The open market names a price for every free agent. It is usually higher than his value, and that gap is the whole game.
Free agency is the one market where cost most often exceeds value, because the open market prices the scarce available players at a premium and the best players rarely reach it. So the engine applies the surplus discipline hardest here, it prices each target's on-field value against the market cost he will command, flags the negative-surplus signing that pays premium money for replaceable production, and favors the value pockets the market underweights. And it reads the contract structure as the true cost, because the cap hit and the dead-money risk, not the headline number, are what a signing actually costs.
The best players never reach it. The premium is the default.
Free agency is where cost most often exceeds value. The open market prices the scarce available players at a premium, and the best players rarely reach it, so what reaches free agency is the players other teams chose not to keep, priced by a market that pays for scarcity, need, and name.
This is the price-is-not-value doctrine pointed at the market that most reliably breaks it, the same discipline that finds the rookie-scale surplus and the cross-level value find, turned on the open market. The engine does not say do not sign, it says what the signing is worth against what it costs. The market names the price, the engine names the value, and the gap is the decision.
Illustrative on the real free-agency market dynamic (the best retained before the market, the available priced at a premium, the surplus discipline applied hardest, price-is-not-value on the open market). Composite market, demonstration figures.
Pay for what sustains, not for the career year.
A free agent's on-field value is his OVERALL KR read through his positional value, in win-equivalent terms, next-season projected and independent of what he is paid. His cost is the cap hit the bidding market sets. Surplus is the gap, and the engine does three things the market forgets.
On-field value is read through positional value, a position-relative grade converted to win-equivalents before pricing, so the engine will not let a team pay premium-quarterback money for an elite interior lineman. The same free agent is a different value to different teams, priced into each team's cap position, need, contention window, and scheme fit. Buy the surplus, not the name, at the value-to-team price, never a market-wide one.
Illustrative on the real free-agency surplus discipline (the on-field-value-against-market-cost surplus, the three disciplines, the negative-surplus flag, the value-to-team pricing). Composite players, demonstration figures.
The cap hit, not the cash, and the dead money it leaves behind.
A free-agent signing is not a fee, it is a negotiated, guaranteed-money contract, and its real cost is the cap hit across the years, not the headline total or the cash. The cap hit is almost never the cash in a given year, because signing-bonus proration and backloaded base salaries decouple the two.
The engine reads the cap hit across every year, so the structure's downside is priced at signing rather than discovered at the cut. Read the cap hit, price the guarantee, and know the dead money before you sign.
Illustrative on the real contract-structure layer (the cap hit as base plus prorated bonus not cash, the limited-guarantee structure, the void-year and dead-money risk, the true cost as the structure). Composite contract, structure current-as-of, scale numbers held in the Pro Cap Reference (v0).
Every market in the sport tempts a team to treat the price as the value, and free agency tempts hardest, because the open market prices the scarce available players at a premium and the best players never reach it, so the pull to overpay for a name or a need is strongest exactly where the surplus is thinnest. The engine answers with the same discipline it runs everywhere, pointed at the market that most reliably breaks it: it prices each free agent's on-field value, read through his positional value into win-equivalent terms, against the market cost he will command, and it names the gap. It pays for sustainable traits over a contract-year spike, it holds the positional-value line so an elite interior lineman is not paid like an elite passer, it hunts the value pockets the market underweights, and it flags the negative-surplus signing that pays premium money for replaceable production. Then it refuses to let the headline number stand in for the cost, reading the contract structure as the true cost, the cap hit across the years rather than the cash, the guarantees, the void-year proration, and the dead money a bad deal leaves behind. The market will always name a price, the engine names the value and the true cost, and the space between them is the only thing worth signing on. Buy the surplus, price the structure, and remember on the open market what every team forgets there.
Price the value, not the market. Read the structure, not the number.
Free Agency Intelligence prices each target's on-field value against the market cost, flags the negative-surplus overpay, hunts the value pockets, and reads the contract structure as the true cost, so a team signs on the surplus and the real cost, not the market buzz.