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A missing element of this discussion is that historically you didn't have free agents. Players played someplace for some sort of team or didn't play again. Teams didn't negotiate deals with players but purchased player contracts from other teams.
What changed when teams began to make more money was the advent of bonus babies, who did sometimes score big bucks in the form of signing bonuses. That was regulated by the advent of the draft.
If you are bringing new historical players into the league as free agents, you've created a situation that is not historical, and one that the financial model doesn't try to account for, unless you consider them to be bonus babies. But the AI doesn't know to bid for them like that.
OTOH, when players come into the league directly into teams, they get standard salaries automatically. Any FA money in your team budget is meaningless.
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