2017 RULES: Tag and Trade
Posted: Tue Apr 04, 2017 12:40 am
Tagged players being traded happens rarely in the NFL (Matt Cassel and Jared Allen are examples from reality) but happens frequently here. Some of those situations seem to happen in the grayest of areas with teams coordinating together for optimal salary outcomes or trying to play along the edges a bit to get value for players set to leave their rosters otherwise. Things at times have seemed to get messy when tagged players get traded and matching rights switched from team to team. It's a situation that I always feel like needs to be cleaned up each off-season.
In the NFL you can't trade a player just because you placed a franchise tag on them; the player has to sign his tender to be under contract with the team in order to be traded. Tag applied, player signs 1-year tender at franchise value, player become active roster player again, then can be traded in the NFL. Our sim world is different from reality because we don't have real players deciding to sign their tenders or not. We sort of assume they sign their tender but still keep them with franchise tag treatment on the market with matching rights traded.
The league proposes that (if feasible) we make a sim tagged player sign his 1-year franchise tag tender BEFORE being traded. Since we don't have real players, we'd make the sim team click to sign the 1-year tender for the player, then they'd be an active player under that 1-year salary deal, and then that team would be free to trade that player like any other active roster player.
Teams planning on tagging and trading players, as often happened in the past, can still do that. They just wouldn't be trading a franchise tag matching rights any more, but instead a player on that 1-year signed deal. The acquiring team could use one of their LTCs to sign the acquired player either the same off-season or the following off-season before the player became a free agent again. So the acquiring team would have two off-seasons and 4 LTCs available (plus the option to use franchise tag again) to use to sign that acquired tagged player before they hit the free agency market.
Another advantage is that it better represents NFL reality where tagged players can't be traded until they sign their tenders. It also arguably cuts out some of the franchise tag unrealistic gamesmanship in free agency, limiting what can be done to move a tagged player to just signing them to a 1-year deal. On the other side, it is more limiting for the acquiring team given that they couldn't match free agent multi-year offers or extend the deal if no bids, but as mentioned before acquiring teams would have 4 LTC and next off-season tagging options to extend the player themselves otherwise.
If this is a popular proposal, and if the programming isn't too complicated (I think it should be doable) we may institute this off-season before free agency as it doesn't really change options teams have on the whole involving any of their players or pending free agents, even if it's slightly different than the past (anyone eligible to be tagged & traded in the past would still be after rule change, but would just have to be on 1-year deal instead of trading rights). If it's a more controversial change highly opposed, it may be pushed back to future off-seasons.
In the NFL you can't trade a player just because you placed a franchise tag on them; the player has to sign his tender to be under contract with the team in order to be traded. Tag applied, player signs 1-year tender at franchise value, player become active roster player again, then can be traded in the NFL. Our sim world is different from reality because we don't have real players deciding to sign their tenders or not. We sort of assume they sign their tender but still keep them with franchise tag treatment on the market with matching rights traded.
The league proposes that (if feasible) we make a sim tagged player sign his 1-year franchise tag tender BEFORE being traded. Since we don't have real players, we'd make the sim team click to sign the 1-year tender for the player, then they'd be an active player under that 1-year salary deal, and then that team would be free to trade that player like any other active roster player.
Teams planning on tagging and trading players, as often happened in the past, can still do that. They just wouldn't be trading a franchise tag matching rights any more, but instead a player on that 1-year signed deal. The acquiring team could use one of their LTCs to sign the acquired player either the same off-season or the following off-season before the player became a free agent again. So the acquiring team would have two off-seasons and 4 LTCs available (plus the option to use franchise tag again) to use to sign that acquired tagged player before they hit the free agency market.
Another advantage is that it better represents NFL reality where tagged players can't be traded until they sign their tenders. It also arguably cuts out some of the franchise tag unrealistic gamesmanship in free agency, limiting what can be done to move a tagged player to just signing them to a 1-year deal. On the other side, it is more limiting for the acquiring team given that they couldn't match free agent multi-year offers or extend the deal if no bids, but as mentioned before acquiring teams would have 4 LTC and next off-season tagging options to extend the player themselves otherwise.
If this is a popular proposal, and if the programming isn't too complicated (I think it should be doable) we may institute this off-season before free agency as it doesn't really change options teams have on the whole involving any of their players or pending free agents, even if it's slightly different than the past (anyone eligible to be tagged & traded in the past would still be after rule change, but would just have to be on 1-year deal instead of trading rights). If it's a more controversial change highly opposed, it may be pushed back to future off-seasons.