It’s been a while since I’ve done this exercise, but with the 2026 NFL Draft just a few days away, I thought I’d revisit an estimation on the number of UDFA signings that each team might sign. This is calculated with some very simple math: take the sum of current rostered players as estimated by OTC and draft picks each team holds, and subtract that from 90 to provide the estimated UDFA signings each team could make.

This rookie class, the Ravens, Vikings, Rams, and Chargers could all be poised to add quite a few UDFAs after the draft is over, while on the other end, the Titans, Colts, Steelers, and Giants might not add that many unless they cut some veterans in the process. The Dolphins also project out on the lower end despite the current state of their roster.

The table to the left contains the UDFA estimates for all 32 teams, and the paragraphs on the right describe some of the features and caveats that each team’s UDFA rookie class may contain.

The Bengals made a big splash just a few days before the draft trading for DT Dexter Lawrence of the Giants and giving up the 10th overall pick to make it happen. It’s a huge price to pay for a player who will turn 29 during the 2026 season and is looking for a contract upgrade, but it probably says more about what the Bengals think about this year’s draft than anything else. For the Giants this was a deal they could not turn down especially since they were in a contract dispute with Lawrence.

Lawrence had signed a four year, $90 million contract extension with the Giants back in 2023 which felt like a deal he rushed into and it certainly has not aged well for him. The Giants added some incentives to his contract last year as a band aid to keep Lawrence happy, but the issues, not surprisingly, lingered this year as he seemed set on getting a new contract.

Lawrence still has two years remaining on his contract at salaries of $20 million in 2026 and $22 million in 2027. The current market rate for interior defenders not names Chris Jones is $26 million a year, so my guess would be that we see a three year extension worth $26 to $26.5 million a year. This would likely pacify the contractual situation with Lawrence as it would effectively make him highest paid at the position. From the Bengals point of view they would view such a contract as a five year contract worth around $121 million and $24.5 million a year.

From a financial perspective perhaps the Bengals were more than happy to drop the 10th pick for the chance to get Lawrence. The 10th pick in the draft will earn somewhere in the ballpark of $20 million this year and is unproven. That matches Lawrence’s current salary. While Lawrence will get a raise, perhaps a massive one since the Bengals do not give guarantees beyond their signing/roster bonus in year one, most likely their payout this year will only be $10 million or so more than what they were going to pay pick 10. If you believe this is a weak draft the numbers are easy to justify in the short term. I would also say the long term since there likely will be no future guarantees, but no team has chased sunk contracts costs more than the Bengals have so they likely will honor most of whatever contract they sign regardless of the guaranteed number.

Still this is major draft compensation to give up especially for an unhappy player who wants a new contract. Trading/signing 3rd contract guys is always a big risk and this is no different. The Cowboys made a massive trade last year giving up a 2 and a 1 for a player not yet unhappy with his contract and that so far has looked like a bust for Dallas. While this is not as much value the situations are a little different and the Bengals should have had more leverage which is why I believe they just looked at the 10th pick as a way overpriced asset this year.

This continues a pretty major overhaul of a bad defense for the Bengals. Along with Lawrence they have added Boye Mafe, Jonathan Allen, and Bryan Cook to the team. This feels very much like a put up or shut up year for the coaching staff and they will expect Lawrence to be the addition to get them over the top.

I think this was an easy decision for the Giants. The Giants are in the middle of a rebuild and should not be committing more years to their veteran players at least until they know the upside and downside of QB Jaxson Dart. The reality is the upside of the 10th pick is higher and the peak of that players upside will occur when the Giants may be good. The four year cost is also low enough (around $31 million) to where a number of outcomes justifies the salary in the event the player is not a star.

Lawrence will carry a $13.916 dead money charge for the Giants in 2026, which creates $13 million in cap room. They will free up $28.96 million next year. Numbers wise this is a wash in cash for this year (they save $20M in salary and will pay that to a rookie) and they will be about $29 million better in cap space that can be spent on outside talent in the future. This all just lessens the risk for NY.

