Acquired via: Four-year, $67 million contract.

If you know a skeptic of free agency — someone who thinks the only way to build a true winner is by savvily drafting and developing players over time — point them to the Packers. Once famously allergic to spending on the open market, they dove in with gusto this year, inking a stud on offense (Josh Jacobs) and defense (McKinney). I guess sometimes team-building is just as easy as paying the right price for a ball-hawking dynamo. The Packers have not ranked higher than eighth in takeaways in any of Matt LaFleur’s previous five seasons, but through five weeks so far this year, they’re pacing the NFL with 14, fueled largely by McKinney’s league-leading five picks (plus one fumble recovery). In terms of making a strong first impression, you can’t really do better than becoming the first player in the Super Bowl era to notch at least one interception in each of your initial five games with a new team.

Watching McKinney hoover up anything that comes his way, whether it’s a bad pass or a contested catch, it’s easy to understand why coordinator Jeff Hafley has such strong feelings about him. According to Next Gen Stats, McKinney’s been targeted seven times, and he’s allowed just one reception, good for a passer rating of 0.0 and a completion percentage over expectation of -42.4. With the head start he’s built up, McKinney has a chance to be the first Packers player to lead the NFL in picks since Charles Woodson (who did it twice, in 2009 and 2011) — a vintage home-run signing whose success with the franchise could, by the way, serve as another data point in our imaginary debate over the merits of free agency.