On Thursday, September 8, the NFL’s 2022 regular season officially begins when the Los Angeles Rams host the Buffalo Bills. Teams have already been busy between wrapping up their training camps, preparing for Week 1, and both waiving and claiming players based on the league’s mandated roster cuts last Tuesday.
There is one more aspect of team-building that every franchise will pay some level of attention to at this point: Are there available free agents who can help our team for the right price? There are still valuable free agents on the open market. Some are recovering from injuries, or bad seasons, or they’ve already fielded multiple offers, and they’re either weighing the best opportunity, or just waiting for training camp to end so they don’t have to deal with that.
Here are our best remaining free agents with mere days left to go before the regular season; don’t be surprised if some of these guys get snapped up somewhere before the Rams and Bills kick things off.
WR Odell Beckham Jr.
(Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports)
Beckham agreed to a one-year deal with the Rams last November after he was jettisoned by the Browns, and he was a force multiplier for Sean McVay’s offense over a short period of time. Amazing what happens when you put a player in optimal positions to succeed.
From Week 10 through the postseason, he caught 48 passes on 70 targets for 593 yards and seven touchdowns, and he was a real problem for the Bengals in Super Bowl LVI before he suffered a torn ACL early in that game.
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A signing might not be imminent here, as Beckham may not be ready to go in the first half of the 2022 season. But when he is, you can bet that contenders (starting with the Rams) will be lining up at his door, cash in hand. Beckham still has the ability to help you define your passing game by taking the top off your defense.
WR Will Fuller
(Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports)
The only thing that has prevented Fuller from becoming one of the NFL’s most terrifying deep receivers on a consistent basis? He can’t stay healthy. Selected in the first round of the 2016 draft by the Texans out of Notre Dame, Fuller has never managed to suit up for all 16 or 17 games in a season. The Dolphins signed him to a one-year deal in 2021, and he played in just three games before a finger injury ended his season.
Paired with a quarterback in Tua Tagovailoa who isn’t exactly known for his deep ball. Fuller was not a good fit for the Dolphins. You have to go back to his 2020 season with the Texans, but there you see a receiver who is able to turn any kind of coverage issue into a massive play.
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There is a caveat emptor element to Fuller’s NFL future, but there are also a lot of teams who need a deep receiver, and if he’s healthy (yes, it’s a big if), Fuller could turn out to be a huge bargain as the season goes along.
OT Jason Peters
(Jon Durr-USA TODAY Sports)
Peters may be off this list sooner than anybody else. He’s meeting with the Cowboys to discuss the possibility that he’ll replace the injured Tyron Smith as Dallas’ left tackle, and since he went to Jerry Jones’ alma mater of Arkansas… well, you can probably wrap that one up.
Peters is 40 years old, and he’s entering his 18th NFL season, but he can still get it done at a decent level. He worked through injuries in the Bears’ broken offense in 2021, allowing six sacks, five quarterback hits, and 17 quarterback hurries in 517 pass-blocking reps.
Not ideal numbers, but when you consider how often Chicago quarterbacks worked themselves into sacks in Matt Nagy’s alleged offense… let’s just say that it wasn’t always Peters’ fault, and No. 71 still had reps like this, where he would just block out the sun, and you couldn’t get by him.
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At this point in his career, Peters will lose edge-rushers around the arc at times, but hey — how athletic would YOU be at 40 years old?
OT Eric Fisher
(Joe Camporeale-USA TODAY Sports)
Fisher had what could be seen as an off-year for the Colts in 2021 — per Pro Football Focus, he allowed seven sacks, 11 quarterback hits, and 23 quarterback hurries in 490 pass-blocking reps. But Fisher was dealing with a new system after eight seasons with the Chiefs, and that showed up on the field. Fisher allowed four of those sacks, and 17 of his 41 total pressures, in the first month of the season, After that… well, he looked like him. You also have to factor in that he was protecting a random pocket mover in Carson Wentz, and it takes a minute to figure that out. Fisher was perfectly fine when protecting another random pocket mover in Patrick Mahomes.
Fisher is still a plus pass-protector, and he’s specifically effective when asked to move up to the second and third levels to hunt defenders who are in his way.
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Per ESPN’s Ed Werder, Fisher wants to play in 2022, and he has turned down offers from nine teams already. Teams in need of a good (not necessarily great) left tackle should hope that Fisher’s “selectiveness” would not exclude their efforts to obtain his services.