This feels like a boom or bust trade for the Bengals. If Lawrence plays as he did a few years ago and the team makes the playoffs the next two years it will be looked at as a solid move. If he doesn’t play at his usual high level or the defense simply doesn’t improve its probably a bust especially if the Giants wind up selecting a future star with the draft pick.

With the NFL draft rapidly approaching I thought it would be a good time to do our look at where teams are hitting on good players in the draft and where we can often find high quality talent in free agency. Using those two numbers gives a strong indication of ways to approach the draft using a positional based valuation approach rather than the pure “he’s the highest graded player on the board” approach. I guess this is a bit more timely since a NFL GM recently said “throw positional value out” when talking about this years NFL draft.

One of the first things that we should be doing when we are building a team is determing the best overall ways to construct a team. Primarily teams build through the draft and free agency so how can we use those to our advantage?  What I wanted to do was take a look at the top paid players at each position in the NFL to see what we can gather from somewhat recent history. Here is where each of the top 10 players were drafted:

While these don’t indicate “hit rates” (for example far more QBs are drafted early than tight ends) they do give us a baseline to consider when planning strategies around positional adjusted rankings of players, which is something that I don’t feel is done enough in the NFL. While a 10 player sample is small it does give me some idea that drafting Corners, EDGE, Offensive Tackles, Wide Receivers, and potentially D-line in round 1 is probably a far better use than on other positions, even when those positions supposedly have a “cant miss unicorn”. Enough good talent is there to find if a team is patient enough.

What about if we expand it to the top 20? That is probably a more realistic representation of finding good quality players in the draft than just the top 10 alone.

I think here we definitely get into the concept of drafting QB, following by our defensive line and finally left tackle as our premium options. Those are followed by WR, CB, and RT. Positions like center, tight end, and safety in particular really see a number of really good players land in the latter half of the draft making it much harder to justify an early selection on those players.

These numbers are important because building the best team is not the same simply drafting the best player with your first pick. A team will most likely be better off landing the 5^th best EDGE in round 1, 15th best wide receiver in round 2, and 15^th best tight end in round 3 and still having a chance at finding some other starters, than landing the overall top tight end in round 1, 7^th best linebacker in round 2, 18^th best EDGE in round 3 and then having limited chances at finding starters later on. 

Coupling this information with free agent availability is also critical.  Why?  The second avenue to team building is free agency. What positions are actually available in free agency with high quality players?  Let’s break it down for the top 20 salaries in the league and who was available in free agency.

These numbers really should be giving us some strong guidance. While there may be a great grading off ball linebacker available in the draft, wouldn’t I be better off as a GM to simply sign a top 5 linebacker in free agency and draft a good left tackle even if he grades a bit lower than taking that linebacker in the draft and signing the 18^th best left tackle? I would think so.

The numbers also show you what positions are more of a 6 to 8 year return (the days of expecting a decade out of most positions is simply not realistic anymore) from a draft versus just a four year return where I lose the player in free agency. In addition every team benefits on the cap if they land an expensive position in the draft versus a less expensive one.

If we plot the free agent availability against the players from round 1 that became top 20 players it really solidifies what positions to strongly consider in round 1 and what ones to avoid.

We can also start looking at the growth from round 1 to the end of round 3 to also classify some ideas of what to do in rounds 2 and 3.

We do start to see some shifts here but the important thing to me is that basically our WR and Interior D-Line pool is gone by this point. Really it gives these positions added value if you are really missing at these positions or did not draft there in round 1. These rounds are also where you can begin to consider guards, right tackles, running backs and linebackers as teams do a better job of identifying the stars by this point. Ultimately if you draft the proper positions and then use the money you have to go and buy the top players at the available positions you should create a far superior team to the one drafting the wrong positions and then overpaying for lower quality free agents at the more expensive positions.

As for the original point made by the GM that this draft is different, I have studied a lot of drafts in the NFL. Quite honestly they never are that different in terms of providing starting level talent, outside of the QB position. Maybe the scouts see them differently but in the end they almost always produce relatively consistent numbers. The only draft I can really think of where it wasn’t the case was 2013. Maybe 2026 will be like that draft but weve heard the stories before about major drop offs after 15 players and lack of studs at the top and 95% of the time the drafts simply produce talented players in the NFL at every position.

