Position Contract Value vs TPE
S25 Edition
S25 Edition
Way back when I still mattered in this league I published two articles comparing Contract Values to TPE of players. They can be found here (S20 Edition) and here (S21 Edition). S20 Edition is data entering S20. S21 Edition is data entering S21. For both Parts Contract Value and TPE totals were taken the Sunday before Week 1 of each season. I had plans to continue the series each season and had started working on S22 Edition entering S22. Then life hit hard. I got caught up in a moving process for work that distracted me and kept me from publishing the S22 Edition. After the move, I found myself without reliable cell service or internet for multiple months and I stepped down from all league responsibilities I had at the time. Fortunately, I had gathered all my data for S22 Edition before being distracted and disconnected from the world and I still have it, or so I am assuming it is the data that was to be used for S22 Edition. I could be wrong, but considering S22 was the first season for Sarasota and Honolulu and there are numbers for 12 QBs and 12 Kickers in the data I am going forth assuming it is pure untarnished data.
So here I am finally with a 3rd edition, except that the data is now 4 seasons old and unless you are a nerd like @speculadora or @infinitempg you probably don’t care about Contract and TPE data from 4 seasons ago. So I am actually here to present to everyone the Contract and TPE data of S25 in comparison to the data from S20, S21 & S22. Get excited!
So before we get jumping into all the good stuff let us just take a moment to remember what was occurring in S20-S22 and how the league has changed since then. The rule banning Safeties from playing at Linebacker passed on January 14th, 2020, and would be implemented the next offseason for S21. S20 Edition was posted on January 21st, just as S20 started. In February, just shy of the one year anniversary of the historic S15 class that saved the league, the S22 class happened, a class that is twice as big as the S15 class. Thanks to the S22 class the league expanded, the announcement occurred March 22nd, and Week 1 of S22 occurred April 27th. The League has now just expanded for the second time in a single year. So a reminder that S20 and S21 the League had 10 teams. For S22 the League had 12 teams. Add another two teams for S25.
All data is ISFL related only. No DSFL players or contracts, including send downs, were included. All TPE values are from Sunday the 4th. Free Agents are not included either.
To begin I want to look at a comparison of S25 and S22 Contract Averages vs TPE in which the Contract Values are an average of the contract value of all players who are of the same TPE Tier. TPE Tiers are exactly what they are, players grouped based on contract minimums. Example all QBs of 1000+ TPE are grouped together and their contracts for S25 averaged together, vs players of another position group at the same TPE or other QBs at 800 - 999 TPE etc.
When I did S20 Edition I didn’t have any other season data to compare S20 to, but in S21 Edition I did and showed a similar graph comparing the Averages of S20 to S21. Now I have four seasons worth of data that I could compare in multiple ways. Maybe I display the data for all four seasons together. Maybe I average the data for S20, S21, and S22 together and compare that to S25 since there is a four-season gap in between them. Maybe I display a comparison of all the other comparisons I could have done in comparison to each other. For several reasons that I’d be willing to answer in comments if anyone actually cares I chose none of those and stuck with just comparing the data from S22 to that of S25.
The main reason is that the data of both seasons represents the reflective event horizon for player contracts before an expansion occurred. As the number of teams increases, the more players are needed to fill all required positions. If the influx of players for this demand is not met, then players gain additional leverage in their contract negotiations because they become rarer. Or the League may over meet the required player needs and GMs gain an advantage to keep offering minimum contracts because players are too common. Supply and demand.
Additionally, the data for S22 and S25 is before the first true expansion offseason. Sure expansion GMs can still target and sign FAs before the start of their inaugural season, but GMs and Players may not have a full grasp of how the supply and demand of players have actually changed with expansion. As such FA contracts signed in S22 and S25 may still reflect the supply and demand forces occurring before expansion. Especially since many players sign multi-season contracts, the true changes in the supply and demand forces may not be felt for another 2 seasons. Thus S22, despite including the data for Sarasota and Honolulu, should still be indicative of the supply and demand before expanding to 12 teams, and the S25 data should be more reflective of how supply and demand of players have changed since the S22 expansion and not actually reflect how supply and demand have/will change with adding New York and Berlin.
