Est. Value: how the number is built

Est. Value is what our model says a new deal for the player costs per year if it were signed today. It sits next to what he is actually paid, so you can see the gap. Zay Flowers is paid $3.5M a year on his rookie deal; the model prices a new Flowers contract at about $34M a year. That gap is the whole story of why teams love rookie contracts.

What it is not

It is not a prediction that he signs for that number, and it is not a grade of the front office. A player two years from free agency has no reason to get paid market price today. It answers one question only: if this player hit the open market at his current age and level, what would the deal look like?

How it works

The same way an agent builds an ask: from comparable deals.

• Find the comps. Recent signings at the same position by players of similar skill, similar age, and similar current pay. Skill comes from our own position rankings, expressed as a percentile among his peers.
• Measure every comp in cap share, not dollars. Each comparable deal is converted to the percentage of the salary cap it took up when it was signed. A deal from 2023 stays comparable in 2026 because the percentage travels with the rising cap; the dollar figure does not.
• Average the comps, closest first. Comps that match the player best count the most.
• Adjust for age. Every position has a pay curve. A 30-year-old running back does not get the 25-year-old comp's deal; the adjustment follows the curve and is capped so it can never invent a market that does not exist.
• Adjust for skill. If the player is better than his comp pool, the number moves up; worse, down. Clamped to a narrow band (0.85x to 1.20x) so one hot season cannot double a valuation.
• Convert to dollars. The adjusted cap share times the projected league cap is the Est. Value per year. The range shown is the middle half of the comp pool - where most similar deals actually landed. Years and guarantees come from what those same comps got.

The track record

Every time a player we had priced signs a real contract, the estimate that was on his page before the news is frozen here next to the deal he actually got. The list only grows, and nothing on it gets a second draft.

1 of 1 landed inside our published range. Typical miss on the annual number: 5%.

The bar is the range, not the point estimate. A single number is never exactly right, and grading against one would be a way of scoring ourselves generously rather than honestly.

The UNDERPAID tag

Naive "model > salary" fires on almost every rookie deal, because every rookie deal is structurally below market. The tag only fires when all four are true: the gap is at least $8M a year, the model value is at least 1.5x the current deal, the player is genuinely good (65th percentile or better at his position), and the comp pool is deep enough to trust (four or more deals). That lands it on roughly 5% of players - 120 of 2,603 - which is what a real signal looks like.

Where it is honest about being weak

Kickers and punters have no comparable pool, so they get no number at all - an honest blank beats a made-up one. A thin comp pool (under five deals) widens the range and blocks the UNDERPAID tag. And the model prices players, not leverage: it cannot see a holdout, a franchise tag, or a team with no cap room.

Coverage

2,603 NFL players carry an Est. Value, refreshed with the roster and contract data. It is the same engine Be a GM uses when you extend a player, so the number you negotiate against in the sim is the number on the profile page.

Where to see it

• Any NFL player profile page - the Cap tab, next to what he is paid
• Team Roster & Cap pages - a sortable Worth column for every roster
• The NFL players board - MODEL / WORTH / PAID on every card
• Be a GM - extension offers are priced by this engine

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