Dave Birkett reported today that the Lions decided to exercise their contractual right to force retired center Frank Ragnow to pay back part of his signing bonus due to his retirement. I had a few questions on this and thought it would be good to share some thoughts about situations like this and what is or is not really right from the team’s perspective.

Ragnow signed a four year contract extension with the Lions worth $54 million back in 2021. At the time Ragnow had two years remaining on his rookie contract so the new contract ran six total years and would keep him under contract to Detroit through 2026. As part of the contract Ragnow received a $6 million signing bonus which would be prorated at $1.2 million per year from 2021 through 2025. In addition he received an $18 million option bonus in 2022 that would be prorated at $3.6 million from 2022 through 2026.

There was nothing special about Ragnow’s contract regarding a teams ability to recover bonus money in the event of a breach, such as retirement. Most teams just use boilerplate language in their contracts to indicate that a player is subject to maximum forfeiture as outlined in the CBA. Forfeiture of salary in this case is a maximum of $1.2 million, which was the remaining proration remaining on Ragnow’s contract from his 2021 signing bonus. The option bonus proration was not subject to forfeiture as the NFL only allows option bonus forfeiture if the breach occurs in the season the option is earned.

The NFL rules regarding signing bonus forfeiture are old and don’t really reflect the reality of veteran NFL contracts. The term “signing bonus” is loosely defined as a prepayment of a contract and there was probably a time when that was the case regarding NFL contracts, but that time has passed. Realistically they are nothing more than a salary cap accounting mechanism designed to artificially deflate the salary cap charge of a player. There is no prepayment occurring nor any salary that acts as a “bonus” above and beyond the contracted salary of the player.

The signing bonus given to a rookie fits the bill of a bonus that should be subject to forfeiture. Last year’s number one pick, Cam Ward, received a signing bonus worth $32.15 million. It represents 65.8% of Ward’s entire contract. His salaries read as follows: $32.999 million in year 1, $3.05 million in year 2, $5.28 million in year 3, and $7.5 million in year 4. That first year salary sticks out because the contract is effectively being prepaid in the first year of the contract. The signing bonus is 2.6 times his annual salary. This is a contract prepayment that would not be paid if there was thought the player would breach the contract.

Now let’s compare that to Ragnow. His $6 million signing bonus represents 8.6% of the total value of his contract.  It is 0.5 times the size of his effective APY. His yearly salary runs $7.21 million in year 1, $20.75 million in year 2, $11.65 million in year 3, $8 million in year 4, $9.25 million in year 5, and $12.75 million in year 6. This does not indicate his signing bonus as anything significant relative to his contract to cause it to be treated as anything special. While his contract did make him one of the highest paid centers in the NFL, his yearly cash flows were in line with the market, which includes teams that both use and do not use signing/option/etc…. bonuses.

To chase after a signing bonus, when there is only 1 year left that you can chase after the bonus, and after 67% of a long term contract has been honored is petty on the part of a team. This was not a blindside situation. He had been contemplating retirement and it was very clear that the team knew this since he announced his retirement on June 2^nd, which was the day the Lions could place him on the retired list and split his dead money across two years. He didn’t belittle the team, demand more money, or anything else. In fact he tried to come out of retirement during the year and it didn’t work out. I don’t think any other team in the NFL would have done this to be honest even though it is their right.

It really is time for the agent community to start pushing back against the use of signing bonuses, or at least bonuses with forfeiture provisions, for their veteran players. Teams use them because they need salary cap space. Nothing more, nothing less. The Lions were going to pay Ragnow $7M in 2021 no matter what, They used a bonus to fit it in best with their cap.

There are multiple bonuses that can be used to get a team the salary cap treatment they want while also protecting the players rights. These include guaranteed roster bonuses, guaranteed reporting bonuses, option bonuses, and completion bonuses. Boiler plate language can spell out retirement provisions rather than just blanket “maximum extent” statements. This is especially true of restructure bonuses that team pays as a signing bonus where they simply exercise their right to convert non signing bonus money into a signing bonus for salary cap purposes.

