Tampering is Legal?!

The latest newsletter from KCSN Sports Data Scientist, Joseph Hefner

Is there anything at all that gets football fans blood flowing and surging like NFL free agency? I think not!! Even the draft doesn’t have quite the same frenzy, probably due to the picks happening in an orderly, timed manner. You know exactly when you’re picking, so no need to keep madly refreshing a broken twitter or bluesky or discord or wherever you go to get your NFL news.

Free agency is not like that. At any given moment, your favorite team could sign a player. Sometimes that player can even radically change the teams outlook! You get to see teams wildly overpay for a bunch of players whose original teams no longer wanted them, and a handful of players whose teams could not afford to keep them.

Some days, you even get to see trades happening! For example, Washington Commanders traded with the Houston Texans for left tackle Laremy Tunsil on Monday! And for what most trade charts would consider to be just a mid to late second round pick. Good thing our favorite team didn’t have any glaring needs at left tackle, or I might be a bit miffed the Chiefs didn’t make that trade!!

Anyway, even before the legal tampering period began on Monday, teams had been re-signing their own players. Signing players before they ever make it to free agency is a time-honored method of making sure you do not overpay for them (or their replacement) after free agency begins. This chart shows how many home brewed players teams re-signed in the days leading up to free agency.