10 Rules: Free Agency Changes

[Jared A]

Ok, then I think a team with a franchise/transition player should be able to make an offer on that player as a free agent. Maybe after two weeks on the market or something, but they should be able to negotiate a long term contract at the 75% range.

I personally like the 75% now, but maybe we should raise it to 80 or 85%.

In reality, almost all tagged players are negotiated with... they don't always get a deal done, but they could often do.

[Goodell]

I could see possibly allowing hometeams to bid too, but then Transition tagged players would be exactly like UFAs now and not much reason to even have that tag. If you could bid along-side others putting in bids for your Transition tagged player and stopped bidding because cost too high, what good would matching rights give you if you decided the price was already too high to keep bidding? Although I guess that gives a team the very last word. But if getting out of a bidding war and relying just upon the matching right is helpful for hometown teams to not drive up the price as much, might as well just have them not bid on transition tagged players like now.

But for franchise tagged players it gives teams way too much leverage on their bids to low-ball every single franchise tagged player to sign for less than what the NFL decides they should earn and what the vast majority of them do (or make higher if signing a massive deal as most elite do). We could keep raising the minimum bid requirement closer to the NFL figure, but the closer it gets it essentially ends up the same way as our process where that's the annual salary and teams given longer-term options.

If a team could bid on their own tagged player but everyone else had to risk two first rounders to get in the bidding also, wouldn't about every single initial bid on those players probably come from the original team and be a back-loaded 50% deal or whatever the lowest amount possible within the rules then for as little as possible with harsh entry points for any other team to raise the lowest possible deals for elite players.

After a couple weeks now we give teams the right to sign those players long-term if they haven't had any matching offers.

[tkienast]

can you direct me to the link about long-term offers for unsigned Franchise players? Can't remember where it is. Just wanting to look at the setup on that.

[Goodell]

can you direct me to the link about long-term offers for unsigned Franchise players? Can't remember where it is. Just wanting to look at the setup on that.

It was on the old site, haven't written up a new version of the rules as hoped and will probably have to be this summer.

Teams who have franchise tagged players who don't get any bids to consider matching can sign their guys to one of these options:

1-year deal at the franchise tag tendered amount (top 5 salary).

3-year deal at that top 5 salary with (.5 x salary) in signing bonus.
Ex. 3-year 10M/year with 5M SB.

5-year deal at that top 5 salary with a SB equal to the same salary figure.
Ex. 5-year 10M/year with 10M SB.

[Ben C.]

Can we discuss the possibility of doing long-term contracts like this for restricted free agents as well?

[Jared A]

So, the signing bonuses aren't figured into the yearly salary? So, they get paid more for longer deals and less for shorter deals? I'm not sure that's realistic either.


The more guaranteed money, the less the yearly salary should be... That's the way franchise tags are almost always figured.


I'm not meaning to be arguementative. However, if changing the rules is to make it more realistic, then there's quite a few changes that will need to be made to fix this.

[Troy S]

Can we discuss the possibility of doing long-term contracts like this for restricted free agents as well?

Yeah, I'm open to suggestions but at the very least RFAs who don't get bids who come back for 1 more year could be tagged the next season and have those possibilities a year later. But could think about doing some extension option for RFAs also.

[Troy S]

So, the signing bonuses aren't figured into the yearly salary? So, they get paid more for longer deals and less for shorter deals? I'm not sure that's realistic either.


The more guaranteed money, the less the yearly salary should be... That's the way franchise tags are almost always figured.


I'm not meaning to be arguementative. However, if changing the rules is to make it more realistic, then there's quite a few changes that will need to be made to fix this.

Discussion is a good thing.

Cassel was given the franchise tag tender in reality. That's 14.65M this year. None of that is signing bonus to my understanding. If they work out a deal entirely outside of that later that's something else as it's own contract extension between a team and it's existing player under contract already.

Let's take Julius Peppers as another tagged example. If he and Carolina don't work something out or he's not traded, he'd play next year for the franchise tag tender amount which is all annual salary and no signing bonus. If he and Carolina do work out a long-term deal it would likely have a very nice signing bonus realistically.

