GO BIG or get left behind.

That's the view of Essendon coach Brad Scott, who says the Bombers will continue to be ultra-aggressive with major offers for rival stars.

After the Trade Period last year, Essendon tabled a $10 million, seven-year offer to Hawthorn's rising star Josh Weddle ahead of his contract year in what would have been the biggest deal in red and black history.

As AFL.com.au reported earlier this month, Weddle will stay at Hawthorn, with a lucrative four-year extension imminent, but the Bombers coach said the club won't be deterred when asked if there would be more mega offers pitched at rivals.

"Yep, but everyone will be doing the same thing. It started well before us and it's a paradigm shift," Scott told AFL.com.au.

There were 58 players in the competition last year paid more than $1 million, in a record tally that more than doubled the 2024 group of million-dollar players, showing the new money in the competition.

With Tasmania set to enter the AFL at the end of 2027, the market will be inflated again, with Scott saying head-turning offers were part of the sell. 

"Wherever you sit in the argument of equalisation, academies, father-sons, and everyone's got a different opinion, and usually that opinion is informed by the position they sit in," he said.

"My position is when we've got a father-son and an Academy player, I think they're great rules. But when we don't, I think they're terrible. Clubs and coaches and list management teams are looking purely at what's right for them. 

"But what I can say pretty confidently is that when you have a top end of the draft so heavily compromised, for clubs to attract top end talent it's trading and free agency. 

"And how do you attract them? Usually, it's with very compelling offers. So, it's not surprising to me that's the way the competition's going. There certainly is an element of if you if you don't want to play that game, then you'll just get left behind."

The Bombers last year were among the clubs that pursued West Coast young gun Harley Reid before he signed an extension with the Eagles, while they met with St Kilda midfielder Marcus Windhager and ex-Gold Coast and new Saint Sam Flanders while they made their contract calls. 

The Bombers have prioritised youth in the past two years, selecting 10 players as national draftees, but know their on-field performance will be the catalyst to being a destination club.

"You've got to be a club that shows players it's an attractive destination so that's certainly going to be the challenge for us in the short term," he said.

"We can see it internally. I know the capability of a lot of our young players. But the best thing we can do to help our list management team is to show some signs on field that this is an attractive place to be, not just now but into the future."

Star free agents Zak Butters, Zac Bailey and Ben King are all among the players already on the Bombers' radar. 

"Yeah, they'd all be welcome here. I suspect it'll be a fairly competitive market," Scott said.

The Bombers' draft-led build has come during an influx of Academy players being off-limits, with the AFL set to introduce tougher bidding rules this year to match deals.

Scott, who heads into his fourth year as Essendon coach in 2026, said the draft as the game's biggest equalisation plank had become weakened.    

"It should be by definition that the clubs that finished down the bottom get access to the best talent, but that hasn't happened over the last period of time," Scott said. 

"You've got premiers and top-four teams acquiring top two, three, four talent in multiple years. When you stack really early high-end draftees into really good teams, it makes the really good teams better. 

"When you take bottom teams and get a very early draft pick, it doesn't move the needle much in the short-term. It might in the long-term, but in the short-term it doesn't change much.

"It's why you end up seeing this situation where the strong stay strong, if not getting stronger, and the others getting not necessarily shut out of the draft [but compromised].

"If you just look broadly at the competition, and I'm not in charge of making these decisions, but when you've got a premier and a top-six team in Queensland acquiring five of the top 20 in the draft, that's why clubs get somewhat frustrated." 

Subscribe to the Your Coach podcast series to listen to Brad Scott's full interview with Cal Twomey later this week.