The Dallas Cowboys got the receiver their fans loved to hate. The New England Patriots gave away the kicker their fans hated to lose.
Both moves were baffling, at best. And not just because it matters what fans think, because in the end it really doesn't.
Coaches and general managers can huddle in darkened rooms for weeks, emerge blinded by the light and still do something stupid. Owners can fall in love with players and hand out millions no matter what the potential for disaster may be.
The greatest thing about free agency in the NFL, though, may be that teams can recover from their mistakes quickly.
So what if Terrell Owens goes berserk and tackles Bill Parcells for taking him out of a game. All it costs the Cowboys is $10 million, money Jerry Jones can quickly make up by charging more for nachos and beer when the new stadium opens in Arlington.
That's because Owens' $25 million contract with the Cowboys really isn't a $25 million contract. If the Cowboys don't want TO after a year, they simply let him go and are out nothing but a $5 million signing bonus and a $5 million first-year salary.
Which is what happened Monday to Larry Allen, the guard who was the last link to the Cowboys' glory days. He became disposable because of his age and the fact he was due $2 million next week and was going to count $7.5 million toward next season's salary cap.
All Dallas had to do was show Allen the way to the door and wish him good luck. And, hey, if you want to come back at a cheaper price let us know.
This isn't baseball, where George Steinbrenner ate Kevin Brown's $16 million salary the last couple years, and has to pay Randy Johnson even more until he collects Social Security.
Almost left out in the tributes to the departing Paul Tagliabue last week was the fact that he has - with help from the players' association - kept in place a system that rewards performance and comes close to forcing players to actually play for pay.
Signing bonuses may be huge, but with no guaranteed contracts there's rarely any complacency among players. The system, tied together with a salary cap, works, unlike baseball's dysfunctional labor division.
Tagliabue said at the Super Bowl this year that the philosophy on guaranteed contracts goes back to the founders of the league, who believed that a significant portion of pay should be for performance.
"Guaranteed contracts, within the context of a salary cap, just take money from a player who is not playing and take it away from a player who is playing," Tagliabue said.
Players have generally gone along with that, often at a high price to those unfortunate enough to suffer career-ending injuries or whose performances, like Allen's, were just declining. Many others, though, have made it up on the other end with signing bonuses that Tagliabue estimates make up half the league's $3.4 billion in annual player costs.
And it's hard to argue when the amount of money each team can spend on players has gone up $35 million in the last five years.
Those payrolls will skyrocket even more now because the NFL blinked earlier this month and agreed to a contract that will add nearly a billion dollars in player costs in exchange for six years of labor peace.
The agreement increases the salary cap from $85.5 million to $102 million for next year, and teams didn't wait long before starting to spend the money.
Owens got his, and so did Edgerrin James, who is guaranteed at least $14.75 million of a four-year $30 million pact he signed with the beleaguered Arizona Cardinals. And Steve Hutchinson got the richest deal ever for a guard, $16 million guaranteed and a possible $49 million over seven years from the Minnesota Vikings.
Adam Vinatieri won't get nearly that much because, well, he's a kicker. But his signing by the Indianapolis Colts was a good example of why fans should never get too attached to players, no matter what they've done for a team.
Vinatieri won two Super Bowls for the Patriots on last-second kicks, and helped win the 2001 AFC semifinal on a memorable kick through swirling snow with 32 seconds left against the Raiders.
He's probably the best clutch kicker in the history of the game. And, by all accounts, he probably would have stayed with the Patriots if they had shown him a little love.
Yet New England let him go, declining to pay him a paltry $3 million or so despite reportedly having some $20 million in unused cap money. Maybe an alarm went off when they realized they could buy 10 kickers at Vinatieri's price.
Indianapolis, meanwhile, didn't mind shelling out a few million to get him, not with memories still fresh of the kick Mike Vanderjagt missed in the playoffs that would have gotten the Colts into overtime against Pittsburgh.
The Cowboys took a gamble on TO. The Patriots took a gamble of their own.
In the NFL, though, rolling the dice isn't so hard. More money will be pouring in next year, and there will be plenty of time for those smart enough to correct any mistakes.
And that, really, is the beauty of the system.
