A fool and his money are soon parted.

For NFL teams, foolhardiness comes naturally when money is concerned. It a league built around parity with a salary cap, salary floor and draft picks that reward teams with lower records. Because of that, it’s often a fool’s errand to spend a lot of money in free agency, but not always.

Over at Bleacher Report, I recently wrote about how “winning” in the offseason rarely equates to winning once the actual games start. Still, there’s certainly a time and a place for spending that hard-earned cap space, but the free agency misses far outweigh the successes. As I wrote:

Yet, while there’s nothing wrong with well-meaning, well-informed opinions about teams that were able to find the “right player” for the “right price,” far too much emphasis is put on teams that are active in free agency when some of the most successful organizations would rather dip their toes into the pool of available players rather than make a big splash.

The real key for free agent spending is that no two teams or their circumstances are ever alike. There’s bottom feeders who need to build from the ground up, and there’s quality teams just looking for a missing piece to the puzzle. The biggest mistakes happen when one of those groups acts like the other.

Enough about the mistakes, though, here are some ways teams can actually spend wisely.

Don’t Spend at All

Before talking about the best ways to spend money, sometimes discretion is the better part of valor.

Green Bay Packers general manager Ted Thompson and Baltimore Ravens general manager Ozzie Newsome are famous for being light (or altogether inactive) spenders in free agency. Their nonchalance toward spending the big bucks has contributed to their long-term success over the past decade.

While fans of both teams take this as a badge of honor, they’re also intermittently angry and impatient as free agency buzz comes and goes each spring while they’re left hoping their draft classes pan out.

Thompson and the Packers typically use that money to re-sign their own players. In 2015, that meant keeping players like wide receiver Randall Cobb. Over in Baltimore, their players typically head elsewhere for big money. This means compensatory picks up the proverbial wazoo as they’ve all but lapped the rest of the league (combined) when it comes to hauling in extra picks.

The Mercenary Method

The Packers aren’t always complete bystanders in free agency. In fact, one of their best players—outside linebacker Julius Peppers—was a free agency signing. This is the exact kind of “right player, right price” signings mentioned earlier.

Another fantastic example of that was the New England Patriots last offseason. They brought in cornerbacks Darrelle Revis and Brandon Browner, who both played a huge part in the Patriots Super Bowl championship. Though the Patriots would’ve loved to have both back in 2015 and beyond, both contracts were built as one-year deals for a very important reason—they were all in and didn’t want to foul up their long-term prospects by committing money in future years.

Free agents aren’t bad in and of themselves. It’s when free agents don’t pan out that causes the real pain. By mitigating risk and pouring resources in on a year-by-year basis, the pain of signings (good and bad) only hurts for a short time.

“Loser Tax”

Not every team can be content with mercenaries, though. In 2015, we’ve had a number of teams that willingly paid what I call the Loser Tax to convince free agents to sign with them. This is money that gets added to contracts by teams like the Jacksonville Jaguars, Oakland Raiders, Cleveland Browns and others to ensure that free agents aren’t just playing musical chains with the contenders.

Tight end Julius Thomas is worth every penny that the Jaguars gave him, because he wouldn’t have signed there for any less. The same goes for defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh and the Miami Dolphins. It’s all about the money for these guys, and that’s alright. Sometimes, that’s how the game is played.

This is the riskiest form of free agency, however, and the high risk only works out if there’s high reward down the road. When the “right price” is the entire Brinks truck, the player better be Mr. Right and then some.

Yet, for a franchise at rock bottom, the draft is often too long of a con to truly be the only way to rebuild. Coaches and general managers get a few years (at best) to turn things around, and paying the Loser Tax becomes more necessity than option.

Think the New Orleans Saints regret bringing Drew Brees on board in 2006, or the Raiders with Rich Gannon before that?

Waiver Winnings

The last way to win at free agency is the lowest risk and lowest realistic reward—it’s accomplished by playing the long odds and treating the Waiver Wire like a poker addict grinding out day-long sessions at the table. The more hands you see, the logic goes, the better the odds. It’s better to bet on your considerable skill paying off with a quantity of hands than on one big one.

Think of it less like going all in on one guy, and more like trying to see dozens.

Teams that do poorly in the regular season not only get high draft picks, but they also get waiver wire priority. This allows them to churn through the lower-end free agency pool, collecting player after player before dumping them back on the waiver for others up the chain.

Hit on one or two as starters, and the reward was well worth the risk. At worst, the teams that failed miserably the season before can depend on getting the cream of the crop when it comes to camp bodies, special teasers and backups.

That is…if they play their cards right.