NFL free agency grades 2026: Breaking down biggest deals, trades

NFL free agency featured some surprising contracts and trades. How did each team fare in the most notable deals? We break it down.

NFL free agency doesn't have the overall shock value it once did.

With fewer and fewer top players reaching the open market thanks to extensions and franchise tags, all-out spending sprees by teams are increasingly rare. When agreements began materializing Monday, March 9, as the league's negotiating window opened, only a handful of pacts entailed truly surprising sums.

But the stakes are still high in March, and several teams took bold action to reshape their fortune for the coming season – and not always for the better.

USA TODAY Sports will be grading all of the biggest deals and trades, so check back often for all the latest:

It sure would be nice for Kevin Stefanski if he could fuse the best qualities of each of his quarterbacks – Tagovailoa's accuracy and Michael Penix Jr.'s ability to drive the ball into tight windows – into one passer. Instead, he's stuck with two players who each amount to a half-measure behind center. While it's fair to question whether Tagovailoa is a sustainable solution for the franchise, the Falcons weren't going to find meaningful competition for Penix elsewhere at this price point. Atlanta now has insurance in case the third-year signal-caller's return from a torn ACL has any hiccups, or if Stefanski merely wants a different look than a player who doesn't appear to be much of a fit in the coach's system due to his preference to work from the shotgun and his reluctance to operate over the middle.