If you want to save some money re-signing players wait until the off-season and the "Re-Sign Players" comes up on the schedule. During this time, you may edit the players to a different position. This lowers their overall rating while at that position. This allows you to re-sign such players to much, much cheaper deals (like 33¢ tinned meats that have Red Tide disease ... it's so cheap).

You can now move these players back into their original places and their rating will go back to normal. The contracts in the game are ridiculous, so you can use this trick to make more realistic deals (yeah right -IGN eds.) or just sign everyone to the minimum.