FA Rule

[Aston]

Yeah, this is as light as we can have it, I think. The exception will let people do some smaller 1/2 year deals and the 3-year one is tried and true. It makes teams take on a commitment when getting a quality FA player without necessarily having to break themselves while doing so (which requiring more years would).

There's the CyFL I'm in and someone let a 81/81 QB slip into FA. He's in his 6th year. 1 year, 40 million? is what I guess he'll go for.

[Ozias]

There's the CyFL I'm in and someone let a 81/81 QB slip into FA. He's in his 6th year. 1 year, 40 million? is what I guess he'll go for.

That's nuts!!

He should be an automatic 3 yr deal.

The 1 yr 2 mil or 2 yr 4 mil options were looking at make more sense than that. A QB of that caliber would be bid on by half the league if you knew a 1 yr 40 mil type of contract wouldn't land him instantly....unless another club has more $$ to spend and offers 50 mil...then the next season, bam TAG him....that's just wrong on so many levels.

At least on the 3yr offers, more teams have a shot at a guy like this....so glad we don't do FA that way here.

[Guest]

Damn, forgot about the damn 2 year and 1 year rules..

[Plastic]

There are no exceptions to the 2 or 3 year deals are there? I noticed another team offered a guy I offered a 2 year 3 million dollar deal and is leading the pack for his services.

[Ozias]

1yr is 2mil Max, 2yr is 4mil Max total value, so you can't go over those amounts for 1 or 2 year deals.

3yr or more, you can offer what ever kind of deal you want.

So if the guy you really want has a 2yr offer on the table for 4 mil from someone, you may have to offer a 3yr deal for 6 mil or more in order to land him.

[Guest]

Okay, here's how I feel about the rule at this point: It's okay.

Now, I understand why Brad originally came up with this alteration to the basic 3-yr rule, but I feel like its shortcoming outweigh the positives as an owner.

Why? I'll give you an example.

As the owner/GM or Morgantown, we're historically a ~.500 team. Then take Columbus who just about has a .750 winning percentage. With an arbitrary value placed on 1 and 2 year contracts there's a greater proliferation of $2 and $4 million contracts, respectively. This is to be expected, just as the $5 mil contract happened with last year's rule.

So, let's say there is a player that a bunch of us are interested in, but isn't worth a 3 yr contract (for whatever reason). If I offer the minimum on salary and the rest in bonus for 2 yrs, we're looking at a 2 yr deal worth $4 million. I'm not the only to one to make this offer, multiple other teams make this offer, including Columbus.

With all these teams offering the same exact contract what determines who gets the player? First comes loyalty, I believe, and this makes sense. After that what does a player consider? What dice roll happens? My completely uninformed belief seems to be Play for Winner. What this mean, to me, is that Columbus will tend to win players with the same contract over my team fairly consistently.

And this is why I think arbitrary monetary contracts have a relatively minor, but unfair influence on the game.

Why do I feel this way? Well, I felt this way last year when I noticed Columbus winning contracts on players for the $5 mil amount. I made the comment (and I've repeated it since then) that they were "going for it all". Turns out I was right as Columbus won everything last year, but I'm not trying to take away from Nemesis's win, I'm merely speaking from my personal view and being in Columbus' division gives me a focus on them.

It seemed to me that Nemesis sold out on the future somewhat by giving shorter, higher contracts to people to get higher results from those contracts. He had his reasons (aging receivers and DBs), but this is not my point. My point is simply that arbitrary monetary limits on contracts seem to negatively influence the game and even after lowering the price to $2 mil a year, I don't think it's an entirely fair rule.

Now that this league is use to a 3 yr minimum rule, I think if we went back the basic 3 year minimum rule then Brad wouldn't have as many issues with contracts. The first year or two of a rule change is always going to be bumpy and while I think Brad's changes have come from a logical place, I feel as if they are negatively impacting the game. The sky is certainly not falling, but I wanted to voice my opinion and let you all throw in your input.

[Aston]

I hear that (somewhat). It takes a little bit of freedom away from teams when everyone knows they can offer $2mil with min salary and max bonus for 1 year. So when there's a not-very-highly-rated guy that a lot of people like, you end up with this offer sheet:

Team A: 1 yr, 2 mil
Team B: 1 year, 2 mil
Team C: 1 year, 2 mil
Team D: 2 year, 4 mil
Team E: 1 year, 2 mil
Team Utah: 1 year, 890k ('cause I'm a cheap mofo)
Team F: 2 year, 4 mil

If someone wants to win, they can always go 3 years - but they're going to have to throw quite a lot of bonus down now. For a 3-year deal to beat the bonus on a 2-year, 4 mil deal at max bonus is no small commitment. Around $1mil of bonus and up just to match the 2-year deal's bonus.

