Overreacting to NFL free agency: Has Kyler Murray put J.J. McCarthy on the sideline … for good?

You know we love our overreactions. And there is absolutely no time of year that is better for overreactions than NFL free agency.

Your favorite team goes out there the first day of the negotiation period and spends big, adding players you know at positions where it needs help, and it’s easy to let your offseason fan brain dream the biggest of dreams. The fact is, some of these moves might have a 2024 Saquon Barkley-level impact on the teams that make them … but most of them won’t quite live up to lofty expectations. Some might flop completely. The fact that we don’t know which ones are which is a huge part of the fun.

I picked out a few situations that came up during last week’s frenzy and took a shot at predicting whether they’ll live up to the hype or not. So please enjoy this special mid-March edition of judging overreactions — where we sort out which big takeaways are legitimate. And forget I said what I said in the second sentence when I say the same thing about the NFL draft six weeks from now.

Jump to:
McCarthy, Penix done as QB1s?
Steelers losing season?
Walker ranking RB1 in fantasy?
Brown, Crosby staying put?
Rams to the Super Bowl?

The Vikings signed Kyler Murray, and the Falcons signed Tua Tagovailoa, thrusting those veterans into ostensible competitions with the 10th and eighth overall picks from the 2024 draft, respectively. McCarthy is coming off a terrible and injury-plagued first NFL season after missing his entire rookie season due to a knee injury. He entered the offseason healthy, but after throwing 12 interceptions and taking 27 sacks in his 10 starts last season, he has given the Vikings reason to doubt whether he’ll turn out to be the quarterback they thought he was when they moved up a spot to draft him.

And Penix opened the 2025 season as the Falcons’ starter, but he missed the final eight games of the season due to a torn ACL in his left knee. It’s unclear how much time Penix, who had two ACL reconstructions done on his right knee in college, will need before he can come back and play.

Verdict: OVERREACTION

Murray and Tagovailoa are big names, but are they slam dunks? Murray missed 12 games last season due to injury, and the Cardinals just released him with $36.8 million in guaranteed money left on his contract. Tagovailoa got benched with three games left in the season for performance reasons, and the Dolphins just cut him with $54 million in guaranteed money left on his contract. Combined, the teams that drafted these two players are paying them $90.8 million to not play for them. And neither Arizona nor Miami appears set at the position.

All of this is to say that Murray and Tagovailoa don’t come without some legitimate concerns. Murray is very likely to end up starting ahead of McCarthy, unless a light goes on this offseason and McCarthy performs well enough in the summer to beat him out. But the Vikings aren’t ready to give up on McCarthy just yet, and they’re hoping Murray’s arrival has a positive impact on him. The Atlanta story is different; my sense is the Falcons view Penix as the starter once he’s healthy and Tagovailoa is just there for coverage in case he isn’t ready.

Both Murray and Tagovailoa arrive in their new homes with a lot to prove themselves. Don’t assume they’re there to take jobs away from guys who were top-10 picks a lot more recently than they were.

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The Steelers are about to have their first losing season since 2003

Mike Tomlin, who stepped away from the team in January, famously never finished a season with a losing record in his 19 years as the Steelers’ head coach. The last time Pittsburgh finished under .500 was 2003, which was Bill Cowher’s 12th year as its head coach and the year before the team drafted Ben Roethlisberger.

After winning the AFC North with a 10-7 record in 2025, the Steelers have added wide receiver Michael Pittman Jr., cornerback Jamel Dean and running back Rico Dowdle while losing running back Kenneth Gainwell and guard Isaac Seumalo in free agency so far. They haven’t done anything yet to address the quarterback position, but the widespread opinion around the league is that they’re hoping Aaron Rodgers decides to return for another season and play for them again.

Verdict: NOT AN OVERREACTION

First of all, it has to happen at some point. Playing 22 straight seasons without a losing record is a stunning accomplishment and a testament to the culture and stability that have defined the Steelers over that time. But the reason this isn’t an overreaction? It has kind of been on a knife’s edge for a while now, and it’s possible Tomlin was holding it all together. The Steelers’ win totals the past five seasons are nine, nine, 10, 10 and 10. They’ve been a good team, but it has been a while since they’ve been a great one. They haven’t won a playoff game since the 2016 season.

The main reason they haven’t been able to elevate is that, since Roethlisberger, they haven’t found a meaningful or lasting solution at the quarterback position. A 42-year-old Aaron Rodgers, who hasn’t finished in the top 20 in the league in QBR since 2021, isn’t going to fix that. At best, he’s a Band-Aid for the problem. At worst, his play goes off a cliff in the season in which he turns 43, and the Steelers are in real trouble.

