FanGM

As we get the off-season going, this will serve as a refresher/reminder for the returning GMs and hopefully valuable for the new GMs getting their feet wet.

Right now the rosters are unfrozen and 2010 off-season underway. Teams currently can:

- Cut players
- Make trades
- Designate franchise/transition tags (deadline FA start 3/26)
- Set compensation levels and tender amounts for Restricted Free Agents (deadline FA start 3/26)
- Free Agency (coming soon later this week)
- Draft (coming later in April)

Treat your sim team like a real team. In reality it's nice to have a strong offensive line as well as tough defense so don't treat your sim team like a fantasy team with just skill position players. Strong lines and defenses help win games, in addition to play makers. You also need depth, as we recognize all real injuries, suspensions, and retirements. Every team will have injuries but the deepest teams have a shot at surviving unfortunate breaks.

The sim game uses real player updates from NFL games each week for skill position players like fantasy football, but also adjusts those in various ways based upon the strength of an offensive versus their sim opponent's defense. If you want to help your RB, make sure he has a good line -- which also helps your QB in addition to some highly graded receivers to take their actual stats to a higher level in the sim with a better supporting cast. Build a stud defense and you can cut down strong games from your opposition.

When you CUT a player, his 2010 (and future years) salary will go off your books. Annual salary is unguaranteed. But if they have a Signing Bonus with SB left that unaccounted for signing bonus balance becomes a cap hit that you can either take all this year or split over 2 years. Roster Bonuses get paid on 6/1, so if you have a guy with a roster bonus and don't want to pay it, either cut or trade them before 6/1. After 6/1, it's on your cap this year no matter what as money you've paid this year. Also on 6/1 you can do unlimited cap hit splits, but I believe the system still under 2 exemptions before 6/1 to split a cap hit.

Be careful splitting cap hits over 2 years. Yeah that helps this year, but can pile up dead money for next year and limit your available funds as you pay millions to guys no longer on your team.

When a player is traded, he also will get a cap hit based upon his SB left. The original signing team is entirely responsible for the signing bonus. For cap accounting, you break up the signing bonus into an annual average over the length of the deal, but once the player is no longer with your team (cut or traded or retired/deceased) you have to account for it entirely either all this year or over 2 years.

So be careful making big free agent bids later with huge signing bonuses, as that becomes a cap hit and makes some players literally untradable. You rarely see a super star traded in the NFL (at least while capped) because of the huge cap hit a huge signing bonus creates.

Designating franchise and transition tags are explained at the bottom of your roster this week until free agency starts. You must designate a tag before FA starts and cannot change later, but if you want to change now you can contact me before we start. Don't tag anybody not worth a top 5 (for franchise) or top 10 (transition) because that becomes a huge salary floor that they'll make at least next year. You can also just CUT a tagged player later if you decide you don't want him and want to remove the tag, but lose all matching rights or possible compensation. You can also do Exclusive franchise tag this year which removes the player from free agency and means he can't shop for any offer-sheets from anyone else, but it will be more expensive to give him a 3-year contract extension at that franchise price versus making him non-exclusive and seeing if he doesn't get any bids to extend his deal.

Although you can, don't cut you UFA or RFA players if you have any interest in re-signing. You get unlimited bids toward your own UFA free agents while other teams are limited to 5 bids per 24 hours for UFAs on other teams. Once you cut a UFA you lose those unlimited bidding rights as home team for that player and basically sever those advantages and ties. You can't bid on your RFA's but must wait til they sign an offer-sheet and can then match the offer to keep the restricted player. If you don't match, you may also get compensation if you set a compensation amount before free agency started (at bottom of roster). Same with tagged players, you can't bid on them but wait til they sign an offer-sheet with another team and then can use your matching rights.

Click on the league name near the goal posts in the header when you are on a league page to visit the league HOME PAGE. There you'll see news of recent transactions. I'll try to fancy the home pages up more this year at some point. But also new this year is a note to (CLAIM) a player who has been cut if they have less than 4 years of experience. Click that claim link next to the player name to see what their existing contract consists of, and if you want to put in a claim on that player click the claim link there. That puts you on the list and after 48 hours I'll move the player to the team who finished lowest in the standings last year (after Week 4 we use current season standings). Only players with 0-3 years experience go through waivers now, but everyone will go through waivers after the late October trading deadline during the season.

