In this offseason, a lot of players have become free agents. This means their contract has expired and they can either resign with the same team or possibly be traded to another team. Players are open to signing contracts with new teams for a multitude of reasons, but the most common one is money. So far, this offseason has had many surprising trades that can be either super exciting or disappointing depending on your favorite team.
The most shocking trade I’ve seen this season was former Viking Quarterback Kirk Cousins signing with the Atlanta Falcons. He has been the Viking’s franchise quarterback for the past six seasons and has been very loyal to the team, so I didn’t see this coming. He suffered a season-ending injury to the Achilles last year, and his backup quarterback Josh Dobbs had to take over. The Vikings also decided to trade Josh Dobbs to the 49ers, which raises the question: who will be their quarterback this upcoming season? They are planning to sign the 49ers’ second-string quarterback Sam Darnold, but they will likely be drafting a rookie quarterback as their starter in April.
One of the most active teams during this free agency is the Steelers with them releasing Kenny Pickett to the Eagles. While Kenny Pickett showed a lot of promise, he did not perform well and ended up being out on injury for the majority of last season. Most likely Pickett was released because after the Steelers recently signed Broncos quarterback Russel Wilson to be their starter. Kenny Pickett didn’t handle it well and said that didn’t want to be a backup, but now he is traded to the Eagles where he will backup Jalen Hurts anyways. Also, the Steelers traded for the previous starting quarterback for the Bears Justin Fields to be their new backup quarterback. Even though Fields is a backup now, it will be interesting to see if he can prove himself and possibly play even better than Wilson.
All of these quarterbacks being traded around and new ones being drafted soon will create a lot of tension between who will be starting. As mentioned before, Fields and Wilson might battle for the starting quarterback position on the Steelers, but the Giants will have an interesting quarterback battle. This is because the New York Giants have decided to re-sign their quarterback Daniel Jones, whose season ended due to injury last year. During the time he was injured, both the Giant’s second and third-string quarterbacks had playing time where Tommy Devito proved to be the best fit. It seemed like the Giants were even more successful with Devito than before Daniel Jones’s injury, so it will be very interesting to watch the Giants quarterback since they just received backup quarterback Drew Locke from the Seahawks.
Speaking of the Giants, it has been big news that they traded away their star running back Saquon Barkley to the Eagles. Personally, I am excited about Barkley being on the Eagles since I think he was a great player on a bad team, but Giants fans are very sad to lose their best player. The Giants will need to find a replacement, but so far it isn’t looking too good for them with only receiving Devin Singletary from the Texans which is a downgrade. This trade between the Giants and Eagles is one example of the many inter-division trades going on between rival teams.
There are still a good amount of weeks until the NFL Draft, but it has been super fun to watch how these different teams are handling these player’s free agency and I’ll be excited to hear more news for the upcoming season.
