2017 Off-Season Update

[Goodell]

As previously announced, Free Agency gets started Monday 4/17 morning at 9 AM ET. For those new to the leagues or forgot how things go, here are a couple reminders. New GMs can also refer to previously send welcoming messages with details on league activities.

Teams get UNLIMITED bidding toward their own UFAs on the market, and 5 bids per 24 hours to put toward other players. After 24 hours, a used bid becomes available again. There's nothing more frustrating than putting in your 5 bids immediately first thing only to see them all countered and no longer leading bids by mid morning with no other bids until the next day. Some have different strategies probably, but sometimes it can be effective to space your bids out a bit after seeing how the market is going, what players are in crazy demand, and being the team that gets out of the first day on top instead of the team that had an all their early bids countered.

A UFA is signed when he goes without a counter bid for 24 hours. Restricted free agents (RFA) or tagged players are signed to offersheets after 24 hours without a counter bid, but their home team has a chance to match or receive compensation in some cases. Always read the bid page completely, especially in cases of RFA or tagged players that have certain conditions and compensation required for bidding that is listed on their page. Often in those cases you may have to give up a draft pick if you sign a restricted/tagged player. If a player has an original round tender, check their actual NFL draft round for the required compensation (not sim draft round). I'll try to get around to updating those as time allows.

Once turned on, free agency will never be turned off until the end of the regular season in January. It's always available to shop players throughout the off-season and regular season. During peak free agency starting tomorrow you'll be able to see what players have bids and rough signing time deadlines before they'll sign, as we do that in peak free agency to try to ensure players get their fair market price. Some things change after peak free agency is over when free agency becomes much more secretive for the rest of the season to reward teams that do their research on training camp gems instead of just cherry-picking other team bids.

Depending upon your situation, you may want to pay close attention to the UFA gain/loss chart on the front of the league homepages (and on your team roster page). That determines which lost UFAs get compensatory picks in the 2018 draft or not. Only teams with more UFA losses listed than gains are even eligible for picks, and only the top 32 UFA losses whose team didn't have a similarly graded UFA gain to balance that out will get picks. Street free agents without teams, RFAs, and tagged players DO NOT factor into compensatory picks -- only UFAs from other teams with unlimited bidding rights. So it helps you with compensatory picks in next year's draft to let some of your UFAs sign with other teams (despite your unlimited bidding rights) and sign street free agents without home team unlimited bidding affiliations.

There are no do-overs in free agency. Especially if you are giving a player GUARANTEED signing bonus money, make sure you do your research. Check their rotoworld page, do a google news search. There's no hurry, take your time and enter wisely. Make sure you're bidding on the right player and not someone with the same name. We honor real NFL retirements, suspensions, injuries, etc. Grades listed are grades from last year, and madden grades can sometimes change significantly from year to year plus grades are updated weekly throughout the season with performance. Be smart with your money, and careful with guaranteed signing bonuses especially as there is no way out of those at all. You're going to pay 100% of that one way or another and cannot transfer signing bonuses to anyone else.

It's a good idea probably to save yourself about $2M+ under the cap for in-season transactions as it's more difficult to clear cap space during the season when injuries happen. I'll also be adding estimated draft pick values, but in the meantime you can research a player drafted in that slot last year and look at their contract. Don't over spend in free agency or you won't be able to afford your draft picks.

We also carry over some unused cap space from year to year, this year increasing to a max of 10M. So if you're 10M under the cap at the end of this season, you'll get that 10M next year. If your 50M under the cap, you still only get 10M carried over.

If you are unsure about something, please send me a PM. Better to ask than make a mistake that can't be undone. Thanks and happy hunting!

[Goodell]

Free agency underway!

[Goodell]

If your new to the leagues (and even if you're not) here's a little more information about a more complicated aspect of free agency -- compensatory picks. It may cheer up teams that are losing their players.

On each league homepage you'll notice a chart for compensatory picks with a link for more details that goes here: http://www.fangm.com/football/comppicks.php

I've updated that page this off-season to provide a little more details about what kind of compensation generally applies to certain UFA losses. Only players on that page are eligible for possible compensatory pick consideration, and it only involves UFAs associated with teams that have unlimited bidding rights (not tagged or restricted or street free agents cut). The only teams eligible for picks have to have more qualifying UFA losses than gains. Compensatory picks for free agency losses from this off-season will be given out before next year's 2018 draft.

It's definitely something to keep an eye on if you're not having much success signing other teams' free agents and losing some of your own, as if your team is eligible and you had among the 32 highest graded eligible losses then you may get compensatory pick(s) for next year's draft.

[tjbarnaba]

When will the draft rankings be open?

[Ben C.]

What's the deadline for signing tagged players?

[Goodell]

When will the draft rankings be open?

Draft tools will start to be turned on early this week.

[Goodell]

What's the deadline for signing tagged players?

As tagged or RFA players often impact draft picks, we'll have to wrap those up prior to our sim draft. We'll give that one more week and say the last day to enter a bid for a RFA or tagged player is Sunday 4/30.

[Goodell]

I've uploaded players in the 2017 college draft pool and turned on our draft tools. That will allow teams to start to add players to their draft queue rankings and mark picks they want to move up or down. There is also a specific time now set for every pick. Just click "draft" from the top menu.

Our college draft starts Saturday 5/6. It's round 1 the first day (15 minutes per pick) and then 2 rounds per day for the following 3 days (10 minutes per pick). We usually turn on the picks for the #1 overall teams to start early if they wish the night before. Any undrafted free agents will be put on to the market after all the drafts are over at a time TBD, normally the next day morning.

Your picks have an assigned time. No matter what or how fast/slow the draft is going, you can be sure that your selection will be due at that exact time so you can plan around that. That also allows you to trade up/down based upon your time availability if you wish. Each pick also has an estimated value based upon last year's contracts, so if you're short on cap space you can plan on what picks you might want to trade away for future picks if you can't sign a player of that value.

You do NOT have to be online when your pick is due. That's why we have a draft queue rankings. If you don't manually pick, when the pick deadline hits the system will give you your highest available rated player. If you didn't fill up your queue or it was emptied by other picks before, you'll get the highest available player based upon actual NFL draft order.

A little advise for those who haven't drafted before. Know that you can trade your pick at any point while on the clock before the deadline, so you have options if you're not sure who to take when you're up. Many GMs here probably do a ton of research and have hundreds of players individually ranked, etc. That's great for those that put in all that work, and it may pay dividends for their sim team by doing so much homework. I personally also think teams can make pretty solid draft picks just by generally following the draft as a fan, watching tv coverage or reading some draft articles as you might otherwise, picking players you like from your favorite team's draft that you'll be following closely, perhaps googling mock drafts or opinions on the best picks from draft rounds as your pick approaches, and while on the clock take a couple minutes each for the top few of players still available based upon NFL order to select who you like best among the guys picked around your slot. Or re-watch the entire combine and game tapes from hundreds of college players available. Whatever, but have fun with one of the best times of our game!

Let me know if any problems, but otherwise as the NFL draft approaches and you come across names of college players of interst, add them to your draft queue and get ready for 5/6.

[soonertf]

Can't believe we are kicking the draft off on the biggest sports day of the year!

[Ben C.]

When will waiver claims begin being processed? Is there a way to automate the claims, or otherwise have a script run to do this (similar to the script that runs to "sign" a free agent when their name is clicked after bids expire)?

Thanks.