2010 RULES: Non/Exclusive Franchise Tag Details

[Goodell]

We've hit on most of these questions between two polls, and almost just posted a conclusion from those but wanted to lay out the options against each other directly first.

We'll add an exclusive franchise tag meaning soon you could designate one of your top players who'd be a UFA as an exclusive franchise player and no team could even bid on him and he'd automatically return to your team at a top 5 salary and you'd get some extension options (similarly to non-exclusive franchise tagged players who don't get bids), but just have to figure out if we are going to use a higher salary base for those years for exclusive versus non-exclusive like reality (top 5 last year versus top 5 this year) or some other way of making exclusive tag cost more (raising the extension costs) or if people think the price should be the same exactly for exclusive or non-exclusive despite it usually costing more to do exclusive in the NFL.

The comlication comes from exclusive tags in reality not being known and published until mid April because they are based upon 2010 top 5 salaries by position (versus non-exclusive top 5 from last year). We could just start with the non-exclusive salary base for exclusive tags and let teams know that may increase in April if the NFL puts out an exclusive list, or just ignore that salary difference because of the complication.

[Royce R]

Is there a way for each league to use their own salaries?

[Jared A]

I don't believe we should tie into one leagues crazy salaries. Since a single GM can make one crazy contract that the rest of the league has to pay for.

[Goodell]

Is there a way for each league to use their own salaries?

Like using our own sim player salaries instead of the figures the NFL publishes? The AFFL's franchise tag value for a DE might be different from a CFFL franchise tag value based upon the contracts in those specific leagues? It's generally a good thought in theory and possible someday and I think brought up in a previous year but in practice seemed unnecessarily complicated to calculate all those figures ourself and between issues of players able to play multiple positions (like DE/LB in a 3-4) or figuring how to convert all the contract details into one number (such as maybe the highest valued player has huge signing bonus guaranteed money and lower salary) for a fair list of the top 5 salaries.

So for me has seemed easier to just use the figure the NFL puts on the value of a top 5 player at each position, but we could maybe transition to calculating those ourselves someday but for now seemed like too much and some complications versus just taking their list of what a top 5 should be paid.

[Royce R]

I don't believe we should tie into one leagues crazy salaries. Since a single GM can make one crazy contract that the rest of the league has to pay for.

Like wash paying Haynesworth to be fat and lazy? 100 mil right?

[Jared A]

That's the exact contract I was thinking

[Ben C.]

In my opinion this idea only works if you have the pay be higher than the non exclusive tag. Otherwise there's no point to it. Teams need to have a cost/benefit decision to make here. The benefit is clear - keep the player off the market. The cost should be clear too - higher pay.

[Dustin S.]

i think there should be a combination of those options up top. like, the salaries should be top 5 at the position in april (so the upcoming year) and the cost should be higher, maybe even having a sb in the first year, at like 50%