National Football League

Free agency, from those who really know

Published Mar. 13, 2012 1:00 a.m. ET

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Since the start of modern-day free agency in the NFL, the process of signing a player who is on the open market can be exhausting. Given the dollars and cents involved, the stakes for both sides are rarely higher.

Sometimes teams get creative. When Reggie White became available in 1993, Green Bay Packers coach Mike Holmgren made a saintly plea. Holmgren called White, a pastor, and said, “Reggie, this is God, I want you to play in Green Bay,” and then hung up. A four-year, $17 million offer then won the lineman over, and the franchise’s fortunes improved. Green Bay earned a Super Bowl title in January 1997.

Indeed, for those lucky free agents and the clubs that want them, Christmas comes in March and April. From the opening days of the signing period, teams lavish certain free agents with the red-carpet treatment, then bid high for that player’s services. But not everyone enjoys such a smooth ride. In those cases, the players and agents, the general managers and head coaches, play hardball (or lowball) during negotiations. In some instances bidding wars take place, or at least that’s what one side wants you to believe.

Free agency starts at 4 p.m. ET today, and the process of offer and counter-offer begins anew. What follows are first-person accounts from all sides about what transpires during that time.

The general manager: Charley Casserly

Casserly spent 24 years in the front offices of the Washington Redskins and Houston Texans. Three seasons after he was elevated to GM in Washington in 1989, the Redskins won their third Super Bowl title. He also helped build the expansion Texans from scratch.

GMs have this big board of all the players in the NFL. Each one of them is rated, and then you decide what positions you feel you need. In your mind, there’s an A-list of players you want. When free agency officially starts, you prioritize whom you are going after, and then you have to adjust and keep adjusting on the fly. Once you sign your first player, you have to go back and look at your budget to sign the rest on your list/board. It has to be a moving budget. You prioritize.

Now, you usually don’t have a shot at elite players in free agency. The biggest difference from when (modern) free agency started (in 1993) and now is, teams originally said to elite players “Why don’t you go out there and see what you can get, and then come back to us and we will match it.” Well, they did go out there . . . and never came back. That’s why the first two expansions teams (Jacksonville Jaguars and Carolina Panthers) were so good, because the quality of free agents was unbelievable, and they had money to spend. They raised the market on everybody, and ate it up. Carolina reached the NFC championship in its second year of existence. They had eight Pro Bowlers, and I believe seven of them arrived through free agency. You’re not going to find seven guys that go to the Pro Bowl within a two-year period of signing them anymore. Teams had to adjust, and fast.

So the market went the other way. Elite players usually sign extensions before their deals expire and never get to free agency. It’s rare that you have a Mario Williams this year. And Peyton Manning . . . I mean, that’s unprecedented. So the market is basically comprised of good, solid players. That’s what you work with.

Even those good free agents are gone within the first week of bidding. What’s left is your B-level players, or B-plus players who overpriced themselves. My last year in Washington (1999), we signed three guys in June: (defensive end) Marco Coleman, (fullback) Larry Centers and (offensive lineman) Andy Heck, and they all started for us. For one reason or another, Coleman thought he was going to get more money and didn’t. Centers got released late, and I believe Heck did too. So after that initial rush, you might get some good players at lower prices because the market has dried up for them.

When you make that first call to a player’s agent, you always have the parameters of a deal in place. Then, with the agent you find out what’s happening. Some deals are closed within a matter of an hour; some take days and a few visits. Sometimes, free agency is simply an auction. The agent will play the market, come back to you with a price and say, “Are you going to take it or not?” If you take it, you got him. If you don’t, well, he’s probably gone by the time you have the next phone call. You just have to decide: pay it or not pay it? If you say yes, you’re probably paying him more than you thought. That’s why you have to prioritize. The market is a fluid one; something that you thought would be in a certain price range could be gone within an hour.

As you might imagine, it’s a hectic process. You have to be ready to pull the trigger at any minute. I’ve heard people say they don’t get any sleep, but I’m not sure about that. You just have to be on call 24 hours a day.

The agent: Steve Caric

Caric first worked for a high-profile sports agency before striking out on his own, focusing on NFL clients. This season, his new charges include University of Washington running back Chris Polk and Stanford receiver Chris Owusu.

Every client’s situation is different, but in general we always have a game plan in place before free agency officially starts. I always make sure to set realistic expectations. I prepare my clients by showing them research and data on the market and competition at their position, as well as contract trends with the teams and GMs that we anticipate dealing with. Just like an NFL game, you have to be prepared with a detailed plan for free agency.

You take the first call. Usually it’s like the first round of a boxing match, where both sides are feeling each other out. I want to find out how they see my client fitting in with their team and scheme, where he is on their free-agent priority list and what their budget is. If the client is a big name on the market, the whole process could take about a week, though that can vary. Now, if your client is one of the top two or three players at their position, your phone could ring the first minute of free agency, and if the situation is right, a deal can be completed that same day.

There can be sticking points before a final deal is reached. While total dollars are important, the amount of guaranteed money and the structure of the contract are paramount. I want my clients to receive as much guaranteed money as possible in order to provide them and their family with security. I also want to see the contract “front-loaded,” so that the three-year average is as high as possible.

The catch: Drew Bennett

Bennett came into the NFL as an undrafted rookie in 2001 with the Tennessee Titans and worked his way up the depth chart to become a dependable, move-the-chains receiver. His three-year, $6 million deal ended after the 2006 season, making the once-anonymous Bennett a coveted free agent in the eyes of some clubs — but not his own.

