2010 RULES: Waivers
Posted: Mon Mar 08, 2010 7:07 pm
Waivers kind of went under our radar when league first founded because they aren't used as much in the NFL, but last season Larry Johnson being cut and going through waivers brought up that issue that we should consider adding that process.
That would also have a big impact (for better or worse) for our current mechanisms for teams to force players to take pay-cuts by cutting them and trying to re-sign for less. Sometimes other teams may out-bid them and sign those players away. Adding a waiver process would make it even more risky to cut a player and try to bring back at a lower cost, as all teams would have some time to put in a claim to snag the player before they even hit free agency.
For cap impact, the cutting team would have to take any remaining SB left cap hit and we'd treat it not unlike a trade where the claiming team wouldn't have any Signing Bonus as part of that player's deal anymore (as paid by cutting team in cap hit) but would just pick up their contract from that point in terms of annual salary and roster bonuses. There may be some signing of a claimed player to a different agreement in reality, but can't really see us putting contract bidding negotiation into the claim process so just would have to be taking on the annual salary under their contract as is. If you didn't like their salary, you'd just not claim and hope they hit free agency with nobody else claiming either and then try to sign them as a free agent.
I thought I might have read something somewhere about restrictions of the cutting team to bring the waived player back perhaps, which would really end that practice of cutting players here and trying to force a price cut and sign for less, but wouldn't be practical for us as we can't really negotiate with the players to reduce salary and our only means of doing so is cutting and trying to resign. This would just add that they have to clear waivers with nobody willing to pay them that current salary because they hit the streets as a free agent looking for a new bidded contract.
The claim order is a little complicated in that it starts out as last year's standings (we'd use draft order of original slots since we generate that order for the draft) with the worst teams getting first priority to claim, and then changes later in the season to be the current year standings once enough games played for that to matter (9/28 I read last year). If we can find a date in an NFL calendar if it changes each year we can go with the exact date, and if not just go with some week of the season that matches that generally.
That would also have a big impact (for better or worse) for our current mechanisms for teams to force players to take pay-cuts by cutting them and trying to re-sign for less. Sometimes other teams may out-bid them and sign those players away. Adding a waiver process would make it even more risky to cut a player and try to bring back at a lower cost, as all teams would have some time to put in a claim to snag the player before they even hit free agency.
For cap impact, the cutting team would have to take any remaining SB left cap hit and we'd treat it not unlike a trade where the claiming team wouldn't have any Signing Bonus as part of that player's deal anymore (as paid by cutting team in cap hit) but would just pick up their contract from that point in terms of annual salary and roster bonuses. There may be some signing of a claimed player to a different agreement in reality, but can't really see us putting contract bidding negotiation into the claim process so just would have to be taking on the annual salary under their contract as is. If you didn't like their salary, you'd just not claim and hope they hit free agency with nobody else claiming either and then try to sign them as a free agent.
I thought I might have read something somewhere about restrictions of the cutting team to bring the waived player back perhaps, which would really end that practice of cutting players here and trying to force a price cut and sign for less, but wouldn't be practical for us as we can't really negotiate with the players to reduce salary and our only means of doing so is cutting and trying to resign. This would just add that they have to clear waivers with nobody willing to pay them that current salary because they hit the streets as a free agent looking for a new bidded contract.
The claim order is a little complicated in that it starts out as last year's standings (we'd use draft order of original slots since we generate that order for the draft) with the worst teams getting first priority to claim, and then changes later in the season to be the current year standings once enough games played for that to matter (9/28 I read last year). If we can find a date in an NFL calendar if it changes each year we can go with the exact date, and if not just go with some week of the season that matches that generally.