When you have a ton of space, you absolutely must overpay on a bunch of guys to reach minimal thresholds. You are forced to go on a shopping spree of other team’s players, and the available groceries aren’t always up to par.
It also means you’re a bad team so a lot of the big names you may have wanted don’t want to sign with you.
It’s a cycle.
The same stair analogy could be applied to the opposite end of the spectrum by the way, blaming an accounting system for bad football decisions.