That's somewhat simulated by us here also, though. If a team doesn't want to work out a longer-term deal they can have him for the 1-year set annual salary amount as Peppers may end up playing for like many other tagged players have for 1 year like like Briggs and Asomugha. If they want to sign longer, they'd have to take on more signing bonus here (and almost always in reality with elite players too) but teams certainly don't have to. They could just have him play for one year for that amount and then re-tag next year as other teams in the real NFL also have done recently. But no signing bonus involved on the 1-year tender amounts and only if a longer-team deal made.

The cap is very complicated and confuses the heck out of me sometimes even after hours of research and writing rules, but that's my understanding that those tagged tender amounts do not have any signing bonus at all and only if a team works out a long-term deal otherwise SB would likely be part of that for top players. And that's what we do also adding SB if a team wants to extend it longer but not for the 1-year tender.

Peppers is a little different for the annual salary amount since he made so much before that a top 5 salary isn't enough and he gets a raise ($16.683M) as part of his tag tender, but we can't make it quite that complicated looking at past salaries and having different tag amounts for separate individuals at this stage I don't think and keep it a little more simple at the NFL top 5 salary amount and rely upon market forces to take it higher if a player deserving.

[Jared A]

However, a player almost always accepts a lower yearly salary for more guaranteed money (signing bonus).

That's what will happen with Cassel.

[Goodell]

However, a player almost always accepts a lower yearly salary for more guaranteed money (signing bonus).

That's what will happen with Cassel.

Cassel's a different deal, though, as a backup QB before with almost no track record and primarily a temporary 1-year security blanket for Brady or a trade chip (as it turned out) to the team giving him the tag. I don't think guys like Peppers will sign for less than our top 5 salary amount, but I guess something that could be looked up in past years.

But I can't really just make up a lesser salary I think they should get instead, and we don't have real players to talk with.

Nnamdi Asomugha (Oakland CB) was franchise tagged the year before with no agreement so playing on that 1-year tender amount with no SB. This year tagged again, but long-term contract agreed to that pays him way above the annual top 5 salary each year.

Lance Briggs similarly tagged before, didn't come to agreement, played a year under the 1-year tender with no SB, then tagged again the next year I believe but agreeing to a deal that time around. Difficult sometimes to translate real deals with incentives/bonuses to our simpler setup but he's one that will probably have a little less per year than the annual top 5 amount.

There's probably some mix where if a top 5 type guy is a #1 or #2 he'll probably get more than the top 5 average per year in a new deal but if a #4 or #5 type he'll get less in reality making up the average amount.

BEST INTEREST OF THE LEAGUE

I think we had a similar discussion before about the LTCs for franchise tagged players last year. In our setup, TRADES are much more likely to happen and players are much more likely to have their cap impact reduced to their annual salaries ONLY than in real football where if a guy signs a big contract with SB there's almost no way he's traded ever.

These players are the only ones we have some league control over their salary setup, and they are usually elite players who get tagged. If they are going to get traded around here more than reality, I think it's probably in the league's best interest to have their annual salary be high and in conjunction with their ability rather than having Tom Brady be signed for $1M a year with a 100M signing bonus over 7 years in an extreme example to where he could be traded and only count for 1M on caps across the league for the rest of his career. Much better IMO that if Tom Brady traded around that if the league had anything to do with his contract setup that it would roughly approximate his value for any new teams that may acquire him in the future than having him be some kind of odd discount. Now teams can bid creatively and perhaps generate those types of situations later, but I don't think the league-mandated contracts should be setup in such ways and rely more upon the annual salary matching the ability so that value stays with a player throughout his career in a trade-friendly league where contracts heaped up with SB instead wouldn't.

We could make the annual salary lower on these default league-established deals to accept or not in these rare cases for top players but I don't think it would be beneficial. Adding more SB instead and reducing salary hurts the home team because generates more cap hits limiting options, and hurts the league probably if creates oddball contract values for elite players later with small salaries for great players. The only one it would help would be the player getting more upon signing but players fictional here. We don't treat them badly, though, as if a team accepts to sign them to LTC they'd get more than the top 5 average salary when including the SBs so fictional players should be happy too.