There are a ton of great players on the 2015 NFL free agency market, thus some names will get lost in the shuffle; a few of whom will immediately make their new teams better in 2015.
Dez Bryant, Ndamukong Suh, DeMarco Murray, Randall Cobb. Those are just four big names ready to hit the open market when the NFL calendar officially flips to 2015 in March.
There are countless other players whose names are large as life, and in some cases their paychecks have been in the past too. In most of the cases, their on-field performance has been commensurate with their earnings.
But there remains a subset, a group of players either underappreciated, underpaid or both. For every Tom Brady, Rob Gronkowski, Richard Sherman or Russell Wilson (just a few of the players who had great overall games in Sunday’s Super Bowl) there is a Chris Matthews or Malcolm Butler, who comes out of nowhere and plays an integral role in a team’s success, even if in the case of those two it was just one game, or series (Butler, in addition to his game-sealing interception on the goal line, also had a key pass breakup on the ‘Hawks attempted scoring drive, which preceded the incredible Jermaine Kearse bobbling catch).
All the players among this list are more accomplished and notable than either Matthews or Butler. But that shouldn’t ruin the point. The point is the following five players are the type of free agents who will be acquired at a convenient price to the buyer. And that buyer’s investment will return two-fold.
Here are the five most underrated free agents in the 2015 free agent class.
Next: The most recognized and well paid of this group