Top 10 Best NFL Roster Additions Of 2024

With the 2024 season drawing to a close, it’s a good time to reflect back on the year. Here’s a look at the top ten most impactful free agent signings and trades of the 2024 season. 

10 – Dolphins signed TE Jonnu Smith for two years, $8.4M

Miami became Smith’s third team in as many years when he signed this past March. Even though it was a multi-year deal, it was received with little fanfare since Miami already had such an established pecking order on offense. Smith was quietly solid in 2023 with the Falcons, notching more receiving yards and touchdowns than the previous two years with the Patriots combined. 

But 2024 was his best season yet. Smith blew past his previous career highs with 79 catches, 828 yards and seven touchdowns. He was a bigger piece of the passing game than WR Jaylen Waddle and has more touchdowns and just 111 fewer yards than WR Tyreek Hill. Smith has always been more of a move tight end at 6-3 and under 250 pounds, and his speed was a perfect fit for Dolphins HC Mike McDaniel to add more wrinkles to his innovative scheme. With Miami’s struggles with quarterback injuries, it was also often easier to get the ball to Smith than Hill and Waddle. 

Smith is under contract with the Dolphins in 2025 for just $4 million, and it would not be a surprise to see the 30-year-old get a new deal at some point before the start of next season after proving to be such an effective fit in Miami. 

9 – Seahawks traded for Titans LB Ernest Jones 

Jones has had an eventful 2024. After three quality years with the Rams, including being named a team captain, Jones was mysteriously phased out and traded to the Titans during the preseason. The fit in Tennessee either wasn’t clean or the Titans felt like they couldn’t turn down the offer from Seattle for a player in a contract year because Jones was traded for a second time during the season to the Seahawks, who gave up LB Jerome Baker and a fourth-round pick in a midseason revamp of their linebacker room. 

That trade was the biggest key in Seattle’s defense turning a corner under first-year HC Mike Macdonald, and after some early struggles, the Seahawks are 10th in the NFL in scoring defense and 13th in total defense entering Week 18. Jones’ stats don’t leap off the page, including his splits with the Titans compared to the Seahawks, but Macdonald has given him a ton of credit and indicated that extending him will be a significant priority. 

8 – Chargers GM Joe Hortiz’s hot streak

Personally I found it curious how it took so long for a team to hire Hortiz away from the Ravens, who have had one of the best front offices in the NFL for years and years. Hortiz’s first year was outstanding and just about everything he touched turned to gold. We’ll probably discuss his draft in more detail in another article, but four members of the 2024 class are starting or playing important roles already which would be an outstanding hit rate. He made a number of other shrewd moves: 

• Moved on from WRs Keenan Allen and Mike Williams, kept OLBs Khalil Mack and Joey Bosa with pay cuts. Allen and Williams have had struggles with their new teams, while Mack and Bosa have combined for 11 sacks. Not the highs those two are accustomed to, but still productive. 
• Signed RB J.K. Dobbins in April to a one-year deal with just $50,000 guaranteed. Dobbins was coming off a torn Achilles and multiple knee surgeries but was the team’s leading rusher with 177 carries, 842 yards and nine touchdowns in 12 games. His absence was felt when he missed four games with a tweaked MCL and he likely would have topped 1,000 yards otherwise. 
• Signed CB Kristian Fulton, DT Poona Ford and DT Teair Tart to help revamp the defense. Fulton has started all season at outside cornerback, picked off one pass, knocked down seven others and graded as PFF’s No. 17 overall cornerback. Ford and Tart have been key rotational players on the interior defensive line for a defense that’s allowed the fewest rushing touchdowns in football, and have stuffed the stat sheet with an additional combined four sacks, two picks, two forced fumbles and seven batted passes. They’re also both inside the top 12 in PFF’s defensive tackle grades. 
• Traded a seventh-round pick to the Titans for S Elijah Molden, who has started 12 of 15 games, played the third-most snaps on the team, picked off three passes and graded as PFF’s No. 16 overall safety. 

New Chargers HC Jim Harbaugh was obviously an impact addition, but the role Hortiz has played in turning Los Angeles from a four-win team in 2023 to a double-digit win playoff team in 2024 should be earning him more buzz than he’s getting for executive of the year. 

