For 20 years we USED to laugh at Jet fans, etc for "winning" the off season. Now we have become them. Geesh.
Now would have loved to have gotten Smith and I understand that it will come out that a LOT of that $20MM is dependent on him being on the field, which he hasn't been much the last several years. I also know that if I had been Smith, the Jets are much further advanced and have an established QB than we are.
Here are the FACTS gentlemen and ladies, we are no longer a prime destination for older FA's who are just as interested in potential championships as well as big money. And just because they didn't land here, didn't mean we didn't try or were somehow trying to to be "cheap".
You know NEXT season's FA WR list is going to be better and deeper than this bad crop. Same goes for the OT class. I would have liked it if we had signed guys like Smith, DHunter, and the top FA CB, whose name slips my mind. But it requires that THEY want to come here too.
But the fact remains that there are STILL a LOT of NFL quality players that will be signed over the next 6 weeks before the draft, and there will a ton more after June 1. It is amazing to me that we have fans who make immediate judgements on what kind of team we will have based on the first week of FA. I USED to believe that Pats fans were more knowledgeable and savvy football fans than most other franchises. But this off season make we wonder if we are NOW just like the other yahoos we used to mock. Fans who need to win the sports page top stories and media approval, rather than win games and field a competitive team.
There will be MONTHS before we get even an INKLING of what this off season will be like and not till October before we get a sense of what this team will turn into
Personally I would MUCH rather spend money getting Duggar signed and Barmore extended than signing a 32 year old WR when we don't know who the QB will be in mid-March. Maybe NEXT year will be a better time to add FA WR's when the class will be better and your QB of the future should be fully integrated into your offense.