All of that said, major differences in positional TPE averages could still be the simple season to season noise than an actual indication of how supply and demand have changed with expansion, and of course, the continued addition of new players could have met the added need and supply and demand hasn’t changed at all. Another hindrance to supply and demand is that there is a strong culture of taking minimums for the betterment of the team. Hopefully looking at a large number of graphs comparing the data we will get a consensus of how the market has moved, if at all.
On to our first graph!
Graph 1
Wow!! Is that a messy cluster of lines or what! How are we supposed to determine anything from this graph? Who made it? Fire them! Yeah, it is pretty messing and pretty hard to read, and honestly, we probably shouldn’t try to determine too much from ONLY this graph. Remember the Contract Values are averages. Example in S25 there are currently 3 TEs between 800-999 TPE. They are making an average of $3.5M. In back in S22 there was only 1 TE between 800-999 TPE and he was paid $6M that season. It is possible that our 3 S25 TEs at that TPE Tier are individually making $6M, $3M, and $1.5M and averaging to $3.5M. Observing that there are now 5x as many TEs in S25 at or above 800 TPE compared to S22, it should be no surprise that the Average TE value has decreased. In fact of the 5 TEs above 800 TPE only two are making more than $3M this season and none over $5M (Austin McCormick’s minimum). I would say that the TE position is an outlier given only 1 TE in S22 was at 800+ TPE, but almost every Position and TPE Tier is showing a decrease in average contract value from S22 to S25. This is only one graph and we need to look at further graphs before making that conclusion.
Graph 2
We are now gonna view position specific graphs for Average Contract Value, but instead of only S22 and S25, I included S21 and S20 data. For each of these graphs, S20 is blue, S21 is red, S22 is gold and S25 is green. S20 and S21 have larger dots because they are layered behind S22 and S25, having the larger dots allow us to see them when data overlaps.
QB. Given every team needs one QB and only one QB I would expect the average across the seasons to remain fairly constant despite any changes in Supply and Demand Forces after expansion events. This would be the same for Kickers.
And for the most part, we do see the averages of all four seasons remain roughly the same. There is some deviation in the lower tiers, but almost every season the highest tier, >1000 TPE, converges at a $5M average; of course, that is the minimum for the TPE level. The only season with a significant deviation is S25 at the 400-599 tier. A quick conclusion would be that teams no longer take care of their young QBs, that teams are no longer ensuring the QB has enough money for the necessary T6 equipment as teams used to do. On deeper inspection, there is only one QB in S25 at that TPE tier, New York’s Sam Howitzer. The User behind the Player is league vet Trautner who currently has $23M in his bank account, which I’m willing to guess is about $15M less than it was just a couple weeks ago before he purchased T6 equipment. So Trautner has enough money to take care of his player’s TPE earnings without needing a high $$ contract unlike many young QBs back in S20-S22 did.
The other thing to note in this graph is the gap in the S21 data between the 400-599 tpe tier and 800-999 tpe tier. That is because there were no QBs beginning that season in that tier. Expect to see the same kind of gaps for other positions, like no TEs in S22 over 1000 TPE as previously mentioned.
Can we collectively stop for a second and acknowledge just how good the overall QB play was in S21? That season 7 out of 10 QBs started the season over 1000 TPE. I know QBR isn’t the best metric and has its flaws, but I’m using it for this. The first and only time in league history two QBs finished with a QBR over 100 was S21 (Havran and Armstrong). You have to go back to S16 (Showbiz) for the last time a QB finished with a QBR over 100. Leading up to S21, S20 had only one QB finish over 90 QBR (Cue - 91.5). In the seasons after, S22 had 8 QBs finish below 80 QBR and 88 was the highest QBR in S23.
I am also providing the number of players that played in each season for the position. Looking at the number of QBs playing, no surprise at all. Exactly one QB for each team.