Otherwise, you have all these equivalent-looking offers, and you either throw it to chance, or plop down serious cash and 3 years. I don't think it's unfair so much as a little restrictive. Most teams will feel value the guy such that they feel they can't do anything but leave it to random chance / "wants winner" / things like that. And that takes away from the bidding experience.

I don't think it negatively influences the game, as teams can choose to get a guy for 1 year and bid on him again next FA if it's cheapest that way, or if they want to focus on the now. That's a choice and that's fine.

That said I do like the exceptions to the 3-year rule. I think most people like it. It's nice to get cagey vets without knowing you have to surrender 100k in cap penalty when they retire. And it's nice to sign the marginal guys nobody wants without throwing down 150k bonus for every one. And it's really nice not to have to wait until FA2 if you already found someone. So by and large I think what we have is pretty good. It makes more players in FA1 worthwhile to go after, and thus keeps owners more engaged in the FA market during this time.

[Aston]

I wonder about what might work better a lot, and I usually just go in circles. All rules have their upsides and downsides. Here are some ideas I've tossed around:

alt #1: minsal/minbonus only for 1-2 year offers
This would mean for 1-year offers, you can offer 0 bonus only with minimum salary. For 2-year offers, you can offer 20k bonus only - that's the minimum requirement enforced by the game, and it never changes - with minimum salary.
Positives: It is completely trivial for a team to go 3 years and beat the 0-bonus and 20k-bonus smaller deals. For GMs, "minimum" should be easy to remember and it will mean the same thing in 10 seasons as it does now.
Negatives: The #s make it a pain to enforce, since "minimum" means different things for players of different years. Also, players often ask for say, 10k more than the minimum salary by default and not everyone catches on to this. It's easy to forget, a slight annoyance to check, and would violators then be punished?

alt #1: greysheet players must be offered 3 years+
This would be like the old old rule, except it doesn't depend on how many years the player asks for. That's important because players that demanded 5-year deals made it too easy for GMs to break themselves going after a player. Exhibit A some stud CB, Exhibit B some other stud CB. It can be hard to stay out of cap trouble as it is, we don't want to facilitate teams self-destructing.
Positives: Ultimate amount of freedom for anybody not on the grey sheet. 3-year rule in place for *most* of the guys who deserve it.
Negatives: You can't sort the Grey Sheet by name or position. It can be a real pain to nail down if someone is actually on the Grey Sheet or not, and on the fringe it really isn't very obvious. Similarly, it's hard to enforce and very easy for offending deals to slip through the cracks - let's say someone offers a guy who's on the lower ranges of the GS and nobody else offers him. Who is going to notice?

alt #3: 3-years+ only for everyone
I don't think there is enough support for this. I think the freedom of being able to offer the more marginal guys smaller deals is important to enough people. Ultimately I think what we have now with the 2/4 million exceptions, is a good balance. It offers a degree of freedom that is (pretty) nice, and it's simple enough to still be viable.

Of course, we're only about two weeks into this and I haven't made up my mind. I think it's good to keep this discussion going while this year's FA1 is in place, so props for bring it up! Maybe we can have a poll when it's all said and done just to take the pulse of the membership here and decide where to go from there.

I am personally okay with just about anything and would work with whatever restrictions are in place (unless they're as heavy-handed and complicated as the USFL list, wowzers). But I always like a discussion on what might make for the best FA experience for everyone.

[Guest]

The 3yr, FA1 rule is pretty standard in leagues. Why? Probably because it's the easiest to enforce/understand. To me, I actually think the Grey Sheet rule makes the most sense overal, but isn't necessarily the easiest to enforce.

Yes, the downside to the 3-yr rule is that there is a decent amount of players, young and old specifically, who don't want a 2yr deal. The older guys don't want a 3yr as they're expecting to retire and the younger guys won't take a 2yr without more investment than the 2yr base offers.

This means there's a lot of people we end up waiting on for FA2. Is that really so bad?