Why the NFL and NFLPA continue to make this different distinction for a signing bonus is baffling. The NFL lost an arbitration decision years ago when they used option bonuses as a prepayment of rookie contracts by advancing the rookies future salary as an option bonus. Due to that all sides now agree you only attack the option if the breach occurs the same year and nobody uses those bonuses as an advance of anything more than current year salary. They agreed to treat roster bonuses the same since more and more teams were using roster bonuses as a way to commit to early offseason salary. The logic behind both of those is that you should not pay a player X only to have them turn around and hold out or retire after getting a large payment.

At this point anyone dealing with the Lions should just refuse the standard signing bonus and force their hand to remove any doubt of this kind of activity, but the potential problem exists league wide and there are easy avenues to prevent it from happening. The time has come to either change the rules or change the negotiations stars are having with their teams.

On March 9, the 2026 compensatory draft picks were released. As always, upon seeing the official release it’s proper to judge how my projection did against it.

ESPN’s Field Yates is reporting that the Browns and star Edge rusher Myles Garrett have agreed to a modified contract where the two sides have agreed to push back the option dates in his contract from late March to early September. This is a pretty bizarre move on Garrett’s end as it defers the payment of salary each year to Garrett and really just opens up a trade window each year, except Garrett has a no trade provision. It is hard to really tell what the logic is here from either side.

Garrett’s original contract extension, per a source with knowledge of the contract. had yearly option bonuses due in 2026, 2027, and 2028. Garrett was able to get the Browns to break from tradition and have the exercise date of the option tied to the 15th day of the league year. This would force the Browns to commit to a payment at that time and more or less protect him from losing much of that salary if he were to somehow breach his contract after the 15th day.

Under the prior terms he would be paid $10 million in 2026, $13 million in 2027, and $7 million in 2028 within a month of the option being exercised by the Browns. The balance would then be paid concurrent with his salary and as lump sum on March 31 of the following year. Now those initial payments are deferred until the fall when the new option date occurs. Yates did mention that there are payment benefits to Garrett so the Browns must have moved some of the money due with his weekly salary up to make up for what is somewhere around a 6 month delay to being paid. Garrett also received March roster bonuses in the final two years of his contract but considering the Browns got him to move this bonus I’m sure they don’t envision that as much of a concession.

The Browns don’t gain any cap room by making this move unless they actually changed the option amounts this year. They already had the lowest cap charge possible for Garrett, outside of converting some per game bonuses to a signing bonus. All this does is give the team the maximum flexibility to trade Garrett assuming they were to get him to waive a his no trade clause. I guess there is also the soft factor of having everyone on the team have a similar exercise date.

This delayed option was a mechanism made popular by the Philadelphia Eagles where they would include option bonuses in just about every year of the contract where the date would usually be pegged to the start of the regular season rather than a traditional date in March, except for the second contract year (which is where Garrett is now). The benefit of this is all to the team. They delay payments until the fall and most importantly they delay financial commitments until that time. The option here functions the same as a restructured contract where the team gets the lowest possible cap charge for the player but at the same time still hold the rights to send that money to another team via trade or potentially escape things entirely is a guarantee void occurs for any reason. In a traditional restructure once you restructure the contract you are on the hook for the salary regardless of if you trade the player or not.

This mechanism has caught on with other teams in recent years. The Browns use this in every single contract. The Lions have used this in some of their big deals. The 49ers have adopted this mechanism. The Broncos have multiple options in each year, though they have actually used these to pick and choose when to take on bigger cap charges in a given year. Dallas uses them in the final year of contracts. I would expect more teams to use them because there really is no downside for the team.

