March is the time when fans watch as teams switch some of their players and contracts expire. This time is called free agency and allows other teams to make offers on those players that are involved. Most of the time, the ones that become free agents are the players that teams do not want. A few of them, however, get targeted by more than one team, and a financial and recruiting battle ensues.

Free agency has one advantage over the draft. It gives teams the opportunity to add players who have NFL experience, while the college prospects in the draft have yet to play an NFL game.

Each team’s scouts and general manager knows what kind of player they are getting.

Unfortunately for teams, this experience comes at a terrible cost and shows free agency’s biggest problem.

The best way to describe this problem is to illustrate a financial analogy. When a person goes to a store and buys a $300 cell phone. The consumer knows the features that come with the phone, as he/she researched it just a week before.

Once the phone is paid for, excitement about using the new phone runs through the consumer who is glad the purchase happened. The consumer sees this phone as one of the best things they have ever bought.

Oftentimes, the consumer later finds a few problems with the phone that were not advertised.

For example, the battery life was not as long as promised or it did not respond to the buttons pushed.

In the end, the price of that particular phone goes down and the consumer realizes that the phone was not worth the $300.

Free agency is the exact same way, except dealing with football players.

Players are given unbelievable amounts of money to play football and the production simply does not meet the financial value.

One perfect example of this came in 2006.

In Washington, D.C., the Redskins were looking for a safety. Fortunately for them, the Rams were not able to re-sign safety Adam Archuleta before free agency started. Archuleta signed a six-year $30 million contract with the Redskins.

Fans and media agreed that this signing was huge for the Redskins, believing that Archuleta would make opposing teams more cautious.

The result did not turn out well for the Redskins, as Archuleta simply underachieved and did not live up to the money that they paid him.

Archuleta took up a lot of salary cap space for the Redskins. This made it more difficult for Washington to sign new players in free agency and the draft for the upcoming years.

Eventually, Washington re-leased Archuleta to free up space in the cap.

The 2010 season is an uncapped year, meaning that for this year teams can sign any player to any amount of money.

The fact that the cap could come back, however, will make teams act as if the cap is still in effect. Still, that did not stop teams like Chicago from making a huge deal this year.

Julius Peppers, the former defensive end for the Carolina Panthers, signed a six-year $91.5 million dollar contract with the Bears this month.

Although there is no cap, Chicago is still taking a huge risk in giving Peppers this kind of money.

Peppers is the caliber player that can take over a game and disrupt the quarterback. Giving a guy $91.5 million in a brand new defensive scheme is extremely risky.

March is a time when players can get significantly more money. Whether that player lives up to that value will be seen during the season. Free agency is not something that teams can live and die by.

When the season starts, some teams will live on into the playoffs, while others will watch as the value of their free agent signing costs did not equal to the player’s predicted abilities.

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