2020 RULES: New CBA

[Goodell]

With the new NFL CBA, we'll try to bring over as much real NFL changes as we can here.

When the NFL playoff teams expand and seasons go to 17 games in the future, those are things we can easily accomplish simming those extra games and realigning our playoff matchups also to mirror the NFL changing realities ahead.

Our minimum salary levels for free agency and drafted player contracts can easily adjust with those figures.

We can increase our practice squad limits to the NFL changes (from 10 to 12, then eventually 14 ahead).

Some things in the CBA aren't as applicable to our sim league as real people, and some things may be a little too complicated to be worth implementing (like 2 practice squad players eligible to be promoted to active roster players in a game or gameday rosters having extra players than before but one must be a lineman, etc.), but I'd like to bring in what make sense to keep us in line with some of the new adjustments to NFL reality.

We may become more aware of CBA changes being more highlighted as NFL events or even further detail agreements develop ahead, but comment or let me know if there are any CBA changes to the NFL that should be explored here.

[Knighty Knight]

Here are some of the details that may have implications here:

Rosters
-Teams can designate an additional player to return from injured reserve each year (three instead of two)
-Practice squads expanded from 10 to 12 players in 2020-2021, then to 14 players starting in 2022 (including between two and four players with unlimited accrued seasons per team)

Minimum salaries
-$100K increase in 2020 for Rookie Minimums, another $50K increase in 2021 and then $45K increase each year after
-At least $90K increase in 2020 for other minimum salaried players; $80K to $105K increase in 2021 and then $45K increase each year after
-Fifth-year Options fully guaranteed for fourth and fifth years at the time option is exercised; Amount of Option dependent on player achievement and no longer based on which slot selected in first round

With additional pay increases for players in other categories we don't really track, we should increase the Workout, Reporting, Misc Bonuses and Practice Squad cap charge.

[bpboguta1483]

Players with less than 1 year experience goes up to 610,000 in 2020. One year experience goes up to 585,000 which seems unusual. I like the fact that practice squad players go to 12 in 2020 and 14 the year after. The increase in veterans salary with 7 to 9 years experience jumps to 1.05 million and 10 or more years experience rises to 910,000 which I like, where if you look at it in this perspective, what veteran is going to sign a minimum 450,000 contract in real life, just my opinion. Yes it will make salaries tighter in our league, especially those who are in a salary cap crunch but it adds to the realism of the league.

[Goodell]

-Teams can designate an additional player to return from injured reserve each year (three instead of two)

With additional pay increases for players in other categories we don't really track, we should increase the Workout, Reporting, Misc Bonuses and Practice Squad cap charge.

On these points, we let our sim teams bring back unlimited number from IR now (assuming they were brought back in NFL which is a limited number of people) so we'll probably still just stick with that for simplicity of tracking that.

I agree that we probably should tack some extra dollars into that cap charge across the board, especially given some of the real increases mentioned.

[Goodell]

if you look at it in this perspective, what veteran is going to sign a minimum 450,000 contract in real life

We have the 1-year minimum contract available here because in the NFL (as I understood it when we implemented that) a team could sign a veteran to a 1-year veteran minimum for more money but that only a rookie minimum amount was charged to the cap. That was a way, as I understood it, to help veterans afraid of losing all their jobs to cheap rookies. That while they made more on a temp deal, their impact toward the cap would be the same as a rookie minimum.

Don't know if that's changed, but I would assume probably not and that unless so we'd probably keep that 1-year veteran deal here but just raise the cost of that to the rookie minimum as it counts against the cap.

We'd adjust some of our free agency bidding requirements to better fit some of the other minimums for deals beyond the 1-year temp offers.

[tino38]

-Fifth-year Options fully guaranteed for fourth and fifth years at the time option is exercised

This one is really interesting to me.

[JonC]

-Fifth-year Options fully guaranteed for fourth and fifth years at the time option is exercised

This one is really interesting to me.

Translation: Easily exploitable for trades by tanking teams.

[Goodell]

-Fifth-year Options fully guaranteed for fourth and fifth years at the time option is exercised

This one is really interesting to me.

We'll have to look into that further for us.

We don't really have the partial or full guarantee of salaries (we have our guarantees in signing bonuses). The closest we get to salary guarantee is after week 1 for veterans on rosters. If cut instead of taking a partial-season fraction of the salary, it determines veterans get full salary paid at that point.

Those players would be under the veteran salaries guaranteed after week 1, like all other veterans. I'm not sure how we'd easily implement salary guarantee on just a small group of players each off-season and treat them differently. The easiest way things are might be to make those last optioned years veteran minimum salary with large signing bonus to bring in the guaranteed part as we operate now.

The whole value of optioned year being based upon achievement than draft slot will also be a challenge to actually implement here. We'll have to perhaps see how that's done and what we can do in those regards. Might have to be just straight based upon objective grade that calculates to option value.