No need to pay, you can manage multiple teams under your annual subscription.
You can sign up to 2 star veterans to contracts 5+ year contracts. In addition you can sign all of your rookies to contracts of any length. Only players that have “no contact” next to their name can be signed. Be careful signing contracts to save salary points for free agency which will begin on a few weeks. Those with a number of years remaining are fine. Only release players you are sure have no place on your team. That’s it for now. There are videos in the help menu that show the mechanics.