Strengths and weaknesses of the 2026 free agent class
The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL
The Athletic
4.6 • 3.3K Ratings
🗓️ 4 March 2026
⏱️ 68 minutes
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Summary
Free agency might begin next week, but we already have plenty of player movement news to tackle. The Bears are surprisngly in th emarket for a tackle after Drew Dalman's sudden retirement. The Cardinals will be shopping for a new quarterback next week, and Kyler Murray will be looking for a new home. Daniel Jones (most likely) and Breece Hall are staying put. Thats' where Robert Mays, Derrik Klassen and Dave Helman kick off this episode of The Athletic Football Show. After that, the guys dig into the contours of this free agent class, focusing on the positions where needy teams can find answers, and those at the opposite end of the spectrum.
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Host: Robert Mays
Co-Hosts: Derrik Klassen and Dave Helman
Executive Producer: Michael Beller
Video Producer: Katy Duffy
Audio Producer: Michael Beller
Social Producer: Scott Krinch
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the athletic football show. |
| 0:05.3 | I'm Robert Mays. |
| 0:06.5 | A little free agency primer today. |
| 0:08.7 | We're about a week away from free agency kicking off in earnest. |
| 0:12.0 | The first day of the league year is a week from, if you're listening to this on Wednesday, |
| 0:15.8 | is a week from today. |
| 0:16.8 | Obviously, the tampering period starts on Monday. |
| 0:19.2 | As I mentioned at the end of this show today with |
| 0:21.3 | Eric and Dave, we're going to be doing a five-hour stream throughout the entire first day of free agency. |
| 0:27.4 | Monday, March 9th, 11 a.m. Central will be starting right here on the YouTube channel. |
| 0:31.8 | We're going to have 15 guests over that entire five-hour period. It's going to be rolling through |
| 0:36.3 | people like every 15 minutes, |
| 0:37.7 | similar to what we did last year. Truly one of my favorite things that we do. It's an absolute |
| 0:42.1 | blast. Excited to be doing it from the studio this year. So please be on the lookout for that. Today, |
| 0:47.7 | we took our first kind of foray into what that class looks like. We talked about positions that are |
| 0:53.1 | strengths in this group, guys, where |
| 0:54.7 | if you want to be looking for a safety, you might be feeling pretty good. If you want to be |
| 0:58.3 | looking for a running back or a linebacker, you might be feeling pretty good. If you're trying to |
| 1:02.0 | find a tackle or an interior defensive lineman in this class, other end of the spectrum. So that's what |
| 1:07.5 | we did today, kind of a big picture bird's eye view at the 2026 free agent class. |
| 1:12.5 | We started the show with some news right before we started recording. |
| 1:16.3 | I think I deserve some credit for bouncing back. |
... |
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