Yup. Basically, there's a pipe dream scenario where you are so perfect as a FO that every player on your team provides production that exceeds how much you're paying them. This can be anything from getting every draft pick right to always precisely valuing free agents. But because this standard is impossible, there are always going to be contracts that are more expensive than the player is worth. This forces the expenditure of additional resources to make up the production and field a good football team, while also (usually) moving on from the overvalued player and suffering some kind of dead money hit.
Every team has to deal with some of this. The better ones are able to keep it minimized and balanced so there's always a small dead money hit, but never one that forces their hand on players they'd rather keep. The worst end up on the opposite end of that. But once a cap hit is on your books, it's is like matter in the universe: you can never create or destroy it. You can only make it take a new form.