Every player on your roster is on a contract: a salary, a number of years, a structure, and a guarantee. Together those four things decide what the player costs you now, what he'll cost you later, and what it costs to walk away.
Years and the minimum salary
Contracts run from one year up to your league's maximum contract length. Longer deals lock in today's price (plus annual escalation) but carry more dead-cap risk if the player busts. The league minimum salary defaults to 1% of the cap, so even end-of-bench players cost something real.
Structures: flat, frontload, backload
A flat contract costs the same every year. A frontloaded contract costs more early and less late: painful now, cheap later, and easier to move or cut near the end. A backloaded contract is the opposite: cheap now, expensive later. Backloading is how contenders squeeze one more star into this year's cap, and how future-you inherits a problem.
Guarantees
Your league's guarantee structure decides how much of a contract survives as dead cap when a player is cut. Fully guaranteed leagues make every signing a real commitment; non-guaranteed leagues let you churn rosters freely; partial guarantees (25%, 50%, or 75%, with 50% the default when partial is selected) sit in between. Check your league's setting before you hand out a long deal: it changes what "risky" means.
How re-sign prices are calculated
When you re-sign or extend one of your own players, Capr sets the price rather than leaving it to a negotiation. The price is the player's CAPR Price in your league: the same number the CAPR Market shows, computed from your cap, your lineup and your scoring. Re-signing your own player and signing someone else's therefore quote the same market, which is the point.
The league minimum salary is the floor, so nobody is kept for nothing. There is no ceiling. A genuinely elite player can be quoted at whatever share of your cap the market says he is worth, and what stops you keeping him is your cap space rather than a rule.
When there is no CAPR Price
CAPR Prices are built for quarterbacks, running backs, receivers and tight ends. A kicker, a defense, or a player who has just arrived and isn't in the board yet has no price to quote, so the re-sign price falls back to Capr's own valuation of him, built from four factors:
The fallback valuation, and what each factor contributes to it
- Weighted points per game
- Default 28%
- Production, weighted toward the most recent seasons.
- Positional finish
- Default 29%
- Where the player ranked among players at his position.
- Dynasty market value
- Default 28%
- Log-scaled against the 95th-percentile player, so one superstar can't stretch the scale.
- Age curve
- Default 15%
- Where the player sits on his position's aging curve.
That blend is then adjusted twice: down for a player who misses games, and down again when neither production nor market data exists to price him on. The same four factors are shown as a breakdown on a player's card, where they explain how Capr reads him. For a quarterback, back, receiver or tight end they are commentary on the number rather than the arithmetic behind it, because his CAPR Price is the price.
Limits on keeping your own players
Three separate limits can apply, and all are unlimited by default. A per-team limit caps how many players you may re-sign in one offseason, and a second caps how many you may extend. A per-player retention limit (one, two, or unlimited) caps how many times you may keep the same player at formula prices, and re-signs and extensions draw on one shared budget: extending a player and later re-signing him spends it twice.
Winning a player back in the free agent auction resets his count. The limit is therefore a tax on holding one player forever rather than a hard ceiling: you can keep him, you just have to pay the market for him.
Rookie contracts
Drafted rookies sign cost-controlled deals, 3 years by default, priced by your league's rookie pay scale, with early picks costing more than late ones. The scale is set against the cap of the season the class plays in, so if your cap escalates, the class drafted this offseason is priced on next season's number, the same one your cap holds reserved for it. Cheap rookie deals are the biggest value engine in Capr, exactly like the real NFL.