The three charges, side by side

Surrender the round he was drafted in, and the oldest charge prices a keeper against his draft position: a seventh-round flier costs a seventh-round pick, a first-round star costs a first-rounder. The arithmetic rewards the manager who found Priest Holmes in 2001 sitting in the ninth round of a redraft and held him through a season that made that pick price absurd. A league running pick-cost rules becomes a drafting league. The competitive edge sits at the draft table, in the rounds nobody else is watching.

An escalating salary works differently. Under most escalator systems, a player costs a fixed fee in year one and steps up — often by a defined dollar amount or a round — for every season he is held. The escalator makes timing the central skill: managers who enter and exit at the right moment win the arbitrage, and a running back held one season too long turns from an asset into a liability. The short career arc of an NFL running back — three years is a commonly cited average — is why the escalator hits that position hardest. Buy high on a receiver; sell a running back before the clock runs out.

A fixed contract with a term — two years, three years, a salary agreed in advance — shifts everything toward planning. The manager commits to a dollar figure and a duration before seeing how the player develops. The upside is certainty; the downside arrives when a scoring change or a PPR rule reprices the whole position after the ink is dry. Contract leagues reward the manager who reads the constitution carefully, because a rule nobody noticed drafted years ago is the one that breaks the roster.

The three systems are not interchangeable. Pick cost punishes holding a star too long by spending a premium pick. The escalator punishes holding any player too long by making him expensive. A fixed contract punishes commitment to a player who stops producing before the term expires. Same thirty-two NFL teams, same eighteen weeks, three entirely different arguments — and three different rosters at the end of September.