Question 1

Are these real salaries?

Accepted Answer

It depends on the league, which is why the two are separate boards. For basketball, 463 players carry reported figures from Balladex's contract dataset and the rest are modeled from the CBA's structure, labeled as estimates. For football, 54 of the league's best-documented deals carry their published figure and everything else is modeled from the slotted rookie scale, fifth-year options and veteran minimums. A modeled football salary measures roughly 1.8x off per player, which is why the published ones are used wherever they exist: the model prices a veteran off his draft slot, so a young star who signed a large extension would otherwise still be carried on his rookie deal and read as a steal.

Question 2

What does the verdict mean?

Accepted Answer

It compares a player's salary to what his projected production is worth on his own position's market. A steal earns far more value than it costs; an albatross is the reverse. Because the football salaries are modeled rather than reported, those verdicts inherit the modeling error and can invert — a highly paid star can read as a bargain. The position rank beside each verdict is the sounder number.

Question 3

Does every player have a contract here?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Players with no recorded game still carry one, because a slotted rookie deal is fixed by the CBA before a first snap. What they do not carry is a position rank or a grade, because there is no production to measure — those are left blank rather than filled with a middling guess.

League	Players	Teams	Salary figures	As of
NBA contracts	627	30	463 reported, 164 modeled	2026-27
NFL contracts	1922	32	54 reported, 1868 modeled	2026-27

Contracts