This year’s NFL free agency has been one of the craziest ones ever. Every March, NFL free agency commences. Essentially, all 32 NFL teams race against each other to sign every star NFL player that isn’t under a contract before the next season. Because NFL rosters consist of so many players, and the NFL has an actual enforced salary cap, free agency is always a crazy experience for fans as. So far in the 2024 free agency spree, teams have allocated hundreds of millions of dollars into the biggest free agent stars looking to spark a push towards the 2025 superbowl.

First, some of the past year’s contenders have already begun reloading for the next season. Last year’s superbowl champs the Kansas City Chiefs resigned their superstar defensive player Chris Jones to a massive 5 years 159 Million dollar contract, franchise tagged start cornerback LaJarius Sneed keeping him next year, and acquired bonafide star wide receiver Marquise “Hollywood” Brown, which enhances their offense significantly. In addition, the Baltimore Ravens signed soon to be hall of fame running back Derrick Henry and re-signed star defensive tackle Justin Madubike to a 4 years 98 million dollar deal. However, the Ravens failed to re-sign many of the players key to their strong 2023-2024 season, so they had an overall loss in free agency. The Green Bay Packers acquired superstar running back Josh Jacobs for 4 years 48 million dollars and rising super star free safety Xavier Mckinney for 4 years 68 million dollars. Green Bay looked very promising towards the backend of last season, so it seems likely they will be even stronger next year and have a shot at making a deep playoff run. Lastly, the Philadelphia Eagles re-signed left guard Landon Dickerson for 4 years 87 million, making him the highest paid guard of all time. They also signed superstar running back Saquon Barkley for 3 years 38 million dollars and star edge rusher Bryce Huff for 3 years 51 Million.

Not only did great teams last year make big signings, many other teams executed huge deals in an effort to be contenders next year. The biggest signing in this category is the Atlanta Falcons signing superstar quarterback Kirk Cousins for 4 years 180 million dollars. The falcons have been considered a quarterback away from being superbowl contenders for over a year now and they finally have gotten that piece. They are expected to be strong contenders next year. The Houston Texans and Minnesota Vikings had some funny exchanges too. First, the Vikings signed former Texan edge rusher Jonathan Greenard and the Texans signed former Viking edge rusher Danielle for 4 years 76 Million and 2 years 49 million dollars respectively. Also, they made a trade for draft picks where the Vikings acquired the Texans ownership of the 23th overall pick of this NFL Draft coming up in April. It is likely the Vikings will use this pick to help their efforts to trade up even higher in the draft and select one of the top quarterbacks in the draft.

Finally, the Carolina Panthers, the team with the worst record last year, made some big moves. They traded young superstar edge rusher Brian Burns to the New York Giants for draft capital, and the Giants extended Burns to a massive 5 years 150 Million Dollar contract. They also signed two starting offensive guards Robert Hunt and Damien Lewis 5 years 100 million and 4 years 53 million dollars respectively. This is a substantial amount of money to allocate into the interior part of the offensive line, but the Panthers are making it clear that they want to help and protect former first overall pick Bryce Young at Quarterback. In this help to support Young after a failure of a rookie season, the Panthers trade for Diontae Johnson, a very good receiver on the steelers, in exchange for mediocre cornerback Donte Jackson and draft picks.

While this article covers a lot of the big deals made during free agency, it is quite the marathon, so a large amount of big signings are left out. This just goes to show how prominent NFL free agency is and it would be very useful to search a list of all the dealings made during this frenzy. All of these signings lead into the 2024 NFL Draft, which is on April 25th, so get  ready for even more NFL offseason action, which no other sport of the world can replicate the beauty of.