Are NFL Teams Being Smarter About the Free Agent QB Market?

The internet has poured out a lot of unkind words for John Elway over the past week or so. He failed to re-sign Malik Jackson or Brock Osweiler. Not putting a second-round tender on C.J. Anderson forced the Broncos to match an offer sheet from Miami that resulted in a pay raise for the running back. He arrogantly pointed out the folly of Osweiler not wanting to be a Denver Bronco in one corner of his mouth while at the same time offering him a deal not much worse than what Houston gave him.

Now, the Broncos did get burned a bit on the surface of things. Any time your own free agent spurns you in favor of a different team, it's going to sting a little bit—even if Osweiler is untested, unproven, and perhaps not the best long-term bet at the position. And especially if he's replaced with Mark Sanchez.

But what Elway has done in Denver is help draw a clear line at the quarterback position. If the Broncos can't do better than Brock Osweiler, why should they flush money down the toilet on someone who is simply a placeholder?

That's been Ryan Fitzpatrick's and several other quarterbacks' dilemma this offseason. Fitzpatrick is by far the best quarterback available on the market. If you were to judge quarterbacks purely by statistics, he finished 14th in DVOA this year. He connected on 31 touchdowns. This is, on the statistical surface, the kind of quarterback that starts a bidding war on the open market.

Instead, Fitzpatrick has faced a harsh reality. The Jets have shown no interest in giving him a long-term deal that spells out that he's the clear franchise quarterback. The Broncos haven't shown any interest in that either. The Browns, 49ers, and Rams have barely been connected to him at all.

This is actually a pretty startling sign of intelligence by NFL teams. Per Cian Fahey's charting, Fitzpatrick isn't actually a good quarterback. He just happened to play in a system suited for his strengths, and he got to throw at Brandon Marshall and Eric Decker all the time. In the past, this sort of uptick in production would almost undoubtedly be met with widespread interest. Young quarterbacks with this kind of production in a small sample would, like Kevin Kolb and Matt Cassel, are auctioned off to the high bidder. And even old quarterbacks like Josh McCown with a sudden uptick in production get rewarded with big contracts.

Now, this is not an argument that the Broncos secretly had a good offseason. They may have faded an extra year of an Osweiler contract that could potentially blow up in their face. But it's hard to be happy with what they wound up with. Denver won the Super Bowl because their defense hit a level of performance that is not rationally sustainable. Peyton Manning was awful last year, and they should be able to get a bounce of regression from the position. That doesn't put them in a better place going forward.

But I think it tells us a lot about the spread of information that a quarterback like Fitzpatrick could have the year that he had and be completely hung out to dry on the open market. The only buzz about him are just texts from his agent to a media guy begging other teams to be involved. At this point he'll be lucky to beat Chase Daniel's contract, and Daniel has thrown 68 passes over the last three years.

As for the Jets, QB Ryan Fitzpatrick knows where they stand. Their offer is a little better than what Chase Daniel got in Philly.

— Albert Breer (@AlbertBreer)March 10, 2016

We've seen the exact sort of cold market standstill as Colin Kaepernick has been bartered with the Browns and Broncos. We've seen Robert Griffin III, coming off a year where he didn't play at all, basically ignored by teams.

And while the Osweiler contract shows us that teams are still willing to risk a real year of dead salary on players they believe in, I think we're looking at a much more efficient market. Teams are applying more outside rationale to their beliefs. Teams are doing their homework on character and the reasons that players have failed. They're looking for reasons to not believe in quarterbacks as much as reasons to believe in them.

And that's why a player like Fitzpatrick can be out there today. We're not only talking about taking simple regression principles and applying them to Fitzpatrick. We're talking about the entire scope of his success in New York. If teams can tell themselves a story that involves Fitzpatrick not being the driving force of his statistical success, why would they pay him like he was?

And so he sits on the market, waiting for his agent to come to terms with this fact. Fitzpatrick isn't a bad quarterback, and teams could certainly do worse. But they're not willing to pay him like he's a real answer when he almost certainly isn't.