DL Sheldon Richardson
(Jeffrey Becker-USA TODAY Sports)
Selected with the 13th overall pick in the 2013 draft out of Missouri, Richardson won Defensive Rookie of the Year in 2013, and then made the Pro Bowl in 2014. After that, he went from franchise cornerstone to mercenary in an abrupt hurry. After his time with Gang Green ended, Richardson signed four different contracts over the last five seasons. Since 2017, he has played in (deep breath) Seattle, then Minnesota, then Cleveland, then Minnesota again.
In 2021, for a Vikings defense that struggled at every level, Richardson had four sacks, 11 quarterback hits, 22 quarterback hurries, seven tackles for loss, and 24 stops. Richardson established himself as a plus player inside, but it was interesting and impressive to see how often No. 90 was also able to wreck from the edge in 2021.
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So, if your team needs a multi-gap rotational disruptor who can consistently get things done in those departments? Richardson isn’t Aaron Donald or Cameron Heyward, but he’s better than a lot of guys with starting spots around the league.
DT Ndamukong Suh
(Photo by Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images)
In 2021, his 12th NFL season, Suh had seven sacks, nine quarterback hits, 27 quarterback hurries, and 18 stops. He didn’t play at his ultimate level when he was terrorizing the NFL with the Lions early in his career, but he still proved to be a valuable rotational force — this after his forth quarter against the Chiefs in Super Bowl LV, when he was basically unblockable.
Suh seems to be gauging the interest of NFL teams at this point, and he’s lobbed a few entreaties in that general direction.
Raiders could be fun, indeed. Imagine Suh wrecking things inside with Maxx Crosby and Chandler Jones doing the same outside? I think new Raiders defensive coordinator Patrick Graham could make that work. In any event, Suh still provides value at this point in his career, and teams in need of reinforcement in the interior defensive line should take notice.
LB Anthony Hitchens
(Denny Medley-USA TODAY Sports)
The Chiefs released Hitchens in February to open up $8.4 million in cap space, and he’s been on the open market ever since. In 2021, he totaled five quarterback pressures, 65 tackles, 29 stops, seven tackles for loss, and he allowed 27 catches on 36 targets for 289 yards, three touchdowns, one interception, and an opponent passer rating of 114.2. Coverage has never really been Hitchens’ thing, but if you need a smart linebacker who can move from the midlife of the field to the boundary to snuff out underneath stuff, you could do a lot worse. And he can get it done as a blitzer from the second level, as he showed in the 2021 preseason on this sack of Kirk Cousins.
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CB Kevin King
(AP Photo/Matt Ludtke)
If you want to get into a dust-up in the greater Wisconsin area, just ask a diehard Packers fan about King, the Washington alum selected in the second round of the 2017 draft. At six-foot-3 and 200 pounds, King was supposed to be one of Washington’s conga line of big, physical cornerbacks attuned to NFL success. That didn’t always happen, and after his unfortunate work in the 2020 NFC Championship game, where he gave up two touchdowns and let Buccaneers receiver Mike Evans turn him in to a piece of toast, it was never going to be the same.
Like most Washington cornerbacks in recent years (hello, Marcus Peters), King is a big, physical defender with a high variance in performance, That’s a nice way of saying “boom-or-bust,” but either term applies. However, the Packers’ bete noire does have some nascent ability in coverage. You just have to know how to use him… and how not to use him. If you put him on a guy from the start of the snap without asking him to do too much in terms of switches, you may get a play like this interception against the Seahawks in Week 10, where King wrapped up D.K. Metcalf and followed the ball for an interception.
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If King could do everything required of his position, he wouldn’t be a free agent, and he’d be sitting on about $100 million. If you’re fishing for guys on the street at this point, it’s all about what you can maximize, and what you need to hide.
S Landon Collins
(Todd Olszewski/Getty Images)
In 2019, Washington signed Collins, the former Giants star safety, to a six-year, $84 million contract with $31 million guaranteed. Three years later, the Commanders were ready to cut bait, and they released Collins in March. Collins never played a full season in Washington, and between his own limitations and the ways in which Washington’s defensive staff have been able to dial up coverage busts like nobody’s business, it was never going to work out as anybody hoped.
Last season, even with all that going on, Collins had two sacks, six total pressures, 58 tackles, 30 stops, and two interceptions against four touchdowns. There may be a schism regarding his ideal fit as NFL teams look more to fortify their defenses with do-it-all safeties, and Collins is far more of a box defender than he is a deep third guy, but if your defense plays a lot of dime, and you need a force ‘backer to deal with the line of scrimmage and behind, Collins (No. 26, here killing a Seahawks run play in Week 12) can do that all day long.
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