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Bill Barnwell, ESPN Staff Writer
It’s always tough to wrap your brain around the first day of NFL free agency’s legal tampering period. Just matching name and team for the first time feels weird. Josh Jacobs of the … Packers? Falcons quarterback Kirk Cousins? Offensive lineman Robert Hunt becoming a member of the league’s nine-figure-contract club? After weeks of rumors and attempts to connect the free agent dots, actually seeing things play out in a matter of hours can be overwhelming.
That’s why I’m here. Let’s try to break down the winners and losers from what amounts to the first day of NFL free agency. What might look like a winner in March could play out like a loser in September and October, of course, but consider this an attempt to evaluate how teams viewed the market, built their rosters and which players and teams got squeezed in the process.
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We can start with a position that for once didn’t feel like it was being left out in free agency:
Jump to a section:
Free agent RBs | RB cuts | Guards
Lions D | Texans D | Justin Fields
Dolphins | Eagles | Panthers | Vikings
Winners: Free agent running backs
With one of the deepest and most viable running back classes ever hitting free agency, there were reasons to be concerned the spring of 2024 could look like the summer of 2023, when a group of well-regarded veterans who had become cap casualties or had been franchise-tagged were hung out to dry for months. When those backs all struggled to live up to expectations in 2024, the market seemed like it could have been even more cutthroat.
Owing to a variety of factors, we didn’t see that same freeze in the market during Day 1 of free agency. Nine rushers who project to either be the lead back or the 1A in a rotation signed with teams Monday. Of the seven unrestricted free agents in the top four tiers of my look at the free agent running back class, the only one who didn’t sign Monday was Derrick Henry, whose role with the Titans appears to have been taken by Tony Pollard.