There are only a few days in the year when it is common for players to come and go from your favorite professional teams — the days leading up to the trading deadline during the regular season and the first few days of free agency, which for the NFL started at midnight Thursday night.

While there are only a few days where there is significant player movement, the impact these few days have on a franchise is magnanimous. If an owner and/or general manager aren’t able to woo any talented free agents, the franchise is likely to struggle.

With so much at stake for franchises, several players across the league pursued new contracts, and possibly new homes, all whilst teams tried to lure in talent to fill as much necessities as possible before the April 26-27 draft. Since Thursday, several players have made a move on the market including CB Asante Samuel (Eagles), DE Justin Smith (49ers), RB Michael Turner (Falcons), TE Alge Crumpler (Titans), OL Alan Faneca (Jets), and wide receivers Donte Stallworth (Browns), Issac Bruce (49ers), Bernard Berrian (Vikings) and Jerry Porter (Jaguars).

Other big name free agents like LB Lance Briggs (Bears), OL Flozell Adams (Cowboys), and QB Derek Anderson (Browns)decided to re-sign with their respective current ball clubs. However, there are still some big name players who have yet to sign a new contract, including the biggest name, and ego, still floating around the free agent market — Randy Moss. Other big time players still available include kicker Rob Bironas and RB Marion Barber III.

For some teams, like Jacksonville, trading away a key piece of last season’s squad (defensive tackle Marcus Stroud in the Jaguars instance) was necessary because they didn’t believe they would be able to retain certain players in next year’s free agency markets.

To keep up with your favorite team(s), two great web sites to check out are Scout.com’s Free Agency Tracker and FOX Sports Free-Agent Central. Scout’s Tracker is very user-friendly allowing you to sort the players by their overall rank, individual position, the college they played for, the team they played for last year, or who they’ve signed with (if they have signed). FOX Sports’ site has the important transactions broken down in chronological order. They also free agent analysis, analysis for the upcoming draft, and even a link to Scout’s Tracker.

So, if you need to catch up with what your favorite team has done this weekend, check out either one of these sites or even NFL.com’s Free Agency Tracker, which is useful, just not as user friendly as Scout.com’s.

If you aren’t satisfied with what your favorite or hometown organization has done so far, find solace that Randy Moss and some other key contributors are still available and a stacked draft with some fresh blood is not far away.

Shotgun Spratling

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