Spending In FA Does Not = Wins

[WindyCitySteel]

Complain is the word, the word that I heard, it has groove it has meaning.

Awwww, no more bingo bango banjo affirmation posts when I post something you agree with? Sad...

[hackjam]

My guess is that this is survivorship bias.

To understand if making big splashes in UFA is good, we'd want too look at all "big splashes" in UFA and see how all of those teams did.

My guess is that picking players is like picking stocks. A small number will work out fantastically well. But it's very hard (maybe impossible) to consistently pick which ones are the ones those are. And unfortunately, you can't sign an index of the top 20 UFAs to play on your team.

Another reasonable strategy is to just not play the game at the top of the market for guys who will come from different teams and different systems. At least I think that's a reasonable strategy.

Agree. In most cases, the top signings in FA are giving 90th percentile money to 75th-ish percentile players. Point being, there's an obvious value gap that's created simply because those players are available. It's what gets Tremaine Edmunds, who is a good player but not a superstar, comparable AAV to Fred Warner, Shaq Leonard, and Roquan Smith. I suppose that the art of roster building involves smoothing those value gaps over the entire 53 man and hopefully coming out ahead, but when you put yourself in a hole to start with, there are only so many places where you can build a value gap in the other direction. The rookie QB contract is the most obvious one but rookie contracts in general provide the vast majority of your opportunity to recover value.

It's effectively the same deal with moving up in the draft. Like if there's a guy you're really sure about, then yeah maybe go ahead with it. But even then there's a huge amount of risk. We saw it with the trade up for Devin Bush. Other teams see it when they sign the Bud Duprees of the world to huge deals.

[WindyCitySteel]

Moral of the story: Bad franchises who try to buy a championship will fail, but good teams/franchises can find the missing piece or two to put them over the top. The Steelers should act like the latter.

[Northern_Blitz]

And MIA spent the 2nd most and ended with the same record as the Steelers. And the Raiders spent the 3rd most and won 3 fewer games than the Steelers.

btw, if JAX and MIA were in the AFCN they would have missed the playoffs and would spent all that FA money for nothing.

Exactly, you need to look at the entire set. Not just the ones you like for your argument.

And even the one he picked isn't great because we had the same record they did.

[Northern_Blitz]

Agree. In most cases, the top signings in FA are giving 90th percentile money to 75th-ish percentile players. Point being, there's an obvious value gap that's created simply because those players are available. It's what gets Tremaine Edmunds, who is a good player but not a superstar, comparable AAV to Fred Warner, Shaq Leonard, and Roquan Smith. I suppose that the art of roster building involves smoothing those value gaps over the entire 53 man and hopefully coming out ahead, but when you put yourself in a hole to start with, there are only so many places where you can build a value gap in the other direction. The rookie QB contract is the most obvious one but rookie contracts in general provide the vast majority of your opportunity to recover value.

It's effectively the same deal with moving up in the draft. Like if there's a guy you're really sure about, then yeah maybe go ahead with it. But even then there's a huge amount of risk. We saw it with the trade up for Devin Bush. Other teams see it when they sign the Bud Duprees of the world to huge deals.

+1

It's either "hell ya!!!!" or "no". If you're spending a ton of cap room, or making a draft day trade on a "probably?", you're doing it wrong IMO.

[Northern_Blitz]

Moral of the story: Bad franchises who try to buy a championship will fail, but good teams/franchises can find the missing piece or two to put them over the top. The Steelers should act like the latter.

My guess is that most "good franchises" don't play this game very much because it's a game with a negative expected value. I think we're in that camp. Sounds like we were willing to pay Brown Jr. (who I think may be a good bet in UFA), but he decided to go to a contender instead. And then when we didn't get him, we didn't just go spend a lot of money on a T to spend a lot of money on a T.

The "bad franchises" are the ones who think they that can successfully play this game over the medium term and win.

[whisper]

Awwww, no more bingo bango banjo affirmation posts when I post something you agree with? Sad...

Oh no, bingo, bango still exist, just not every time.

[Captain Lemming]

Awwww, no more bingo bango banjo affirmation posts when I post something you agree with? Sad...

You waver too much in your allegiance to team negativity therefore you are a traitor. Don’t you know it’s all or nothing for those guys.

[whisper]

Exactly, you need to look at the entire set. Not just the ones you like for your argument.

And even the one he picked isn't great because we had the same record they did.

Same record, but they not only won their div. and made the playoffs, they WON a playoff game. Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Wrong bucko. Bad example.

[Captain Lemming]

Moral of the story: Bad franchises who try to buy a championship will fail, but good teams/franchises can find the missing piece or two to put them over the top. The Steelers should act like the latter.

I don’t entirely disagree with this. But I think the foundation has to be solid drafts. We have too many needs for adding a high dollar free agent to work because of poor drafts 2018-2020.

Bottom line, without drafting well you cannot contend depending on free agency to overcome bad drafts.

I think that in a year or two if we draft well, we CAN make a splash signing or two to put us over the top with a couple years on Kenny’s deal.