NFL Free Agency Big Spenders

Can NFL Teams Buy a Win in Free Agency?

It seems that NFL free agency creates a whirlwind of media noise. All these announcements can pump up a fan base, and lead to lots of excitement for the upcoming season. But how does that free agent spending translate to the most important element of a team, wins? I was curious, so I created a Tableau dashboard that would tell us exactly what free agency does for winning.

This dashboard view shows what free agency spending has done for teams in the past. I’ve highlighted the top-12 spenders in a darker color, and the win change from prior year is either green (1+ more wins) or red (0 or less wins). This is a nice way to see the patterns of the past, and to help drive further insights.

If you notice, the top-12 spenders have more green dots than red dots. In fact, other than 2018, either 8 (67%) or 9 (75%) of the top-12 spending teams improved their win total from the prior year. If we sum the win change for the top-12 spending teams, we can get an average improvement, and using 5 years of history to balance out provides a clear result.

The unexpected results in 2018 were offset the following year with an average win improvement of 2.5 games. These are clearly the outer edges of the improvement model, while 2020-2022 shows the baseline expectations.

Current season spending

Now that we know that the top-12 spending teams should show improvement on the field, how can we use that to our advantage? Well we can use the same free agent spending chart, but instead of layering with the win change, the spending report is layered with prior year wins (dots) and the current season win totals (lines).

The above chart allows identification of teams that are expected to have win improvement of at least 1 game from the prior year. At least 8 or 9 of those teams should win more games this year than where that dot is. In fact, the betting market suggests just that. The orange line shows the 2023 team win totals from DraftKings on May 20, 2023. Of the top-12 free agent spenders, only 4 have an expected win total lower than last years wins.

Those 4 teams (Kansas City, San Francisco, Seattle and Pittsburgh) should gain most of our focus, as they represent an undervalued entity. History shows that these teams should expect to improve their win total from the prior year, and yet the market says otherwise. These teams should be the focus for OVER bets on the season win total market.

Also of note is Carolina. They have a win total of 7.5 after winning 7 games last year. With a top-12 spender improvement expectation of 1 win that would put them at 8 wins for the 2023 season. It’s closer than comfortable, but if you’re a supporter of Carolina and want to bet OVER 7.5 wins on the season, I wouldn’t argue with you about it.