2016 RULES: Peak Free Agency Changes

[Goodell]

Just getting some feedback on some of our peak free agency changes made this year to see if they need to be looked at again next year or if mostly supported. Wanted to ask this while free agency still fresh in our minds. The big changes for peak free agency this year involved using approximate times for last bids (within a 10 minute window) to reduce last minute bidding countdown clock, and changed some of the requirements for veteran bids (need SB if multi-year, allowed lower salary if just 1-year deal).

The trend toward higher SBs continued this free agency I believe, so put some questions in this poll about that also. One of them is capping signing bonus so that it wouldn't allow a bid with mroe than 50M (or whatever agreed) signing bonus to prevent franchises from over-investing in guaranteed money that could wreck franchises if a player suddenly retired or got hurt and a team has 70M guaranteed still on him. 50M would cap it to a 25M split over two years as the most that situation could hurt a franchise. Besides protecting future of franchises so a GM couldn't wreck things too badly and leave, and keeping salary values important for LTC calculations, it also keeps it realistic if this data is right where 37M is the highest SB in NFL now. http://www.spotrac.com/rankings/nfl/signing-bonus/

FREE AGENCY UPDATE - JUNE 1ST
Peak free agency is winding down a bit, but will officially end on June 1st. Teams have before then to make offers to tagged/restricted players before those will be taken off the market and signed to 1-year deals (and have multi-year options for tagged players without bids come June 1st). All UFA signings or losses will continue to count toward compensatory picks for 2016 draft up until June 1st. You can click the details button on the league homepage charts to view your UFA signings or losses (only UFAs from other teams with unlimited bidding count toward those not street free agents). At that point all team associations for UFAs will be dropped and no more unlimited bidding for your own UFAs after June 1st.

Come June 1st we'll also switch off peak free agency and go into another change announced this off-season, where we won't show signing soon links or promote bids placed on players after June 1st for the rest of the season. That will only be visible, by popular support this off-season, during peak free agency. We'll have a poll later this year to see if people like that change or not after we've tried it out further.

[Knighty Knight]

Is it possible to count first year base salary as guaranteed money for the purposes of free agent bidding?

[Goodell]

Is it possible to count first year base salary as guaranteed money for the purposes of free agent bidding?

I may not totally be understanding, feel free to clarify if I'm not addressing that below.

If first-year base salary could be used instead of signing bonus as guarantee, then teams could place a bid of multi-years for a veteran without any signing bonus. That's how it was in the past. Up until this year teams could put in 3-year deals to a veteran without any signing bonus needed. Much support for changing that, though, requiring signing bonus for multi-year deals for veterans.

A first year salary here would only be guaranteed for a veteran if he makes the roster on week 1. If he's cut prior to week 1 during training camp, there is no guarantee of his salary. Support during this off-season rules discussion to require signing bonus guarantees that a team will pay no matter what, no matter if the player make the team week 1 or whatever. Putting a real, unavoidable cost toward multi-year deals for veterans with no more 3-year veteran bids with no signing bonuses per league support.

[Zapotek]

I voted for a cap on SB, but I'd suggest that a percentage of the toal salary might work better than a flat limit. For example, not more than 50% of a contract's possible pay can be SB.

[Goodell]

I voted for a cap on SB, but I'd suggest that a percentage of the toal salary might work better than a flat limit. For example, not more than 50% of a contract's possible pay can be SB.

Yeah, there's a couple different ways to look at incorporating that. If much support for the capping of SB option, as it wouldn't go into effect until next off-season we could talk about different options for incorporating that prior to next off-season and see what the most supported ways were.

