I also think fans pretend like these decisions are made with every guy on the roster. That if you pay 10% more for every player than you wanted to, you'll end up broke. I don't see that. I'm pretty sure when discussing the latest CBA, people had stats that like over 60% of your roster was made up of guys on rookie or UDFA deals, meaning they're already largely at pre-determined slots.
the other thing about this is that if the salary cap gets squeezed it still wont change anything for the upper and lower class of the NFL players - the elite talent will still get the contracts because they're still valuable and worth it - and the bottom guys will still be on the minimum
but the so-called NFL middle-class would get squeezed and maybe you see that 60% of guys on rookie, udfa and minimum deals turn into 80%