I didn’t expect to go into free agency like I did. I was in Tennessee, kind of in a weird situation. I was coming off a serious knee surgery, and they were not very anxious to sign me to a long-term extension, before or during that season. There were some GM issues, and they took away his ability to sign long-term deals. When they did offer me a contract, it was a lot smaller than what I eventually got. Right before free agency opened up, with Mike Reinfeldt in as the new GM, the Titans made me a token offer. I was kind of the first person he took a firm stand on.

My agents and I had a strategy session. I was working with Premier Sports and Entertainment at the time. Gary Uberstine and his big team of guys, which included my current agent, have a retreat in Las Vegas about two weeks before the free-agency period begins. For an hour or two, you had a meeting about your life in general. If you were a restricted or unrestricted free agent, you could talk strategy. At that meeting, you look at other players at your position that have similar stats. The agent points out: “Here’s what they make; we want to mark it up for inflation. Here’s the numbers we will tell teams they need to be serious about if we are going to fly you up there to their place.” There was also a very basic rundown of the market: Here are the teams that need receivers, and here’s where we feel you fit.

There’s a lot of information being passed around. Agents, if they know what they are doing, are getting info from assistant coaches. Informally, they’ll hear a client is on the top of a team’s list of free agents. Well, then an agent can prepare for that. From there, the agency markets you to different outlets and stirs up some controversy. They’ll say you’re dying to go out there, dying to go out here, which might not be necessarily true. But it forces teams to say this is the guy we want. My guys did a great job talking to teams, and not really letting anyone know whom I preferred.

I heard a lot of rumors. Heard that so and so would be the first one to call.

Luckily for me, a lot of things worked in my favor. For starters, there was not a flood of big-time receivers on the market. If six or seven free-agent receivers were out there, then this whole process could have gone to April and May for me.

So the free-agency period officially begins, and it’s amazing how fast things go. It all shakes down in the first 12 hours. You know exactly who the players are for your services. The Rams were one of the first to call. The Patriots were also interested. St. Louis was the first one to really pony up a number. The Rams had Isaac Bruce and Torry Holt, but they were a little older, and while I was younger, I would also be a veteran presence. Plus those two were speed receivers, and I was a bigger possession guy.

St. Louis brought me in, and treated me like a king, which was new to me. I remember sitting with the general manager, head coach and offensive coordinator and saying, “I had to take a bus to the airport to get to the facility in Tennessee.” They wooed me pretty well. They matched the high end of the offer that I was looking for. It was phenomenal. I was offered a $30 million deal, with $10 million guaranteed, and a $7 million signing bonus.

After the Rams made an offer, my agent made a courtesy call to the Titans. Reinfeldt was really quiet, from what I heard.

I am loving my life now. I’m coaching football and baseball in high school and living in California with my wife. I wake up every day so grateful for everything that happened to me. Like I said, it worked out phenomenally.

The veteran: Amani Toomer

The Giants’ all-time leading receiver went through the free-agency process once in his career — at the end. After 13 seasons and 668 receptions with New York, the team opted not to sign Toomer, then 34, so he tested the market and finally signed a one-year deal with the Kansas City Chiefs after a tryout in early August 2009. Toomer was then released on Sept. 1, and didn’t play another down in the NFL.

I wanted to keep playing. I loved the game, and thought I could go somewhere else. The Giants had drafted receivers over the past several years — Sinorice Moss, Steve Smith, Mario Manningham — and I thought they were moving me out. I thought my opportunities were dropping, so my numbers were dropping. Looking back now, I could see that my skills were eroding. But you never think that at the time. I thought I could be very successful.

So you sit down and look at the market. I could play here, you think. Start here. You go down the list. What you don’t really know until you go through it is other teams have players at your position they want to develop. So if they bring you in, you are a monkey wrench in their plan. They are thinking: how does this affect our team? He’s on his back nine of his career and he expects to be a starter. Will he be a good locker room guy? Will he accept the league minimum? The other issue is you are taking two to three roster spots from young guys. You can pay two to three rookies with the salary you’d give me. I was a 10-year-plus player, and the minimum is somewhere between $800,000 to a million at that time. I didn’t play special teams, either.

Still, you do have value. As a veteran, if you can contribute week to week, great. But what they really want is a good example in the locker room. They want you to show the players they drafted and believe in how to act, how to be a pro.

Eventually, I went to Kansas City. It was a different atmosphere than I was used to. When you are in the NFL and playing, you are focused on your team and the teams in your division. I didn’t play the AFC that much, and the Chiefs played in the AFC West. They didn’t know my ability. That’s why you see free agents going to teams that played them in their division. They know what you can do. In Kansas City, they put me at X (split end). I had not played X in a while in New York, because of Plaxico Burress, I played Z, and the Chiefs said, “No, you didn’t.” So I had to adjust. Nobody knows and cares about you as much as the team that drafted you. They didn’t appreciate the intangibles. They didn’t understand what I could bring to an offense. I realized I made a mistake.

If I were three to four years younger, I would have really enjoyed free agency. The best players always get a good deal, guys that a teams can’t do without. Back in the day, the Giants re-signed me with three years left on my contract. I never had a chance to deal with free agency to that point. At 34, I was not the same player as I was before. It’s different when you are trying to hold on instead of making a killing. A lot of guys like me in that situation can play. Hines Ward, that’s a guy that can play. But the business is going to dictate whether he gets another shot or not. You lose a special teams player, lose maybe one to two rookies, because of the money.
 

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