Totally agree with this. I think teams want to pay a price for player value, and control is too hard to price out. Should 4 years of a player be 4x the price of 1 year of the player? Logically that seems close, maybe you get a discount for taking more of the salary.
But realistically no team can wipe out its farm for a single player. That's where the "x amount of control from 5 players for 4 years" does start to make sense.
That said, unleashing robert is timing a market right, all the teams competing would starve for a guy like that.