2010 RULES: 2010 CAP

[Goodell]

The poll hasn't moved much with the new 2010 finances loaded, so I set the leagues to 137M for now for everyone to have a look at the shape of things with the most popular choice loaded as the cap figure for 2010. Still open to any discussion/research on that for a bit, but probably going to be settling on a figure here soon.

[Goodell]

As was the popular choice with twice the number of votes as any other option we'll go with $137M cap.

$137M - Based upon average percentage increase from 2007 to 2009 (7.95%)

But please just keep in mind before you go too crazy with spending that our cap in 2011 may actually be reduced and you may be in financial trouble and have to cut a lot of good players, as I suspect the NFL will again one day have a salary cap again and that we'd align ourselves with the actual cap again in the future when it returns.

There would probably be arguements at that time that we should continue with a higher cap because of sim team difficulties, but this is fair warning a year in advance that if the NFL's salary cap returns and is less then our artificial cap for this season that we'd likely reduce our sim cap back to the real cap. So you can spend but in the back of your mind have a plan for a possible LOWER cap next year and what you'd do in that case -- which players you might could cut or restructure their deals to meet a lower cap in 2011 if that happened.

[Ben C.]

Is this being enforced at all during the offseason? I was under the impression that teams could have an unlimited number of players during the offseason (until roster cut downs in August) but must always be under the cap.

But there are a couple of teams in the AFFL that are significantly over the cap right now.

[Goodell]

Is this being enforced at all during the offseason? I was under the impression that teams could have an unlimited number of players during the offseason (until roster cut downs in August) but must always be under the cap.

But there are a couple of teams in the AFFL that are significantly over the cap right now.

Ideally yes, and I'm going to try to build a little more into the free agency bidding possibly for requiring a team not be over the cap to place a bid unless there is a lot of outrage the other way.

I could understand it, though, while teams could tag players but not yet make any cuts because perhaps they want to franchise someone and know they are going to cut 10 people to have room but cuts weren't allowed yet as they are now. It's also possible someone has a player tagged for the compensation knowing they won't match.

For the sake of making sure GMs understand the financial implications of tagging and to give them a better picture of where they stand overall, we automatically give the tender amount against the cap. But in reality, that wouldn't happen until the player signed his 1-year tender. So I can kind of see both sides there a bit to where a guy still on the market isn't part of the team yet even if we put in his 1-year tender amount to be conservative and make sure everybody knows the money involved.

There usually seems to be a strong group for more strictness there and another strong group for competitive creativity or at least some flexibility for temporary situations while a bid or matching or trade in progress.

I want to build in a little more strictness in the system to try to block more deficit-causing actions ahead of time instead of correcting later when it's more complicated, but at the same time know we have situations where a team won't always know if someone they signed will be matched or not and cap swings can be very volitile at this time.

Making one of the conditions to placing a free agency bid be that your team is under the cap at the time of the bid (not just now but throughout the year) might be a way of encouraging more strictness there, after all signing a player as intending to try to do won't help your cap situation and if already over probably should not allow someone to keep signing.

Otherwise, before FA starts I can contact the teams in that position and see what's up and if it's mostly due to a player tagged that isn't on their roster technically that they probably won't sign unless they can make a lot of other moves before then. We don't allow matching a contract unless you're under the cap enough to fit.

With a lot of the matching we have and uncertainty at times over whether a player is going to be on your team or not, it does create more messy situations than I'd like. I'd like to be more strict there but also always seems to be cases come up where some flexibility not unreasonable.

Maybe after the NFL gets their new agreement and we have to revamp things possibly to fit their new reality, we can built in more strictness to those new labor agreement rules and give teams warning that less creativity and flexibility would be in there and much more strict adherence to never being over.

Free agency with 10M+ contacts that could swing either way during a matching situation makes that harder, so we've tried to say that temporarily being over the cap understandable for some situations like that but needed to be corrected within 48 hours once situations resolved.

[Royce R]

I'm one thats over the cap.

I was under the impression that we always let that slide until roster cuts.

I could make moves to fix my cap but since I tagged some players that I don't plan on keeping that seems like something I shouldn't have to do. Let me know if I do I can make a cut or two. But not wanting to.

[whteshark]

Royce, if you need help, San Diego is here to extend a friendly hand and relieve you of some of your players .

[Royce R]

If you let me relieve you of some of them draft picks

[sportznut]

Royce, if you need help, San Diego is here to extend a friendly hand and relieve you of some of your players .

What a nice guy.

[whteshark]

LOL, Royce. You're loaded enough with picks 1 and 2.

Hey, you know me, Sport, I'm always looking out for my fellow GM's.

[Goodell]

We do have to have some flexibility in the off-season in situations because 10M or more can swing from team to team based upon a matching decision, but when teams have to match or not they aren't allowed to match an offer if they don't have room to fit it under the cap. We've definitely had situations like that last year where I had to work with a team to make sure they had cap room to match an offer.

I believe in the NFL teams have to always be under the cap. They use a 51-man rule in the off-season so that they can have 80 players signed in training camp and not be over the cap. We talked about instituting something like that either last off-season or the one before where it would always go off 53 men in calculating off-season salary cap but I think got complicated or maybe more confusing.

In general it would be bad if all GMs could just be wildly over the cap at any time in the off-season and have heaps of financial problems trying to get down before the season or perhaps walking away from their team if they couldn't.

I think the rule from the old site listings were always under the cap outside of temporary situations and having 48 hours to get under. I think that's ideal, but if a team over primarily because they have over 53 men or a tagged player they won't be able to match with a veteran GM it's not as concerning but as a general rule for the league I believe it's been need to be under always outside of those temporary situations quickly corrected.

But I take the blame for much of that until I get better rules posted in one place to always reference and have no questions. If someone is over just because of a tagged player not really on the roster and team not intending to match, as mentioned before I can see that side of things too but hopefully that is resolved quickly when free agency starts and that's taken care of through bids and unmatched players moving to the team with cap space for them. But best for the league, and when I get to putting the rules down better it'll be like the NFL in always being under the cap or correcting quickly for those variable matching situations.