[RebelFan]

50M would cap it to a 25M split over two years as the most that situation could hurt a franchise. Besides protecting future of franchises so a GM couldn't wreck things too badly and leave, and keeping salary values important for LTC calculations, it also keeps it realistic if this data is right where 37M is the highest SB in NFL now. http://www.spotrac.com/rankings/nfl/signing-bonus/

The only thing about that (37M as the highest SB) is that the NFL has other ways of guaranteeing players' money that we don't have built into our system. I'm not saying that as in, it's good or bad, but just to say that players are definitely getting more than 37M guaranteed. It's just not in the form of a "signing bonus".
http://www.spotrac.com/nfl/miami-dolphi ... ukong-suh/
We just use the signing bonus as a generic catch-all to mimic guaranteed money in the real NFL. Which I think is working pretty well.
I may have put myself and my own teams in some less-than-ideal situations with huge SBs, and other teams have too I guess at times, but I don't recall any situation with SB that has wrecked a franchise since I've been around at least. Theoretically it would be just as easy to give a bunch of guys smaller SBs that could tie your hands into the future. Like most things in life, I don't think this is something that can be completely idiot-proofed. However, most of our GMs have been responsible enough (as far as I know) to avoid the kind of situations we are talking about preventing.

[JonC]

I don't love the idea of limiting a signing bonus. To me, if you have the financial ability to guarantee a lot of money, the only thing you are doing is limiting your own flexibility down the road. By limiting SB, in my opinion, we would be tipping the balance toward those who are wary of committing money to players long term (for better or worse) pretty extensively.

No front office was crying for the Redskins after guaranteeing $40+M to Haynesworth.

[Knighty Knight]

Is it possible to count first year base salary as guaranteed money for the purposes of free agent bidding?

I may not totally be understanding, feel free to clarify if I'm not addressing that below.

If first-year base salary could be used instead of signing bonus as guarantee, then teams could place a bid of multi-years for a veteran without any signing bonus. That's how it was in the past. Up until this year teams could put in 3-year deals to a veteran without any signing bonus needed. Much support for changing that, though, requiring signing bonus for multi-year deals for veterans.

A first year salary here would only be guaranteed for a veteran if he makes the roster on week 1. If he's cut prior to week 1 during training camp, there is no guarantee of his salary. Support during this off-season rules discussion to require signing bonus guarantees that a team will pay no matter what, no matter if the player make the team week 1 or whatever. Putting a real, unavoidable cost toward multi-year deals for veterans with no more 3-year veteran bids with no signing bonuses per league support.

Yeah sorry I wasn't clear to begin with. I simply mean counting the base salary of a contract offer as guaranteed money for the purposes of the calculating tool which scores the offer. I've certainly used the loop hole to try to undercut big deals, say 5 years $7M/yr with $15M signing bonus, by offering a low base salary while maintaining high SB. Recent example is Rodger Saffold signing a one year deal paying about $1M base with $12M SB. For a one year deal guaranteed money and base is really insignificant as a free agent signing during peak time is likely to be on the roster. NFL contracts are already constructed this way with year one and sometimes additional years of guaranteed base salaries. We don't need to necessarily go that far but calculating it as guaranteed with prevent myself and others from manipulating the system. In our example, I don't see Saffold turning down a 5 year $35M deal with $15M SB to sign a 1 year offer that pays a total of $13. Hope that clears up the issue I was trying to communicate.

[Goodell]

In our example, I don't see Saffold turning down a 5 year $35M deal with $15M SB to sign a 1 year offer that pays a total of $13. Hope that clears up the issue I was trying to communicate.

We may tweak the bid score calculation more in future years, and there are a couple of examples that I've jotted down that are kind of like what you mention that come up as teams try to find new angles. However, it's currently tilted toward favoring teams willing to pay guaranteed money. Real players probably do care a lot about absolute guaranteed money compared to overall totals of which they may never see. In our system that's only represented by signing bonus as money they get no matter what. Those scores may be tilted a little more toward percentage guaranteed leading to some of those odd cases. It's not something we'd change mid-stream in the middle of peak free agency but a note to look at tweaking in the future. thanks

[robroach]

Is there any way to consider an option to front load a contract? I have plenty of cap space but refuse to give bad contracts just because I have the money. If I had the option to take the hit on all signing bonus in the first year, it would reward the GM that keeps his cap under control.