Number of QBs by Season
S20: 10
S21: 10
S22: 12
S25: 14
Graph 3
RBs. Wow, look at that consistency. Looking back at Editions S20 and S21 there was only one RB over 1000 TPE in S20 and he was on his last season of a $2M/season contract. I think the number of RBs playing in S25 vs S22 is indicative of the lag in the supply and demand forces adjusting to expansion. Of course, I don't have data for the number of RBs playing in S23 and S24 to confirm or deny that. I could probably cess that out from the index, but I didn't. The number of RBs dropped from S20 to S21, but moved back up in S22 with expansion. With 4 more RBs playing in S22 than in S20, as would be expected if you added two more teams that use two RBs each. Except that with S25 expansion we only added 2 more RBs?
Do other positions have a larger increase in the number of players from S21 to S22 compared to S22 to S25?
Number of RBs by Season
S20: 22
S21: 19
S22: 26
S25: 28
Graph 4
WRs. And almost no consistency here. Looking at my data S22 only employed 2 more WRs than S20, while S25 has 11 more WRs than S22. Which is the opposite of how RB numbers changed with expansion each time. Which maybe should be expected. If the number of RBs increase then WR numbers probably stay the same or decrease and vice versa. However, the WR market may already have been oversaturated since the Contract Average for S25 WRs at 600 and 800 TPE tiers are lower than past seasons. With this large increase in WRs we could see contract averages drop more come next season.
Number of WRs by Season
S20: 31
S21: 29
S22: 33
S25: 44
Graph 5
TEs. What happened in S22?! Oh yeah, I already mentioned this previously. There was only one TE over 800 TPE that season. Now in S25 there are 5 TEs over 800 tpe, another 5 over 600 TPE, and a whopping 10 between 200 and 400 TPE. The market has stabilized as the distribution of TEs has spread throughout the various TPE tiers. The lack of top tier TEs in S22 should also explain why lower tier TEs earned so much that season too. If you are a team lacking a top TE, you want to heavily invest in the next class of TEs to fill the vacancy.
What the large spike from S22 overshadows is that TE is the first position that S25 players are actually making more than their predecessors (TPE tiers 600 and 1000), but it isn't by much. Through four positions S25 players are currently averaging less at every TPE level than past players.
S22 employed 5 more TEs than S21 and S20, and S25 has 7 more TEs than S22 did. What? Each time the league adds two teams we have a ~62% increase in the number of TEs playing? How does that work? Both times 60% is double or triple the percent increase of almost every other position group. The only position group that this dramatic increase doesn't beat is OL.
Number of TEs by Season
S20: 8
S21: 8
S22: 13
S25: 21
Graph 6.
Fair Rubs!!! Is that still a thing? Well, look at that. When I published S20 Edition Offensive Linemen were just beginning to work their way onto the scene proving that some users really do like to play the position in our league. There is still a long way to go, but the position group has grown from only 3 members in S21 to now 21 members. That averages to 1 and half linemen per team in S25. The jump from 9 in S22 to 21 in S25 is the highest percent increase of any position except TEs. As far as the average pay, the current season appears to be on par in comparison to other positions, either at or below previous seasons.
Number of OLs by Season
S20: 5
S21: 3
S22: 9
S25: 21
Let's take a short intervention. We've gone through the data for Offense Positions, a total of 5 positions out of 11 total. So far S25 Contracts are the lowest or tied for the lowest average in 10 categories (by TPE and Position: 400-599 QBS, 600-799 QBs, 200-399 RBs, 600-799 RBs, 800-999 RBs, 200-399 WRs, 600-799 WRs, 800-999 WRs, 800-999 TEs, 200-399 OLs). Comparison, S25 Contracts are the highest or tied for the highest average in only 5 categories (by TPE and Position: >1000 QBs, 400-599 TEs, 600-799 TEs, >1000 TEs, >1000 OLs). I did not include S25 800-999 OLs in either list as they are both the highest and lowest average for that category.
So far it seems players in S25 are being paid less. Let's check the defense positions, maybe GMs are just valuing defense players more than offense players now.
Graph 7.
