Also, if you are close follower of NFL football, you will know how quickly things can change. In some of our longer running leagues, teams that had Andrew Luck under long term contracts ended up with a lot of "dead cap space". In my view a top 10 QB is worth of a 7 year contract and no one else. Young blue chippers at other positions might get a 4-6 year contract. You are also able to offer long term contracts (>=5 year) to up to two players each season. You may want to stagger which good players come up for new contracts so you don't have 4 pro bowlers needing new contracts in one year. In that case, it would be hard to hold on to all of them.