People think the only way to build a team is splash in free agency.
We went from 5-11 to 10-6 in 2013 with the superstar additions of Drew Stanton, Rashard Mendenhall, Chilo Rachal, Frostee Rucker, Matt Shaughnessy, Quentin Groves, Karlos Dansby, Jasper Brinkley, Antoine Cason, Javier Arenas, Jerraud Powers and Yeremiah Bell. By my reckoning that's 3 starters and a bunch of depth, and most of these were gone the year after.
And adding Jesse Minter, Alex Okafor Andre Ellington, Tony Jefferson and Badger in the draft.
What propelled the team was Carson Palmer. The same way that this team will depend on the performance of Kyler Murray.
Yeah there were some decent players on the roster. Larry, Calais, P2, Dockett, Jefferson, but they were on the roster in 2012 too.
People forget how those rosters were poor on paper. There were no star signings. During the whole BA era the biggest signing were probably Veldherr and Iupati, and they are no bigger than Jonah Williams.
These are the biggest FA spenders the last 4 seasons and in brackets what it's got them.
- New York Jets: $346MM; 0 PA
- Jacksonville Jaguars $324MM; 1 PA
- Cincinnati Bengals: $287MM; 2 PA; 1 CC
- Miami Dolphins: $270MM; 2 PA
- Las Vegas Raiders: $249MM; 1 PA
- New York Giants: $240MM; 1 PA
- Carolina Panthers: $234MM; 0 PA
- New England Patriots: $230MM; 1 PA
- Denver Broncos: $229MM; 0 PA
- Chicago Bears: $227MM; 1 PA
- Los Angeles Chargers: $222MM; 1 PA
- Houston Texans: $206MM; 1 PA
- Cleveland Browns: $204MM; 2 PA
- Buffalo Bills: $198MM; 4 PA
- Washington Commanders: $197MM; 1 PA
- Tennessee Titans: $159MM; 2 PA