyler murrayand falcons Put signature on tua tagovailoaThat pushed those veterans into clear competitions with the 10th and eighth overall selections, respectively, from the 2024 draft. McCarthy coming out of a terrible situation injured First NFL season after missing his entire rookie season due to knee injury. He entered the offseason healthy, but after throwing 12 interceptions and taking 27 sacks in his 10 games last season, he has given the Vikings reason to doubt whether he will be able to become the quarterback they thought they would when they moved up one spot to draft him.
And Penix began the 2025 season as the Falcons’ starter, but he missed the final eight games of the season. torn acl In his left knee. It’s unclear how long it will take before Penix, who had two ACL reconstructions on his right knee in college, can return to playing.
Verdict: Overreaction
Murray and Tagovailoa are big names, but are they slam dunks? Murray missed 12 games last season Injuryand the cardinals bus Issued He has $36.8 million of guaranteed money remaining on his contract. tagovailoa got benched There are three games left in the season for performance reasons, and the Dolphins simply Cutting He had $54 million of guaranteed money remaining on his contract. Combined, the teams that drafted these two players are paying them $90.8 million No Play for them. And neither Arizona nor Miami appear to be located at this location.
All of this is to say that Murray and Tagovailoa don’t come without some legitimate concerns. It’s very likely that Murray will start ahead of McCarthy unless something lights up this offseason and McCarthy performs well enough to unseat him in the summer. But the Vikings aren’t ready to give up on McCarthy yet, and they’re hoping Murray’s arrival will have a positive impact on him. Atlanta is a different story; My understanding is that the Falcons see Penix as the starter when healthy and Tagovailoa is just there in coverage if he’s not ready.
Both Murray and Tagovailoa arrive at their new homes with a lot to prove. Don’t get the impression that they are there to take away jobs from people who were recently selected in the top-10 compared to them.
Steelers are about to have their first losing season since 2003
mike tomlin who went away From the team in January, he famously never finished a single season with a losing record in his 19 years as head coach of the Steelers. The last time Pittsburgh finished below .500 was in 2003, which was Bill Cowher’s 12th year as head coach and the year before the team added Ben Roethlisberger.
After winning the AFC North in 2025 with a 10-7 record, the Steelers have added wide receiver Michael Pittman Jr.., cornerback jamel dean and running back Rico Dowdle run back from defeat kenneth gainwell and protector isaac seumalo So far in free agency. They haven’t done anything yet to address the quarterback situation, but the widespread opinion around the league is that they’re hoping aaron rodgers Decides to return for a second season and play for them again.
2:24
Why is Ryan Clark horrified by the idea of the Steelers signing Cousins?
Ryan Clark holds nothing back as he shoots down the idea that the Steelers could sign Kirk Cousins.
Verdict: No overreaction
First of all, this Is To occur at some point. Playing 22 consecutive seasons without a losing record is an amazing accomplishment and a testament to the culture and consistency that has defined the Steelers over that time. But isn’t the reason for this an overreaction? It’s been on a knife’s edge for some time now, and it’s possible that Tomlin was holding it together. The Steelers’ win totals over the last five seasons are nine, nine, 10, 10 and 10. They’ve been a good team, but it’s been a while. Great One. They have not won a playoff game since the 2016 season.
The main reason they haven’t been able to move forward is because, since Roethlisberger, they haven’t found a meaningful or permanent solution at the quarterback position. Aaron Rodgers, 42, who hasn’t finished in the top 20 in the league in QBR since 2021, isn’t going to fix it. At best, it’s a Band-Aid for the problem. At worst, the season he turns 43, his play deteriorates, and the Steelers are in real trouble.
Mike McCarthy is a good, proven, capable head coach and replacing him with Tomlin shows us that the Steelers plan to keep the train on track. But the Steelers have had a really limited cap for a decade now, and at some point that cap is going to expire.