By deferring the option the trade window for the player extends well into the summer. For example if Garrett had his option picked up today (or they had to restructure his contract to get the low cap charge he currently has) the cost to trade him on the cap would have been $70.3M on a trade during the draft and $21.4M for 2026 and $48.69M in 2027 if traded in the summer. The acquiring team would only be responsible for $2.3 to $3,3 million in salary for the year. With the delay the cost to trade during the draft is $41.1M and the cost in the summer would be $15.34M in 2026 and $25.6M in 2027. The acquiring team would be on the hook for $31.5 to $32.5M in salary and the Browns owe nothing. A similar situation exists next year where with the delay the trade cost is $48.9M during the draft and a $17.8/$31.1M split between 2027 and 2028 if traded in the summer.

As I mentioned on X, it is an odd move to make for a player with a no trade clause, but the Browns seemingly turned a very player favorable contract back into a team favorable one with this move and will certainly keep trade discussions out in the media next year if the team plays poorly this year. .

The numbers are officially in for wide receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba’s record setting $168.6 million contract extension via PFT and this really is a big one for the wide receiver market. While many will paint this as a modest jump from Jamarr Chase’s $40.4 million to $42.15 million per year, the reality is far bigger.

The cash commitment from the Seahawks is truly stunning in this contract. What I consider his “year 0” salary (his raise over his existing rookie contract salary) is a gigantic $42.65 million. The other high end players on the market are all around $18 to $11 million. While some of that is influenced by the fact that many were signed with one year rather than two remaining on their rookie contract, that typically is taken into account when doing an extension. Here are some of the comparisons of the other top contracts:

Those numbers continue into the first year of the contract where he will have earned $62.5 million when no other player is above $53.2 million, which is about 17.5% growth in salary. This again sets new high water marks compared to the rest of the market both in terms of overall salary and salary paid as a percentage of the total contract value.

This trend continues through year two and really only slightly falls by year 3 when he drops on a percentage basis to 75.2% of his contract having been paid out compared to Lamb’s 76.5% and Jefferson’s 75.7%.

One of the big comparisons here is the Chase contract in terms of overall cash. Chase’s contract followed a pattern that has been common in receiver contracts where the final year salary is higher than the APY of the contract in an effort to spike the annual value of the deal. Chase’s 3 year value is $38.8 million while Smith-Njigba’s is a more legit $42.3 million.

This is why this contract is really more like an 8.6% increase over the market rather than the 4.7% one if we use Chase’s $40.25 million per year. It would seem that this contract was really pegged off the Jefferson one and inflated for salary cap growth. The Seahawks don’t fully guarantee salary beyond the existing contract years of an extension which may have helped with those big early salary numbers, but that should rub off on the rest of the market even though those teams will often guarantee three years at signing.

The new money guarantee on the contract is $93.5 million which beats Jefferson’s $90.257 million and Chase’s $82 million. His full guarantee of $69.13 million does trail Jefferson’s $88.74 million and Chase’s $73.9 million but that is part of doing business with the Seahawks and their guarantee structures. He does get early vesting dates (typical of the Seahawks) so he is pretty well protected from being released. While he does have $850K per year in per game bonuses I would consider that standard for the position.

His cap charge for this year will increase by $5.78 million while his 2027 cap charge will drop by $8.22 million. His cap charges should be $10.37 million in 2026, $15.63 million in 2027, $32.937 million in 2028, $36.5 million in 2029, $48.8 million in 2030, and $50.3 million in 2031. Those backend numbers could be slightly different as I am making an assumption that the team used one void year.

The salary cap structure is strong for Smith-Njigba. Once the team exercises the first option his 2028 dead money will spike to $45 million in 2028, which would make him pretty hard to release prior to his vesting date just a few days after the Super Bowl. In 2029 that number would be $42 million and Seattle would need at least $10 million in remaining 2028 salary cap room to cut him prior to that early vesting date. So all of the injury guarantees are pretty well protected by the cap structure. 2030 would be the first year really open to debate if his play were to decline.

This is a really strong player contract that really moves the needle for the receiver market as the next group of players gets ready for an extension. This position is always a risk, but my opinion is if you are not willing to walk off the rookie deal (and there Is no reason Seattle should considering how good he has been) you get the extension out of the way early and keep your fingers crossed that no injury or other issue comes up that limits the productivity of the player. Seattle did that and then some with this extension.