Depends how you define top heavy.
Which is more top heavy?
6 players taking up 40 mill, or 10 players taking up 55 mill?
We have 10 players taking up $44M so I'd say we are far less top heavy than either of your I presume rhetorical examples. I define top heavy as a disproportionate percentage of your payroll or cap being earmarked for a fraction of your roster. 10-20% of your players taking up 30-40% or more of your financial resources which are to a large extent limited under a relatively hard cap.
My point is we HAVE TO BE top heavy, because we are "bottom light". That is we have numerous players who produce above their cap # in their rookie contract. Other teams are paying more money to fill those roles. Everyone has the same middle class. By definition, we would be spending more on the higher end.
No that is really convoluted thinking. Other teams pay the same for their rookie contract players by and large unless they are consistently stuck with top picks (which is another whole problem). Some rely more heavily on them to fill out the roster than we do. Some pick better and therefore get more value but that is in hindlight and we are not the only team whose rookies outproduce their rookie contracts by a longshot.
Indy is one example of a team who is far more reliant on rookies playing (well or otherwise) because they cannot spend routinely on mid level or aging FA (who often provide an immediate upgrade over draftees) to build a blended middle class or higher functioning depth because their top heavy payroll will not accommodate it. So they have to try to grow and are forced to rely on their own drafted middle class, and often lose them just as they are rounding into better form. It happens to other low revenue teams as well, just Indy exacerbates it by being top heavy on the offensive side of the ball as a philosophical approach of choice to competing against and beating higher revenue teams.
When we lose a player it is generally because either we would not overpay them on principle even knowing someone else would, or because their level of play was not worth even fair market to this team. When Indy loses a player it's because they chose not to overpay him because they can not afford to overpay them all, or because they couldn't even afford to pay them fair market because they have paid too many others so much more than market to stay.
How it materializes here isnt in paying one or two guys a boatload of money, but by paying MORE players in the upper echelon.
We do not pay our upper echelon players - and I define that as our core players who would be welcome on most any team (Brady, Seymour, Colvin, Vrabel, Tedy, Rodney) more, we actually pay 5 of the 6 far less than market value relative to their performance and position). Good LB's average $4M. Only one of ours makes slightly above $4M average. Rodney was quick to point out last season that he wasn't even in the top 20 salaried safeties. Brady is the fourth or fifth ranked QB by contract AAV and he lags behind the top dogs by $3-4M per season or about 20% less.
I would bet a lot of money that if yuo cut off "upper echelon" at say 2-2.5 mill cap numbers, the Pats would have more of those than any team. That is what I meant by top heavy.
That isn't top heavy, that's having better quality across the board because you aren't top heavy. Your talking us having more players making league starter average as a bad thing, I think Belioli calls that a team based roster philosophy. We have 11 players in your upper echelon. Cut off "upper echelon" at $3M+ and we only have 6. Cut it off at $4M+ and we have only 3. Remember, KC has at least 6 of those and likely lots more.
By the way, Ted Johnson, Antowain Smith, Donald Hayes are examples of being overpaid.
McGinest and Law were overpaid from the contracts BB inherited, but he decided to continue overpaying them.