The best way to create more cap space is to cut or trade players with little or no Signing Bonus left (cap hit) and a big salary in 2010.

You can also restructure one contract per year. Click on your restructure link on your roster page for more details but essentially moves half of their salary this year to the last year of their deal and adds some signing bonus. So restructuring a deal probably will end their stay in your organization a year early, and also adds signing bonus making it more expensive to get rid of them until near the end of their deal. But clicking that link will tell you who would save you the most in cap space to restructure. A player can only have his deal restructured once.

We don't do trade block messages in the forum like some sim leagues, but you can click a link to post your trade block from your team roster page. You can see recently posted trade blocks in the upper right column. You can also set trade availability notices for players on your team to let others know who is available, and visit a page to show trade availability by position around the league.

We'll get into more free agency details once we get ready for that. I have penciled in Friday 3/26 to start, but we may get to that sooner depending upon if I get all teams filled (some tie-breakers tonight and tomorrow) and we get all teams taking a look at their RFA compensation levels or tags before. If everyone is involved early this week, we can maybe get going a day or two sooner if everybody's ready.

As always, send me a PM if you have a question. This league and NFL salary cap management can be confusing especially if coming from fantasy football. We try to make it more real, but that can also make things challenging. Don't hesitate to ask for any clarification on rules or processes, as well as if you just want some advise as a new GM and unsure about what it takes to build a good team here or manage a cap. Thanks, and let's have a great season.

If you are going to be gone during busy days of free agency, you can also send me a PM to discuss your intentions regarding any players with matching rights (ex. I'll match any offer that isn't above 15M) and possibly some bids to place into the system for you while you are gone.

When a RFA or tagged player is signed by another team, his home team has 48 hours to match the offer, so it's important that if you don't want to loose a restricted player that you keep a daily eye on those or send me a PM and get verification that I've received it if you are going to be away and want me to put in your intentions while away.

Also for new GMs, note that the grade assigned to the player was based upon their Madden rating at the end of last season.

We will update our player grades again before the 2010 NFL season based upon the new grades that are published.

So research a player before giving up a lot for him. A grade of B+ today might actually turn into a C+ next year if the player is fading in reality and hurt and unwanted by NFL teams, etc.

The grades are always adjusting. Throughout the early NFL season, we often update grades weekly if grade updates published, so go more off what you think about a player and his future more than his current grade.

Gearing up for free agency starting later today, remember...

5 BIDS PER DAY
Each team gets 5 bids per 24 hours to submit a bid on a player from other teams (or no current team). As soon as you place your first bid, it's on a 24 hour clock and you'll only have 4 left. Once it's been 24 hours after your first bid, it's renewed and you get a bid back. Each bid has their own 24 hour clock, and 5 bids max per day.

For what it's worth, it's real easy to jump in immediately in free agency and waste your 5 bids immediately that are quickly countered by the other teams, and then you have to sit there and wait 24 hours before you can bid again. Sometimes patience is a good thing in seeing who is bidding on which player and trying to pick your spots.

Players are only signed when there have been no other counter-bids for 24 hours. The free agency clock never stops, and goes 24 hours a day and through weekends.

UNLIMITED BIDS FOR YOUR OWN UFAs
You have a home field advantage in signing players who were with your team last year. Like reality, you have an existing relationship. That player has a home in your sim city. You and their agent have probably had many more discussions about contracts. You have an advantage in keeping your unrestricted free agents. Unlike the 5 bids per day toward other teams' UFAs, you have unlimited bidding towards signing your own UFAs. So long as you are willing to pay the market price that other teams are bidding, you have advantages in keeping your guys.

RESTRICTED FREE AGENTS
You cannot bid on your own RFAs. You have rights of first refusal on them to match any offer they find on the market, but you have to just wait until they get a winning bidder to decide if you want to match or not. You have 48 hours after the signing to decide. There will either be a message board thread for those matchings as we've done before or something automated on your roster that will be explained later if implemented.

If you do not match a RFA offer-sheet, you may get compensation. You had the ability to set a 2nd or 1st or 1st-and-3rd round tender on your RFAs before free agency to set a compensation level, or just use their Original round by default. I'll make all RFAs original round compensation before free agency starts if they haven't been designated otherwise. We use the draft round where the player was selected in reality in the NFL for that compensation.

