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Samuel: Picked up by the Philadelphia Eagles

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The figures come at you fast and furious - $42million over six years; $9m over nine years; $45m over six years; and $35.4million, also over six years.

A staggering $714m for 39 players in the space of the first three days.

Welcome to the weird and wacky world of Free Agency, NFL style. And it has been all the rage now for almost two weeks, with deals coming thick and fast for the first week or so and then slowing to a relative trickle in the last few days.

The big money has largely been spent and the dust is starting to settle, which means the media can begin to analyse all the deals that make up this financial landslide. And there is plenty of analysis to go round!

Large sums

The final figure for the full 320 players (give or take a handful) on the free agency block will easily top a cool billion dollars by the time all is said and done, probably around $1.2b - that's in excess of £600m from the 32 teams involved. Or almost FIVE TIMES what was spent during the month-long Premiership transfer window in January.

Some 183 players from England's top-flight league moved in January for a total of £125,600,000; not chump change, certainly, but not quite the rarefied heights of Free Agency. It's enough to make most Premiership owners (and players!) weep.

It also provides a typical media carnival around the 'new contract' carousel that whirls with alarming speed at this time of year, throwing out a range of free agency deals that make your head spin.

Just to begin with, those figures mentioned at the start pan out as follows: $42m over 9 years for Calvin Pace, from Arizona to the Jets; $9m for Trent Green to be the Rams' back-up quarterback from Miami; $45m for San Francisco defensive end Justin Smith from Cincinnati; and $35.4m shelled out by Atlanta for San Diego's back-up running-back Michael Turner.

It is the NFL's big clearing ground before the serious business of the annual Draft in April, but it is also the place that savvy teams use to seriously re-tool their line-ups for next season. Hence the eye-popping salaries being bandied around.

And, after the mega-success in free agency this time last year of the New England Patriots, it means the TV and newspaper pundits scrutinise every deal intently under the media microscope.

Will a team's new-found free agent talent make the difference in getting them to the play-offs next season or will it condemn them to a salary cap bust and another term of mediocrity?

The jury has obviously still yet to sit on any of the big-money moves, but they give us plenty to focus on over here, especially in the absence of any other major headline-grabbing stories (Brett Favre's retirement is so last week).

Patriot gains

And much of this year's crop is being judged by the (very high) yardstick set by the Patriots 12 months ago, when their coaching brains trust produced an absolutely smoking game plan based around hoovering up the best available wide receiver talent, along with the best defensive player on the market.

That gave them the likes of Wes Welker, Donte Stallworth, Kyle Brady and Adalius Thomas, to which they then added the crowning piece of Randy Moss - a whole arsenal of new talent, and all before anyone had even packed their bags for the Draft.

Of course, we now know how that scenario panned out, with New England sweeping all before them only to get ambushed in the Super Bowl by the never-say-die New York Giants.

But, by any standards, both a year ago and in the aftermath of a breathtaking season, the Patriots pulled off a succession of masterstrokes which the pundits are now keen to ascertain if anyone has repeated.

And the results? Not even close. Despite that mind-boggling $1.2billion (and counting) spending spree, the almost unanimous verdict is that no-one has made any kind of jump to mark themselves out as THE team of the post-season.

(Imagine that in the Premiership - a £600,000,000-plus investment, and few clubs have even scratched the surface of improvement!)

Philadelphia have inked former Patriots defensive back Asante Samuel to a six-year $57.4m contract; the Jets bagged Pittsburgh guard Alan Faneca for the small sum of $40m over five years (making him the league's highest-paid O-lineman); and Cleveland have handed over $35million merely to add Stallworth to their receiving corps.

No guarantees

But, with the exception of Samuel, who will certainly make the Eagles 'D' a far more formidable proposition next term, there are precious few impact players - and plenty of gambles being wagered among that welter of new contracts.

ESPN reported that, of the first 78 players to switch teams under free agency, a staggering 48 of them played LESS than 50% of the time last season. So, there are no guarantees that many of them will even be able to influence events on the field for much of the time.

It all leaves the league with more questions than answers at this stage - all pretty much along the lines of which of the multi-million dollar gambles will pay off come the playoffs in 2009?

Watch this space, as they say. Oh, and stay tuned for the serious media frenzy over the Draft in April!