The 5 O’Clock Club: Using veteran free agency to improve the Commanders LB depth chart

The 5 o’clock club is published from time to time during the season, and aims to provide a forum for reader-driven discussion at a time of day when there isn’t much NFL news being published. Feel free to introduce topics that interest you in the comments below.

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Today is June 2nd, which means that the Chase Roullier release has now taken effect, adding around $8m in available space to Washington’s 2023 salary cap. If the front office was waiting for cap space to come available to allow them to sign a veteran linebacker in free agency, then now is the time.

Of course, if they were going to get a look at a player, they probably would have asked him to come to the team facility during OTAs, and we’d have likely heard about that from the beat reporters — but a boy can dream.

I’m not going to try to offer an exhaustive list of every free agent linebacker available (there are a lot of them). The team could have added a low-cost replacement at any time (they did so at 4 other positions in the past couple of weeks). The only reason to wait until now to sign a player would be the need for sufficient cap space to sign a player to a somewhat more lucrative deal.

Here’s a selected list of free agent linebackers who are still on the market and available to be signed. All five players are under 30 years old and an argument can be made for signing each of them, though it’s important to realize that there will be a reason for a veteran player to still be a free agent in June — meaning that none of these guys is ‘perfect’. If any of them were, he’d’ve been snatched up in the March free agent frenzy.

Deion Jones, 29, Browns

Two views of Jones from Cleveland media:

Cleveland.com:

The Browns traded for Jones early in October, also receiving a 2024 seventh-round pick. Due to a shoulder procedure he underwent in the offseason, Jones didn’t play a single game with the Falcons during 2022, and was activated off the injured reserve list 12 days after arriving in Cleveland.

Originally, Jones signed a four-year contract extension worth $57 million in 2019 with the Falcons. But once Andrew Berry traded for Jones in the early part of the 2022 season, Berry basically voided the last year of the contract to allow Jones explore free agency.

Jones, 28, was looked at as a veteran for the defensive unit. But his performance during the season wouldn’t amount up to the aggressive linebacker he’s known to be. Through 11 games, Jones recorded 44 tackles and 2.5 sacks, three pass deflections and a forced fumble, which came about early in the 28-14 season-ending loss to the Steelers.

Jones recorded a 48.5 overall grade and 39.0 run-defensive grade, according to Pro Football Focus, along with a 44.7 tackling-grade and 14.9% missed tackle rate. Those were better than his 2021 grades.

Photo by Jason Miller/Getty Images

DawgPoundDaily (Fansided):

The Browns traded a draft pick to the Atlanta Falcons last season for linebacker Deion Jones. Jones, a former Pro Bowl-caliber player, didn’t take a snap before being traded to Cleveland in late October.

The fact is, the Browns didn’t see the best version of Jones due to him not playing or having a normal training camp. They should bring him back on a team friendly contract and actually see what they indeed traded for last season.

I know his PFF grades weren’t great but I thought he did a decent job for what he was asked to do. He appeared to play decent in coverage, better than any linebacker Cleveland had not named Anthony Walker. He also showed a knack for making impact plays with 2.5 sacks, an interception, and a forced fumble. All this while not getting starter reps for Cleveland.

[The Browns] need to see the best version of what they traded for and the only way to do that is by re-signing him.

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Zach Cunningham, 29, Titans

This is what Nick Shook had to say about Cunningham in a recent article:

A flier on Cunningham won’t make headlines but could be a nice under-the-radar addition to a defense that already features playmakers at every level. At 28 years old, Cunningham seems as if he’s closer to retirement than the start of his career, but [this] could be a perfect fit.... After landing on the Titans via waivers near the end of 2021, he shouldn’t cost much, either.

Cunningham joined the Titans toward the end of the 2021 season, shortly after being waived by the Houston Texans. But recurring injuries limited Cunningham in 2022, his first full season with the Titans, when he was only able to play in six games, making just 24 tackles.

Photo by Cooper Neill/Getty Images

He’ll be 28 for the majority of the 2023 season so the Commanders could offer him a one or two-year contract that could potentially give them a budget starter/depth piece for a pair of seasons before allowing him to hit free agency at 30.

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Rashaan Evans, 28, Falcons

Photo by Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images

The Tennessee Titans selected Evans with the 22nd overall pick of the 2018 NFL Draft and the former Crimson Tide linebacker got off to a quick start early in his professional career. He was unable to maintain the high level of productivity, which resulted in the Titans declining his fifth-year option.

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As you can see from the table above, Evans had a career high 159 tackles (6 TFL), 2 sacks, a forced fumble, a pair of fumble recoveries, and 4 pass breakups in 2022 last season, while starting all 17 games.

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Kwon Alexander, 29, Jets

Alexander was selected in the fourth round of the 2015 NFL Draft by Tampa Bay out of LSU and started as a 21-year-old rookie for the Bucs. Alexander led the NFL with 108 solo tackles in 2016, and he made his first and only Pro Bowl in 2017 as a 2nd year player.

Injuries impacted his career after that, with a torn ACL knocking him out of 10 games in the 2018 season. After signing a four-year, $54 million free agent contract with the 49ers in 2019, a torn pectoral muscle ended that season in Week 8.

He was then traded to the New Orleans Saints in the middle of the 2020 season, and played 19 games over a season and half there before moving on to the New York Jets as a 2022 free agent.

Photo by Kathryn Riley/Getty Images

Last season with the Jets, he played in all 17 games, making 12 starts, and recorded 69 tackles, six tackles for loss, a half sack, two quarterback hits, one forced fumble and one pass defended.

The Jet Press (Fansided):

The Jets were able to sign former Pro Bowl linebacker Kwon Alexander to a dirt-cheap one-year, $1.27 million contract last summer with the hope that he could stay healthy and serve as one of the team’s three starting linebackers.

Remarkably, that’s pretty much what happened. Alexander went on to play in all 17 games, only the second time in his eight-year career that he had appeared in more than 12 games.

The Jets ended up getting excellent value out of the Alexander signing. The former fourth-round pick played 49 percent of defensive snaps, totaling 69 tackles, and finishing with a Pro Football Focus grade of 63.0 that ranked 36th among all qualified linebackers.

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Jayon Brown, 28, Raiders

Here’s an argument for Jayon Brown from Riggo’s Rag (Fansided):

I was very high on Jayon Brown prior to the 2021 season. He seemed to be exactly what the Washington Commanders could use. A tough, young linebacker who had a lot of experience playing on a quality Tennessee Titan team.

He had only played inside in 3-4 schemes, but I figured that is exactly what the Commanders had in Jon Bostic, and Brown could develop into a better long-term option. There was some concern that he was coming off an injury, but he had stayed mostly healthy up to that point, so I figured the 2020 injury was an aberration.

It wasn’t. Brown’s career has been undermined by a stream of injuries over the past two seasons. He hasn’t played especially well and has missed a lot of games. So any potential signing comes with strings attached.

Photo by Kevin Sabitus/Getty Images

But it may be worth the gamble. If he is fully recovered, Brown would seem like an ideal fit to provide Jamin Davis and Cody Barton with experienced support.

He has always been good in coverage and has started almost as many games as all of Washington’s current backups combined. I would not feel comfortable bringing in a player like Brown and expecting him to step right into the starting lineup. But he strikes me as a potentially valuable backup on a team in desperate need of depth.

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