Six Worst Free Agent Deals Of 2026

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It’s time to get negative, people. After we discussed the best contracts signed in free agency yesterday, it’s time for the other side of the coin. Every year, at least a few deals age poorly, some very quickly. Sometimes the guarantees make it difficult for a team to move on from the player after he underperforms, sometimes the contract proves to be way above market, sometimes the majority ends up being right when a surprising player gets a huge bag. There are some obvious candidates this year, so let’s break them down: Raiders C Tyler Linderbaum I praised the Linderbaum signing when the Raiders made it last week, but it’s still a pretty egregious contract on its own that’s worth breaking down. Let’s get this out of the way first: Las Vegas is a better team with Linderbaum, and he’ll be a huge stabilizing piece in the middle of their offensive line. It also makes sense to bring in a veteran center to help out your young rookie quarterback, and anytime you can sign a top-two player in the league at his position, it makes sense to pounce on the opportunity. But still, this is a truly ludicrous contract. The Raiders signed Linderbaum to a three-year, $81 million deal with $60 million in total guarantees. At $27 million in average annual value, Linderbaum reset the center market by a whopping 50 percent — $9 million more than the previous top-paid center, Kansas City’s Creed Humphrey . Given cap and contract inflation over time, a better way to look at the relative value here is as a percentage of the cap. Former Over The Cap and PFF analyst Brad Spielberger laid it out well: Linderbaum currently occupies over eight and a half percent of the cap, while Humphrey’s contract topped out at just under seven percent. That might not seem like a lot, but that’s a huge difference in relative spending, and it highlights just how much money the Raiders are committing to Linderbaum. Additionally, Linderbaum has, practically speaking, managed to get a fully guaranteed contract in a league where even quarterbacks struggle to reach that mark. While just his first two years are guaranteed at signing (which still comes out to $60 million of the $81 million total, a phenomenal cash flow), the third year becomes fully guaranteed in March of 2027. To get out of that, the Raiders would have to cut Linderbaum after one year, meaning they’d have paid him $60 million for a single season. That’s impractical. As the cap grows over time and the league makes more and more money, player contracts get larger. That’s not a surprise. But Linderbaum making $27 million a year is still an absurd jump for the center position. Were the Raiders forced to pay him that much to make sure he didn’t sign elsewhere? That’s possible, even likely, but while the Raiders can afford a bloated contract on their books right now, that doesn’t make it a good one. Browns G Zion Johnson Sticking with the offensive line theme to open this article, let’s examine the deal the Browns just signed Johnson to. A former first-round pick by the Chargers out of Boston College, Johnson started four seasons at left guard in Los Angeles. He was a stable starter and one of the few linemen who stayed mostly healthy for the Chargers all of last season. Now Cleveland has him on a three-year, $49.5 million contract with $32.39 million guaranteed. The problem is Johnson hasn’t been very good in the NFL. There’s a reason the Chargers declined his fifth-year option and elected not to compete with his market. Last…