I will try to update all the RFAs with original round with their specific compensation hopefully early into free agency, but before you bid on someone with RFA and original round compensation LOOK UP what round they were selected in reality. Yahoo sports lists it on their player page, as do many other sites.

Do not bid on a RFA player if you do not have the draft round compensation required. If it requires a 4th round pick (if the RFA drafted in the 4th in NFL) and you don't have a 4th, we'll use your next highest pick instead as the default compensation.

If a team has multiple picks in the draft round for required compensation, we aren't using the lowest pick in that round you possess any more. We are using the team's ORIGINAL pick if they still own it, and if not then their lowest pick in that round.

TRANSITION TAGGED PLAYERS
There is no compensation for transition tagged players, but their original teams have matching rights. There are minimum bid requirements based upon 75% of the top 10 by position in salary alone. You cannot bid on your own tagged players but must wait to match an offer-sheet or not. There is no compensation if you don't.

You must be able to fit an offer-sheet contract under your cap in order to match. If you can't, we can't allow you to match it.

FRANCHISE TAGGED PLAYERS
Do not bid on a franchise tagged player unless you are willing to part with 2 first round picks and pay a top 5 salary for their position also. There are minimum bid requirements for tagged players to be at least 75% in salary alone of the top 5 salary by position.

And it can't be 2 first rounders in 2013. One of those first rounders at least has to be from THIS YEAR'S upcoming draft, and both first rounders have to come either in this year or next.

If you successfully win the bidding on a franchise tagged player, his original team has 48 hours to decide to match it or not. If they don't match, by default they'll get 2 first rounders from the signing team unless some other compensation has been agreed between the teams.

If a franchise tagged player goes without a bid, his home team gets him automatically to that 1-year top 5 salary tender and can also have an option for a 3- or 5-year extension. Teams that already did an exclusive tag can also do that at a higher price, and I'll have announcements about those options in the coming days and a place to post decisions for future season extensions later.

ALTERNATE COMPENSATION
As discussed in off-season rules discussions and passed, we want to open up the free agency process more and make sure all teams (not just one secretly) knows you are willing to reduce the required compensation for a restricted or tagged player.

Hopefully soon, you'll be able to click on your restricted or tagged player's name in free agency and where it would normally tell you that you can't bid on your own restricted players it will also let you change their individual compensation requirement there. If there is a problem getting that up before FA starts, you can also send it to me in PM in the meantime until that's automated.

You can still agree to a different compensation between a winning bid team and the original team (including a player instead of a pick), but it just brings those cases into the light more to investigate for possibly voiding the offer-sheet as signed through unfair manipulation of the market. The aim is to get the players a fair market price in an open process.

COMPENSATORY PICKS
What happened in last year's free agency impacts this year's draft in the form of compensatory picks for the teams who lost the most, just as done in the NFL at the end of rounds 3-7.

If you want to be in position to get compensatory picks in the 2011 draft, you want to have signed less UFAs than you lost. Also the teams who lost the most quality or didn't replace well will get higher round picks than those who lost lesser quality.

The UFAs gained/lost will be listed both on the league homepages and on your individual roster page.

It only counts toward those tallies if you sign a UFA who was associated with another team, and against someone who has unlimited bidding rights to try to retain that player. A signing in that case would be a gain for you and a loss for them. For UFAs without team assignments (not currently listed on a roster associated with a team) those signings do not impact compensatory pick tallies. Also do not cut your UFAs or else you toss away your unlimited bidding advantages for them as well as any compensatory pick considerations.


Also remember when writing those big checks that the draft is coming up in April and you have to leave cap space to pay them too. You can review past drafts and find players in a similar slot as the picks you'll have to get a good idea of the contract they'll have (usually a little higher each year from the next), and I also hope to get an estimate for each team on their roster page once I get the draft order set hopefully this weekend.

Once FA starts winding down (perhaps around the same 4/15 date in the NFL where they end RFA bidding or right before our draft) we'll remove all team associations for UFAs without bids that their team didn't even place a bid upon, as well as putting all tagged and RFAs back to their original teams at their 1-year tender amount designated.

Don't hesitate to send me any questions. Thanks!

Let's get it on!!!!

Im assuming its from the increasing amounts of users in the league but to me it seems that lately the pages are loading really really really slow. Not sure what can be done to speed it up but just thought I'd bring it up.