To be fair nobody knows what players are on, the media does there best but their numbers are often sensationalised either for clicks or because its based on info from agents/club officials with agendas.
Not to mention a crudely quoted number may not factor front/back loading, incentive structure, long serving or marquee player allowances, car allowances and of course TPAs.
We all speculate, discuss and squabble over numbers but ultimately its a fools errand.
Also whilst I'm pontificating...
There is not a club in the league who has all their players playing to their contract value.
Not one.
By the nature of multi year contracts, supply and demand of a market and development, regression and form of players perceived value will always be fluid.
The closest you will get is when a player signs their deal but often that is market driven and not representative of on field worth (Dylan Brown anyone?).
The game is two fold. One, signing players under their value through savvy recruitment or two, through coaching and development to extra extra value out of signed players.
So a player like Jake, signed at proper value but now due to contract length and backending representing bad value.
Moving on is not viable, so the club needs to work on two things for FY26.
One counterbalancing Jakes poor FY26 contract with good ones...that is where youth and veterans comes to the fore needing players like Navale, Laifai, Hart, Walsh, Zaidas to step up and signings like TKO over playing their contract value.
And two, extracting the most we can, and that is where we can look at minutes, gameplan and physical conditioning. We wont get 2018 Jake but we could extract better value.