7 – Browns traded 2025 fifth and sixth-round picks for Broncos WR Jerry Jeudy 

I’ll own up to raising an eyebrow or two when the Browns swung a deal for Jeudy. The trade itself was a low-risk investment, flipping a pair of late-rounders for a former first-rounder at a premium position. Where the Browns really went out on a limb was with the three-year, $52.5 million extension with a remarkable $41 million in total guarantees for a player who’d never topped 1,000 yards receiving and was so inconsistent his former team was willing to dump him for a relative pittance to shed his salary. 

The gamble paid off in a big way for Cleveland. Jeudy had some rough games with QB Deshaun Watson under center but took off after his injury and finished with a career-best 84 receptions and 1,166 yards, plus four touchdowns. He was one of the brightest spots in an otherwise dismal season. 

And at just 25 years old, the Browns have a quality player locked up for years to come for less than $18 million a year. Had Jeudy not been extended and played out his contract year, the Browns would have found it hard to tag him and Jeudy would have found a strong market (easily $25 million a year if not more).

6 – Packers signed S Xavier McKinney for four years, $67M

Green Bay paid up to land McKinney with a deal in the upper range of the market for the safety position. But they were rewarded with a huge year. McKinney has seven interceptions on the season which is second in the NFL, and he started the year with a streak of five straight games with an interception. He’s been a major piece for first-year DC Jeff Hafley on the back end. 

I’d also be remiss if I didn’t mention the Packers’ trade for Titans QB Malik Willis coming out of the preseason. Willis had been awful in his first three years and multiple regimes in Tennessee had given up on him, so the Packers got him for just a seventh-round pick. Two weeks later, Willis was in the starting lineup thanks to an injury to starting QB Jordan Love. It could have been a disaster. 

Instead, Willis looked almost like a different player and piloted the Packers to two wins over the Colts and Titans. Those two wins have given Green Bay a significant cushion over the rest of the competition in the NFC and enabled them to lock up a wildcard berth already. For the price of a seventh-round pick, that’s a home run, and there’s a strong chance Willis will eventually recoup even more value for Green Bay either as a trade option or via a compensatory pick. 

5 – Eagles signed LB Zack Baun for one year, $3.5M

For the first four years of his career, Baun was a cautionary tale of how it can go wrong when “tweener” players are drafted without a clear vision and developmental plan. Baun played edge rusher in college at Wisconsin but transitioned to off-ball linebacker when the Saints picked him in the third round in 2020. Playing time was hard to come by and the Saints never found a role they liked for Baun. 

The Eagles added him as a dart throw at linebacker, and the results have been spectacular. Things have finally clicked for Baun. He has 151 total tackles, 11 tackles for loss, 3.5 sacks, five forced fumbles, one recovery, one interception and four pass deflections. PFF has him graded as the No. 1 linebacker in football this year. 

Whether it’s in Philadelphia or elsewhere, Baun has put himself in line for a monster contract and announced his presence as perhaps the league’s biggest rising star at linebacker. 

4 – Texans signed DE Danielle Hunter for two years, $50M

Houston wanted a bookend edge rusher across from former No. 3 overall pick, DE Will Anderson, to take its defense to another level in 2024. While the overall results for the Texans have been more inconsistent, the defense has been lights out for most of the season and Hunter is a big reason why. He’s been exactly what the Texans thought they were getting and exactly the type of dominant pass rusher he’s been throughout his career. 

Hunter has 12 sacks in 16 games so far, plus 17 total tackles for loss. PFF has credited him with 66 total pressures which are tied for sixth-best in the NFL, and his pass rush win rate of 26 percent is the best in the entire league. He wasn’t a cheap signing at two years and $50 million, most of which was guaranteed. But so far he’s been worth every penny. 

3 – Steelers signed QB Russell Wilson

Wilson’s reputation was in a rough spot after being cut by the Broncos last offseason but the fact that he could sign for the veteran minimum helped keep his value afloat and draw interest from a few teams, including the Steelers. It looked touch and go even in August and September, as Wilson missed swathes of camp and the first six games of the season with a calf strain. Yet Steelers HC Mike Tomlin proved how much he believed in Wilson by reinserting him into the starting lineup even though backup QB Justin Fields was 4-2 and had supporters literally everywhere — in the fanbase, the media, even in the coaching staff and locker room. 

