Washington is once again winning free agency, but this time it’s doing so the right way

In the past, the money would have been too tempting to spend responsibly.Forever, the Washington Football Team in the Daniel Snyder era has chased the free agency flash, lunging for the superstar, writing checks that could not be refused. And with more salary cap room this offseason than any other NFC team, it seemed plausible to think the team would do the same again.

“Washington has cornered the market on overpaying [players] and guys underperforming their contracts and everyone in the league knows it,” a former NFL head coach said a couple of years ago, re countingthe perceptions held in his teams’ front offices. “Agents will never tell you this, but when they have a free agent client who they want to get paid, the first team they call is Washington.”

But a lot has changed in a short time. The impulsiveness that ruled the franchise was gone when Washington entered free agency, Monday morning, with roughly $38 million of cap space to spend after using the franchise tag to keep guard Brandon Scherff, presumably with the idea of working out a long-term deal. This time, the approach was aggressive but also targeted, methodical and refined.

There were no crazed $100 million long shots, no haphazard grabs at big names with no plan for how those names would fit a team. The first days of Coach Ron Rivera’s second free agency as Washington’s coach came with a plan, and the plan actually made the team better.

Needing a quarterback, receiver and corner back in free agency, River a and his new front office executives Marty Hurney and Martin Mayhew came out with a solid one-year quarterback in Ryan Fitzpatrick, an excellent cover corner back in William Jackson III and versatile, explosive receiver Curtis Samuel — all on reasonable contracts that work well with the team’ s future cap. So efficient were the deals that Washington still has room to add depth and pay this spring’s draft picks.

Wednesday night, after Samuel agreed to a three-year contract worth up to $35.5 million, former Philadelphia Eagles and Cleveland Browns president Joe Banner tweeted: “Putting [Washington] on short list of teams being smart so far. Long time since we could say that .” A lot of teams executives must be saying the same thing today.

There are two kinds of winning in football free agency: the kind where a team signs the biggest name for the most money, owning the chatter for the following few days and the kind where a team carefully adds necessary players, while leavingcap space to build essential depth. After years of racing to get the Albert Haynesworths at free agency’s first dawn, Washington waited for the players it needed and spent wisely, landing Samuel and Jackson in their 20s, with their careers on the rise, as opposed to their 30s when they are older and no longer in their athletic prime.

Never was that more clear than in its pursuit of Samuel. Receiver has always been a particular fascination of this franchise in the past two decades. Coaches and executives have long complained about Snyder’ s yearning for star receivers, wasting years with foolish free agent signings and first-round picks that rarely led to postseason games. But by the end of last season, it was painfully clear that Washington needed a top receiver to match with its best offensive player, Terry McLaurin.

Samuel was always the perfect fit, having already played for Rivera and offensive coordinator Scott Turner in Carolina. He is fast, with the unique ability to not only beat defenses deep but also cut across the middle of the field and make plays as a ball carrier off handoffs. He is also a close friend of McLaurin’s, his teammate at Ohio State. Almost to prove how much this team needed him, he to re it apart with 158 total yards in a 20-13 Panthers victory at FedEx Field last December.

He is exactly the kind of player the team would crave so much that it would race to sign him in free agency’s first minutes, regardless of what it cost to get him at that moment. But this time, Washington waited.

Rivera has preached a careful rebuild, something Hurney did when they worked together with the Panthers. With a smaller overall cap this year and a promising group of receivers in next month’s draft, most of the top wideouts in free agency went unsigned as the negotiation window opened. When the New York Jets agreed to sign Tennessee’s Corey Davis for a reported three years, $37.5 million, the temptation must have been there for Washington to rush to get a deal done with Samuel — who was also being pursued by the Las Vegas Raiders, Jacksonville Jaguars and Carolina, according to a person with knowledge of the situation.