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The Art of Free Agency

© Shane Andy Youngblood

You can buy a championship. If that has not already been proven, then the Washington Redskins' Dan Snyder is doing his damndest to turn theory into scientific law.

The Redskins' off-season moves have been stunning, if not dizzying. Snyder moved quickly to ink Bruce Smith, Jeff George and Deon Sanders, and infused his line-up with youth from draftees LaVarr Arrington and Chris Samuels (How in the heck did that happen anyway?...oh, right..the Saints traded 453 draft picks for a running back who pegged rap mogul Master "P" as his agent. "P" as in "Performance incentives." "P" as in "Pardon me, but you aren't getting paid this year."

You can do two things with free agency and two things only. First, you can sign that vital cog that will push your team into the Super Bowl. Second, you can sign the "Over-The-Hill Gang" to a series of performance-laced contracts that will cosmetically disguise the fact that your team sucks.

Let's take the first scenario....has any free agent move in the history of free agent moves made more sense than the Tampa Bay Buccaneers signing Keyshawn Johnson? Well, let's see.....the Bucs' scores in last year's playoffs looked more like baseball scores than football, so the answer is no: Betting the farm that the Saints will increase their playoff-victory drought by another year in 2000 couldn't make more sense than this.

It makes sense to make that move because you have built a stud-stable of talent through the draft and you need that one outside addition because you sure can't strengthen every position via the draft. It makes sense because anyone other than Alvin Harper is an upgrade in my book. It makes sense because Keyshawn is brash and fearless and has the look of a winner.

Or you could do it the other way. Sign a number of aging, free agents and increase the odds that you MAY make the playoffs, but then what?

The San Francisco 49ers, staring directly at the prospect of an aging, brittle team in the mid-90's, decided to get older. They sign Kevin Greene and Chris Doleman, whose combined age is 173, and place performance incentives in their contracts. They continue to work and rework the contracts of team veterans to defer salary so they can stay under the cap.

The 49ers had enough holes in the secondary and at running back to ensure that they were not championship caliber. Adding a couple of aging veterans to the mix was not going to solve their problems, and in fact, set the landscape to where they are staring directly in the face of football's version of nuclear winter.