DTs. Doesn't look like defense is getting more money either. The average contract value beyond 400 TPE has decreased since S22 until you hit 800 TPE. It is interesting the S25 averages follow S20 averages almost identically until you hit the upper TPE tiers. DTs of >1000 TPE are averaging $1M less than in S20, and is another category to add to the lowest paid list. Appears the number of DTs playing followed the RB trend, a jump in number with the S22 expansion, but a smaller jump with S25. Maybe we will see DTs and DEs have opposite changes like RBs and WRs did.
Number of DTs by Season
S20: 17
S21: 20
S22: 25
S25: 26
Graph 8.
DEs. DE number did not have an opposite correlative change with each expansion in comparison to the change in DT number. Instead, DE number increased by 5 and 6 for both expansions. Turning attention to the graph, historically the league has struggled with a lack of top tier DE talent. DT has also been lacking top tier talent, but in the DT graph, we are only missing 1 TPE tier from 1 season. In this DE graph, we have 3 seasons missing 1-3 tiers each. Four seasons of data and only one season isn’t missing a tier above 400, good job S25 DEs! Unfortunately, you still have some of the lowest averages compared to past seasons at the 200-399 and 400-599 tiers.
Number of DEs by Season
S20: 21
S21: 20
S22: 26
S25: 31
Graph 9
LBs. Another position that had struggled to maintain top tier talent, it has clearly improved over the seasons as now there are no LBs in the league below 200 TPE and the gaps at the top have been filled in. The Contract Average for LBs this season is also showing a lack of pay. In all tiers from 200 tpe up S25 LBs are making 0.5M to 1.5M less than the highest average from past seasons. S25 tallies another category (>1000 LBs) in the lowest average list while still not tallying any for the highest average list.
Number of LBs by Season
S20: 22
S21: 25
S22: 31
S25: 39
Graph 10
CBs. Finally, we find a position that is actually making more money in S25 than in past seasons, even if it is only for one TPE tier. Congrats to all 8 CBs between 600 and 799 TPE, you are averaging more money than your predecessors. As they probably should since the number of CBs in the league is only 2 more than in S22. Unfortunately, this small victory is outweighed by CBs at 200-399 tpe, and >1000 tpe making less than in previous seasons.
Number of CBs by Season
S20: 28
S21: 27
S22: 33
S25: 35
Graph 11
Ss And another position making less than they were in previous seasons. After just four years the highest paid position in the league has dropped to below minimums.
Number of Ss by Season
S20: 33
S21: 21
S22: 27
S25: 37
Graph 12
Ks Wow!! Would you look at that difference between now compared to then. We actually have kickers above 800 TPE playing!!
Number of KPs by Season
S20: 10
S21: 10
S22: 12
S25: 14
That's the last graph I have. What was speculated to be true at the beginning in Graph 1 ended up being an accurate observation. S25 on average is being paid less than players were back in S20-S22. Why might that be? Honestly, I'm not sure. Maybe I'm missing something from being IA for a couple of seasons. I can tell you this though, the number of players per team in S25 is exactly only one player more than it was in S20 and S22. Granted that number doesn't include the number of DSFL players a team has, only players actually playing at the ISFL level. So maybe ISFL players' contracts are averaging less because teams are putting more money into their DSFL players. Or maybe the supply and demand has shifted, and there are now too many players in the league for the number of teams we have and we actually need to expand again for the third time in one year.
Then perhaps another thing to consider with possible future expansions is that players now have better longevity. In @White Cornerback recent media List of all time ISFL/NSFL peak tpe leaders, using S15 class as the dividing line as it was the first class since the league creation to push the consideration of another expansion, there are 12 players in the leader list created pre S15 and 13 players in the leader listed created S15 or after. That may not sound like much a difference, but consider that: 1) S19 won't hit their TPE peak until the end of this season and dermot listed 5 of those players to watch; 2) it is 12 players before S15 spread across 7 draft classes, not counting the other 7 classes not represented in the leader list, so really 12 players from 14 draft classes vs 13 players from only 4 draft classes. Conclusion not only are classes bigger than previously, but players are gaining more tpe consistently, which translates to longer careers than previously.
In the end most of the conclusion is just an old hermit making wild conspiracy claims, as this was made solely to help me buy T6 equipment to keep Green alive three more seasons. AMA