Kenneth Walker III Going to be the No. 1 RB in fantasy in 2026
Super Bowl MVP praised for his outstanding postseason performance with Seattle big new contract With the chiefs. Kansas City’s hope is that he will bring an explosive element to its run game that it has struggled to find early on. kareem hunt. Walker had 1,027 rushing yards last season, and he had 33 runs of 10-plus yards (sixth in the NFL).
isia pachecoJoe, who was the nominal starting running back in Kansas City the last few years, was released in free agency join the lions. Chiefs also signed imari demercado And still have a 2025 seventh-round pick brashard smith. But at this point in the offseason, the backfield in Kansas City will primarily be Walker’s, and paying him $14.35 million per year is a strong indicator that the Chiefs expect to give him plenty of work.
Verdict: Overreaction
Several things come up:
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Andy Reid’s offense is going to be great first and foremost, especially at quarterback patrick mahomes is back to its full strength Season-ending knee injury.
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If Mahomes doesn’t return immediately, or if it takes him some time to return to form, the offense is unlikely to operate at or even close to its peak level.
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Reed has a history of drawing up creative plays at the goal line, rather than handing it off to his running backs and breaking it up behind his biggest blockers.
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Walker has a history of injuries, and the main reason the Seahawks were able to keep him healthy last season was because they had a fairly strict timeshare with him. Zach Charbonnet.
Walker should be a really good player for the Chiefs, especially as they deplete their offensive line this offseason. But regardless of the contract size, I find it hard to believe he’ll be a player who will reach the top spot in fantasy. There are several reasons why Kansas City shouldn’t utilize him in this manner.
The market’s top two trade targets went nowhere in the first week of free agency. Well, technically Crosby went to Las Vegas to baltimoreBut the Ravens sent him home because they didn’t like what they saw of his physical condition. stepped back of their trade agreement. but brown is still there on eaglesAnd Crosby is still there on the attackers – Even though teams continue to call the Eagles about Brown’s availability, and Crosby would be a Raven right now if that was the Raiders’ priority.
Since teams that have tried and failed to acquire these two disgruntled stars have moved on to other plans at those positions, it’s fair to wonder if the Eagles and Raiders have missed their windows to trade their respective standouts.
2:29
Orlovsky stunned, Ravens backed out of Max Crosby deal
The “Get Up” Crew reacts to the Ravens’ decision to back out of the trade deal for Max Crosby due to medical concerns.
Verdict: Overreaction
The trade deadline is more than seven months away, folks. The excitement of this past week often obscures the fact that the offseason player buying period lasts a very long time. Smart teams recognize this and continue to make deals and look for improvements even after the start of the league year. There will be other opportunities this off-season when trade talks for these and other players resume.
As the draft gets closer, teams start to get more serious about trades, because waiting until after the draft means waiting a year to use the picks they receive in exchange for players. If not before the draft, negotiations for these players could heat up again after June 1, when it would make more sense for the Eagles to trade Brown from a cap standpoint. Then comes August, when training camp injuries create new needs and teams decide their Plan A won’t work.
Brown and Crosby could be on their current teams when Week 1 begins. But we shouldn’t assume they’ll do so just because they weren’t traded last week.
The Rams are going to win the Super Bowl in Los Angeles
The Rams looked like the best team in the NFL for most of 2025. Locked in a season-long battle with the eventual division and Super Bowl champion Seahawks, the Rams fell short in the regular season due to a wildcard. week 16 thursday night loss and then lost to seattle again nfc championship game. They didn’t lose much in free agency, and they added a pair of starting cornerbacks with Super Bowl experience. Trent McDuffie And jaylen watson. Like many teams, their work is not done and they can still make impressive moves at wide receiver and other positions.
Verdict: No overreaction
The last time the Super Bowl was at SoFi Stadium, it was the Rams who won it — and it’s certainly not ridiculous to believe they could do it again. They came agonizingly close to going to Super Bowl LX, where they likely would have been seeded over the Patriots in Santa Clara. They don’t know how much longer they will have with the current MVP Matthew Stafford As for their quarterback, and as long as that window is open, you can rest assured that L.A. will be in win-now mode and looking for difference-making upgrades wherever they can find them.
The division should again be brutal, with Seattle and San Francisco likely to make it a tight three-way race. But the Rams addressed their biggest weakness with those cornerback moves and should go into the 2026 season as hungry as any after a near miss in 2025.