Tomlin’s gambit paid off. Wilson has been a much more productive passer than Fields — one of the reasons Tomlin cited for the change — and the Steelers are 6-4 with Wilson under center. They’ve stumbled a bit in the past couple weeks after leading the AFC North all season but have clinched a playoff berth and have a great shot to end Tomlin’s postseason win drought. None of that happens without signing Wilson. 

2 – Just about every big-name RB signing

2024 was the year of the running back. The position experienced a resurgence due to a number of factors, including defenses putting more of an emphasis on stopping the deep pass and relinquishing bodies in the box. The RB market in free agency rebounded in a way it hasn’t in years with multiple players signing notable deals with real guaranteed money. The top of the market even moved up for the first time in years with San Francisco’s extension for RB Christian McCaffrey. 

Smart teams like the Eagles, Ravens and Packers spent big on backs in free agency and all of them were rewarded. Green Bay signed Josh Jacobs after cutting fan favorite Aaron Jones and it proved to be an upgrade. Jacobs brought a physical edge to the offense and is fifth in the NFL in rushing with 1,285 yards and 14 touchdowns. Jones signed with the Vikings and has done well too with over 1,000 yards. We touched on Dobbins earlier and the Texans also got a lot of bang for their buck by trading a seventh-round pick to the Bengals for RB Joe Mixon, who should cross the 1,000-yard mark this week. 

The two biggest signings, though, were the Ravens landing Derrick Henry and the Eagles landing Saquon Barkley. Henry landing in Baltimore is one of the most perfect team/player fits we’ve seen in a long time. The one-of-a-kind gravity he commands as a runner is the perfect counter to Ravens QB Lamar Jackson’s slashing skillset, and the two create space for each other. Adding Henry also helped the Ravens clarify their identity on offense: a downhill rushing team that can rip explosive plays through both the ground game and the passing attack. Henry has over 300 carries for the fourth time in his career, 1,783 rushing yards and 14 touchdowns. 

Barkley has somehow been even better. After the Giants infamously let him walk because they subscribed to the “running backs don’t matter [as much]” school of thought, Barkley landed with the division rival Eagles who had the supporting cast Barkley never had in New York. The Eagles have a punishing offensive line and an offense filled with playmakers to force defenses to pick their poison — and that poison has mostly been Barkley. 

He has 2,005 rushing yards in 16 games, just one of a handful of players to crack the 2,000-yard mark ever, and would have had a shot at the all-time rushing record had the Eagles not elected to rest him for a meaningless Week 18 game against the Giants. Add in 278 receiving yards and 15 total touchdowns, and Barkley should be a lock for Offensive Player of the Year. He might even be a dark horse for MVP. 

1 – Vikings signed QB Sam Darnold for one year, $10M

I want to toot my horn about Darnold. After all, one of my bold predictions before the start of this season was that Darnold would have a career year in 2024. But truthfully I didn’t see this coming. Very few people did. Darnold has legitimately been playing like a top-ten quarterback and the Vikings have a chance to steal the No. 1 seed in the NFC this week against the Lions. 

Darnold has set career highs across the board with chasms in most categories between his previous bests. He’s completed 68.1 percent of his passes for 4,153 yards, 35 touchdowns and 12 interceptions, chipping in 202 yards and a touchdown on the ground. Darnold is ninth in the NFL in success rate, 13th in QBR, eighth in adjusted net yards per attempts and seventh in a composite of EPA per play/completion percentage over expected. Sure it helps throwing to first-rounders at two receiver spots and tight end, but when the quarterback is pulling plays like this out of his pocket, he’s on fire. 

ANOTHER UNREAL SAM DARNOLD PLAY ‼️

HE FINDS JUSTIN JEFFERSON FOR THE 39-YARD TD TO GIVE MINNESOTA THE LATE LEAD

(via @Vikings) pic.twitter.com/df2NTGs6XO

— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) December 22, 2024

At a cost of just $10 million, Darnold is far and away the biggest bargain in football this year. There are some complicated questions for the Vikings to figure out this offseason since they signed Darnold to be just a bridge to first-round QB J.J. McCarthy, but they will ride this wave for as long as they can and let the future Vikings worry about that problem.