Drue Tranquill to Chiefs

[DJ's left nut]

Originally Posted by Cave Johnson

This has been a weird FA market. Probably some combo of:

1) Between the guaranteed deal for a molester and the Kirk deal, I suspect there may have been some owner collusion to cool the market.

2) Chargers/Bills/Eagles/etc. went all in last year and couldn’t beat the Chiefs. Fewer teams are opting to sell out for a ring.

3) FA class is weak generally.

I mean the math is what the math is.

There's a ceiling and a floor and teams WILL spend between those 2 figures. As you noted, a lot of teams made deals last season coming off the COVID flat-cap that pushed money into this season expecting a strong rise in the cap. They essentially used this year's cap as a credit card to pay for players they signed LAST offseason and now the bill is coming due.

Last year's spending was never realistic going forward. And it was SO unrealistic that it suppressed spending this season. It'll probably happen around the time the new tv rights deals throws a shitload of money into the system as well.

Collusion is damn near impossible under the CBA and to whatever extent it is possible, the juice definitely does not justify the squeeze. There's just very little to be gained by collusion with the spending floors in place.

What you're seeing is a market correction, Juan. Teams can't mash the accelerator every off-season in a cap league - it don't work that way.