Peyton Manning produced more value for his contract than any other free agent in last five years

The people over at numberFire calculated the production per contract for every free agent over the last five years and determined that no player created more value per dollar than retired Denver Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning.

And it's not even close.

First, they looked at who had the most opportunities to create value, and clearly Manning as a quarterback in his four seasons with the Broncos put him ahead of the curve, along with many other free agent quarterbacks. Of the bunch, Manning was the only future Hall-of-Famer.

The interesting part came when they calculated the pure value of all free agents, and the list is rather impressive.

Next, we must take a look at pure, unadulterated value. This is how truly valuable each player was for his team. The table below shows our first measure of this: which 10 free agents have generated the most Total NEP in free agent contracts signed since 2011?

Years	Player	Team	Total NEP
2012-2016	Peyton Manning	DEN	577.48
2012-2016	Vincent Jackson	TB	382.9
2012-2016	Pierre Garçon	WAS	328.83
2012-2014	Reggie Wayne	IND	223.01
2014-2016	Emmanuel Sanders	DEN	221.1
2013-2016	Delanie Walker	TEN	213.2
2011-2013	James Jones	GB	204.02
2014-2018	Eric Decker	NYJ	195.03
2011-2014	Darren Sproles	NO	171.36
2014-2018	Golden Tate	DET	171.15

It’s pretty compelling to note that four of the top five free agent successes from the past half-decade were either connected to Peyton Manning, or are Peyton Manning himself. Garcon and Reggie Wayne were cornerstones of Manning’s Colts wideout corps, and capitalized on new deals in 2012 – same as Manning himself. Emmanuel Sanders, of course, saw career years when he joined Manning’s Broncos for the past two seasons.

That's right, Manning was worth every penny the Broncos spent on him. With two Super Bowl appearances and one Super Bowl title, it is hard to argue with that statement.

Looking over this list, it also appears that Emmanuel Sanders is due one very large contract about a year from now. He has outperformed his deal by a wide margin and should be able to capitalize financially when he becomes a free agent again.