2026 NFL free agency winners, losers: Tagovailoa, Walker, more - ESPN

Day 1 of NFL free agency can be a dangerous place to operate. It's a great day for players, given that organizations have spent months talking themselves into free agents and building plans for how they'll spend cap space. It's a great day for fans, who have been spending the offseason hoping that their favorite teams fill positions of need.

But teams don't have quite the same luck; although Milton Williams and Sam Darnold were big hits in free agency last year, the likes of Dan Moore Jr., Aaron Banks and Jonathan Allen didn't deliver after being signed in the early days.

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Today, let's run through winners and losers from the first day of 2026 free agency, from both the player and team perspectives. I'll do my best to try to identify deals that didn't make sense or players who ended up in much better situations as a result of what happened on Monday. I'll move all around the league, starting in Atlanta.

Jump to:
Tagovailoa | Phillips | Stroud | Walker
Shula | Hampton | Linderbaum
Browns/Titans | Teams adding WR2s
Veterans who would have been cut

Most «winners» don't start the first day of free agency by being released from the only pro team they've ever known, so I understand why there would be some hesitation in naming Tagovailoa as a winner here. Obviously, he's operating under very unique circumstances. The Dolphins are paying their former franchise quarterback $54 million in 2026, which is one heck of a safety net as Tagovailoa hit free agency for the first time as a pro.

Leaving all that aside, though, Tagovailoa was facing an uncertain future. There were only a handful of teams with real paths toward a starting job. The Dolphins, one of those teams, were about to sign Malik