What I like about the 3 yr minimum contract in FA1 is that it has no limit. If a team want to overpay for someone for 3 years (say, Marvin Daluiso ) they can do so. That way they lock the player up and takee a chance on the price. It somewhat mitigates the "Play for Winner" I talked about earlier because "lesser" teams can pay more to get the guy they want.

The older players, who usually aren't signed until FA2, are left for bidding in FA2. It seems more realistic, so I think.

tl;dr Nutah is wrong. j/k I want nothing more than discussion.

[Aston]

What I like about the 3 yr minimum contract in FA1 is that it has no limit. If a team want to overpay for someone for 3 years (say, Marvin Daluiso ) they can do so.

Rub it in, why don't you Exhibit C for the downside of the original GS (give them the years they want) rule. That saddled me for ageeees. And now you have him back!

That way they lock the player up and takee a chance on the price. It somewhat mitigates the "Play for Winner" I talked about earlier because "lesser" teams can pay more to get the guy they want.

I just figured out where you were going with this. Not all or maybe even a lot of players have high play for winner ratings but when they do and you have a gridlock of identical offers, the rich (winners) get richer. Not sure how much of an impact this has though.

I think you're right, the 3-year is a gold standard and it's tried and true. Maybe we'll come around to it in time, but a lot of people really didn't like its restrictiveness and I have to say, the 1/2-yr exceptions have been very refreshing for me. I like that a lot, props to Brad for coming up with it. Although, this year or last year I haven't been involved with bidding wars at the limits. When I see a 1/2 or a 2/4, I just bow out. So I haven't been really affected by that aspect of the rule personally.

Actually, I'm starting to think the Grey Sheet rule makes the most sense too. Where's strick, he's going to hit me over the head for saying that

[Guest]

I just figured out where you were going with this. Not all or maybe even a lot of players have high play for winner ratings but when they do and you have a gridlock of identical offers, the rich (winners) get richer. Not sure how much of an impact this has though.

Exactly ... and I have no idea the impact, which is in part why I brought up my concerns. There is definitely more $2/$4 mil contracts this year than there were $5 mil last year as far as I can tell. I know I've been doing it because, well, it's stupid not to.

I mean, look at the transaction log for Don Peller. There were 6 $2/$4 mil contracts and the winning bid went for 3y, $9 mil. Obviously this isn't an example of a random selection from the $2/$4 mil bids, but an example to show how often the $2/$4 mil bids are being used. And good on Portland for stepping up and offering the 3 yr deal.

Then take a look at Bernie Price. A couple $2/$4 mil bids, but a handful of 3yr bids. And once again the 3yr bid wins. Morris Grace takes a 3 yr over 2 yr. Clealry a pattern is emerging: longer contracts will win over shorter contracts and the longer contracts allow for more than $2 mil/yr.

Perhaps that's the lesson here. Sure, some $2/$4 mil contracts will come to an arbitrary dice roll or something, but for the most part you're forced into offering a 3yr deal if you really want to compete.

[BradZ]

longer contracts will win over shorter contracts and the longer contracts allow for more than $2 mil/yr.

Perhaps that's the lesson here. Sure, some $2/$4 mil contracts will come to an arbitrary dice roll or something, but for the most part you're forced into offering a 3yr deal if you really want to compete.

This was my assumption all along. If you want a guy and there's a market for him, a 3+yr deal is necessary. 1 and 2 yr deals, in my opinion, go to depth/roster filler types. And as a bonus you know the exact parameters/framework of the 1 and 2 yr deals that can possibly be offered.

[Guest]

It makes more players in FA1 worthwhile to go after, and thus keeps owners more engaged in the FA market during this time.

and

This means there's a lot of people we end up waiting on for FA2. Is that really so bad?

I'm not a big fan of this rule simply because of the complexity and monitoring necessary. But this really goes to the core of it as well... is getting interest in FA1 a problem? Seems to me that this rule all but eliminates FA2, giving us another week of really nothing to do. I hadn't realized it before, but part of the reason I like the (simple) 3-year minimum rule in FA1 is that it divides the strategy. FA1 - go after the players you want, the high-dollar or otherwise attractive FAs. FA2 - fill in the gaps, find your affinities & mentors, etc. Now a team could pretty easily round out their roster in FA1 and tune out until opening day.

[BradZ]

I hear what your saying Jug. Just providing a bit of POV (not saying it's right or wrong), I've just always viewed FA 2 as the land of UDFA's.

[Guest]

Yup, and I do understand the idea for this, just not one I agree with. But certainly not a deal-breaker or anything that takes away from the league. :)