As we near free agency we are seeing more and more discussions about certain teams unwilling to extend players and instead play games with contracts and the trade markets. Points are made about some teams being cheap and others reaping the benefits by spending money so I thought it might be good to look at the actual numbers.

One of the things that I think we all lose sight of in these discussions is that sometimes paying just for the sake of paying isn’t necessarily a good model for winning football. While we often point to the Eagles about having a salary heavy roster they also have players worth spending the money on. The majority of their big player signings are those that they drafted. Other teams that have been less successful do not have the type of players worth spending big dollars on.

While salary cutoffs will always be arbitrary I wanted to use two different ones to take a snapshot of rosters today. The first is a $15 million per year cutoff and the 2^nd would be a $10 million per year cutoff.

The average for teams above $15M is 4.6 and 7.3 for team at $10M and upward.  A look at the numbers this way can also give an idea into philosophies on team building where a team like the Saints has the lowest number of players worth over $15M per year but are tied for 6^th in players over $10 million.

I think the more important thing to look at though is not just blank spending its how many players are these teams losing. While occasionally teams do lose non-homegrown players (i.e trading Geno Smith to the Raiders, Trey Hendrickson perhaps being traded) are there teams that are making decisions to no longer keep some of the higher priced players?

First let’s look at the players who are signed for $15 million or more per year. The table below will show the team they started with, how many were lost to another team, and what the retention rate was for the team.

The NFL average is about 60% and this is where a team like Philadelphia stands out. When they have a high priced player they generally keep that player. This number will likely drop for them this year when a few players do hit free agency but a rule of thumb during this successful run has been draft well, and keep the players you draft well. These numbers also show some shortcomings in drafting from teams like the Colts who have a high retention rate but just three players and moreso a team like Seattle with just 1.

The more worrisome teams are those under 50%. Those are the Steelers, Raiders, Panthers, Dolphins, Titans, Jets, and Saints. There is something there either with poor cap management, a tight budget, or something else causing the teams to not keep their highest priced players. In some cases it may be justified (Bryce Huff for instance was a disaster free agent signing and smart to let walk) but the trend isn’t great for these teams.

What if we cut the numbers to $10 million?

I think the trend here is that most of the successful teams are finding ways to keep their higher priced players. You can see here where a team like Dallas philosophically switches up going from not losing very high priced players to losing many in the next salary tier. The Ravens drop to 44% which is not a great look, though they have been better than most at identifying players who they should drop. The 49ers number at 42% should be alarming and is likely because of their salary cap issues some of which stems from the failed Trey Lance trade robbing them of so many draft picks. The Texans and Dolphins are also a really bad look.

This isn’t to say any team is necessarily right or wrong in what they are doing just that this hopefully can add some context to the actual discussions when discussing teams that are being cheap and those who are seemingly going wild with spending.