Mike McCarthy is a good, proven, competent head coach, and bringing him in to replace Tomlin tells us the Steelers’ plan is to keep the train on the tracks. But the Steelers have had a really limited ceiling for a decade now, and at some point the floor is going to drop out.

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Kenneth Walker III is going to be the No. 1 RB in fantasy in 2026

The Super Bowl MVP parlayed his outstanding postseason run with Seattle into a big new contract with the Chiefs. Kansas City’s hope is that he’ll bring an explosive element to its run game that it has been struggling to find since the early days of Kareem Hunt. Walker had 1,027 rushing yards last season, and he had 33 runs of 10-plus yards (sixth in the NFL).

Isiah Pacheco, who had been the nominal starting running back in Kansas City the past few years, left in free agency to join the Lions. The Chiefs also signed Emari Demercado and still have 2025 seventh-round pick Brashard Smith. But at this point in the offseason, the backfield in Kansas City looks like it will mainly belong to Walker, and paying him $14.35 million per year is a strong indicator that the Chiefs expect to give him a lot of work.

Verdict: OVERREACTION

Multiple things jump out:

• An Andy Reid offense is going to be pass-heavy first and foremost, especially once quarterback Patrick Mahomes is back to full strength off his season-ending knee injury.

• If Mahomes isn’t back right away, or if it understandably takes him some time to return to form, the offense isn’t likely to function at its highest level or even close.

• Reid has a history of drawing up creative plays at the goal line rather than just handing it to his running back and smashmouthing it in behind his biggest blockers.

• Walker has had a history of injuries, and the main reason the Seahawks were able to keep him healthy last season was that they had him in a pretty strict timeshare with Zach Charbonnet.

Walker should be a really good player for the Chiefs, especially once they finish off their offensive line this offseason. But despite the contract size, I find it hard to believe he’s going to be the kind of every-down back who elevates to the top spot in fantasy. There are a lot of reasons for Kansas City not to use him that way.

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The top two trade targets on the market went nowhere in the first week of free agency. Well, technically Crosby did go from Las Vegas to Baltimore, but the Ravens sent him home after they didn’t like what they saw on his physical and backed out of their trade agreement. But Brown is still on the Eagles, and Crosby is still on the Raiders — even though teams continue to call the Eagles about Brown’s availability, and Crosby would be a Raven right now if the Raiders had their preference.

As teams that have tried and failed to acquire these two disgruntled stars have moved on to other plans at those positions, it’s fair to wonder if the Eagles and Raiders have missed their windows to trade their respective standouts.

Verdict: OVERREACTION

The trade deadline is more than seven months away, folks. The excitement of this past week often obscures the fact that the offseason player procurement period lasts for a very long time. The smart teams recognize this and continue pursuing deals and hunting for improvements well beyond the start of the league year. There will be other pockets of time this offseason when trade talks for these and other players flare back up.

As the draft gets closer, teams start to get more serious about trades, because waiting until after the draft means waiting a year to use the picks you get in return for players. If not before the draft, talks for these players could heat back up after June 1, when it would make more sense from a cap standpoint for the Eagles to trade Brown anyway. Then there’s August, when training camp injuries create new needs and teams decide their Plan A’s might not work.

Brown and Crosby might very well be on their current teams when Week 1 rolls around. But we shouldn’t assume they will just because they didn’t get traded last week.

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The Rams are fittingly going to win the Super Bowl in Los Angeles

The Rams looked like the best team in the NFL for much of 2025. Locked in a seasonlong battle with the eventual division and Super Bowl champion Seahawks, the Rams fell short in the regular season thanks to a wild Week 16 Thursday night loss and then lost to Seattle again in the NFC Championship Game. They haven’t lost much in free agency, and they’ve added a pair of starting cornerbacks with Super Bowl experience in Trent McDuffie and Jaylen Watson. Like a lot of teams, they aren’t done and could still make impact moves at wide receiver and other positions.

Verdict: NOT AN OVERREACTION

The last time the Super Bowl was at SoFi Stadium, it was the Rams who won it — and it’s certainly not ridiculous to believe they could do it again. They came agonizingly close to going to Super Bowl LX, where they likely would have been favored over the Patriots in Santa Clara. They don’t know how much more time they’ll have with reigning MVP Matthew Stafford as their quarterback, and as long as that window is open, you can be sure L.A. will be in win-now mode and seeking difference-making upgrades anywhere they can find them.

The division should be brutal again, with Seattle and San Francisco likely to make it a tough three-way race. But the Rams addressed their biggest weakness with those cornerback moves and should go into the 2026 season as hungry as anyone after 2025’s near miss.