2019 RULES: Unlimited Bidding

[Goodell]

A GM sent me this rule suggestion. Currently we have unlimited bidding for your own UFAs, so you can keep bidding on them to try to retain them so long as you can afford the market price. That can sometimes lead to under valued deals slipping through the first day with other teams limited to 5 bids on the market.

The intent of unlimited bidding on your own free agents was to give a home team advantage, as real teams usually have with some of their own players staying (unless their agent says the market will pay much more for them via free agency bids and the home team just doesn't want to pay that much). It essentially gives the home team a chance to match offers on the market by allowing them unlimited bidding on their own.

We have talked about some rules changes in the past to address under value deals that go through to home teams due to bid restrictions on the market otherwise. Extra bids for counter offers on the first day has come up before as well as some other ideas.

We artificially cap bids/day for other free agents on the market to try to simulate reality where teams have to prioritize free agent targets. To some degree, there are time/resource limits on prioritizing your own free agents also in reality. While a sim team can put in bids and counter-bids for dozens of their own UFAs all day here, in reality a real team probably doesn't negotiate with more than a couple of their own players in a day.

If supported, the way this would work would be we'd add another bid counter. Right now there's a 5 bid/day counter for all teams plus unlimited bidding on your own UFAs that aren't limited. With this rule, we'd add a second counter for your own UFAs. So your free agency day would start with two counters: 5 bids toward other UFAs and 5 (or 10 or whatever) bids for your own UFAs. Everytime you placed a bid or counter bid, it would subtract from those counters. You get that bid restored 24 hours later like always. The only change could be that it would restrict the number of bids/day for your own.

You'd still have an advantage in signing your own UFAs, because you have 5 or 10 bids/day for just your own players while other teams bidding for your UFAs have only 5 to spread across the whole market. It just wouldn't be an unlimited bid advantage.

[robroach]

I have proposed in the past that teams can’t make the opening bid for their own players for the first 3 days or week or whatever time period of free agency. Then unlimited bidding after that. The thinking is that the current team had all offseason to re-sign or tag the player. Players realistically wouldn’t re-sign immediately in the free agency process. They would test the market. This would help create a second wave of free agency, which is very realistic.

[Goodell]

I have proposed in the past that teams can’t make the opening bid for their own players for the first 3 days or week or whatever time period of free agency. Then unlimited bidding after that. The thinking is that the current team had all offseason to re-sign or tag the player. Players realistically wouldn’t re-sign immediately in the free agency process. They would test the market. This would help create a second wave of free agency, which is very realistic.

It's an interesting idea. I believe we had something like that delay for your own UFAs in the free agency idea poll last year but didn't get a lot of votes.

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[bpboguta1483]

I like the 5 and 5 just because realistically an NFL GM doesn't have the time to negotiate contracts with 20 players in a day. I would imagine in the real world of the NFL they prioritize who they want to keep and who they will not resign. It challenges owners to really think how they want to build their team.

[Goodell]

CONCLUSION: With nearly 80% in favor, we'll keep unlimited bidding for your own unrestricted free agents.