Under the new CBA announced last August, there were two changes which impacted the 2025 incoming rookie class for the NWSL. First, the collegiate draft was eliminated, and, second, all contracts became guaranteed. The latter impacts the rookie class because instead of signing  shorter, non-guaranteed contracts — which would allow teams to waive said players any time ahead of the October roster freeze — a large chunk of the rookies have been signed to short-term contracts. 

Of the 56 players drafted in 2024, 25% of the players drafted didn’t end up signing with the NWSL team that drafted them. Another quarter of the draftees were signed to contracts of at least three years, while the largest percentage of draftees were signed to a one year contract with an option year for 2025.

Comparatively, in 2025 there have been 37 players signed for at least a full season, with an additional 16 signed to short-term contracts. The 16 rookie short-term contracts went to 11 teams across the league with Gotham, Kansas City, and Orlando being the only teams without one. Washington has the most with three. 

One of the biggest shifts when you look at length of contract between 2024 and 2025 is the shift inside of the shorter contracts between one year with options and just the singular one year contract. If you take the 1 year contracts out of the picture, 2025’s distribution of contract length looks very gaussian compared to the randomness of the 2024 distribution. 

If you look at when the rookies were signed, more than half of the rookies were signed in the month of January, which is a shift left compared to 2024 where the draft occurred on January 12th and then almost all of the rookie signings occurred in the late-February to mid-March window.

There isn’t any consistent correlation between players signing early and having longer contracts, although the first 12 players to get under contract were on the multi-year side of contract lengths. Portland’s Caiya Hanks’s late 4+1 year contract ahead of the season start really bucked a potential trend of having longer contracts earlier in the offseason.