The other factor is the idea that I heard floated not that long ago.
Players that ultimately hit free agency, actually tend to have a bit of pride within them, meaning they may take a marginally less amount of money with a new team, to not admit they were wrong.
Do we think Peters and co didn't value Curl at the contract he got? I wonder (and we will never know the true answer to this) if we offered him a deal similar, or even more than what he ultimately got? In the event we did, did Curl reach back once the deal with the Rams was actually on the table? For all we know, we offered a similar deal to Curl before Free Agency started and he laughed in our face, because if had been reported that we ofered him that same deal a month ago, fans and media would have laughed at it. Did that also happen with Fuller? Or did we even offer these guys? It's really hard to know, exponentially so with the newe regime. I know in the past that i've fallen victim to saying "HOW DO WE LET HIM GET AWAY" when in reality, even with the silly nonsense that gets reported, we dont know.
We know they didnt like Thomas at his current number, but that doesn't mean they didnt like him.