Guaranteed Contracts

[Goodell]

So I cut a player and he makes 5 Million a season and hes on the IR.... I cut him I would have to pay his signing bonus and 1 year of his contract? He didn't play a game for me... so do i pay him because I placed him on the IR?

Players on IR do get paid their full salaries as they are still under contract with you. The Steelers lost a couple players to IR in week 1 for example. Those players aren't going to play for them any more this year, but they remain on their overall roster on IR and they get paid. If they didn't want those players long-term and decided to just cut them after they were hurt in week 1, they'd also get their full salary if they are veterans who made the team for the start of the season. The veteran salary guaranteed after week 1 was an NFL change I believe from their new contract and really impacted NFL roster decisions that off-season so much that it was discussed here and widely supported to incorporate into rules prior to last year here also.

For future reference, based upon the rules we passed a year and a half ago and NFL rules as well and the notice I posted prior to us doing our week 1 recently and the alert that shows up on the transactions page prior to submitting such a move, if a veteran (4+ years) makes your 53 man squad then his salary is guaranteed for that year. To not pay him for the year, he'd have to be cut prior to the 53 man roster deadlines and the start of our sim season. http://www.fangm.com/sportstalk/viewtop ... =guarantee

Before making a move, if teams see an alert or something that they aren't sure of (such as would show up here for veteran player saying it would be guaranteed and charge 17 weeks salary since 4+ years) just send me a PM with question about that prior to making moves you aren't sure about.

[Ulrich82]

I apologize because this is probably posted somewhere, but when does the guarantee kick in? Is it the NFL week 1, our week 1, or some other date?

Also, termination pay is not new. This has been in since at least the 2002 CBA (See article XXIII, https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q ... 4340,d.b2I).
We just started paying attention to it now.

The reason I keep brining up the only once clause of this is I just agree with Jared that we don't/can't really replicate all of the cap ramification and manipulations of the NFL. We also are operating with limited knowledge. I chose to release Kenny Phillips in the roster cut down because he was cut by the Eagles, and I didn't want to guarantee his salary if he doesn't play this year. The NFL Eagles made that decision after seeing him in camp/preseason and knowing his injury status and ability compared to the rest of their team. Meanwhile, I am stuck guessing if he is really unable to play (which would cause his grade to plummet) or if he is likely to be signed by a team after week 1 in which case he is likely to retain his value to me. It brings up an interesting situation that some may argue benefits the league, but I don't think I should have to make this decision blindly. I'm at the mercy of the league to employ this player who I'm locked into with bonuses anyway. I don't see why, given the uncertainty, I shouldn't be able to keep the player and pay his salary for a few weeks while I find out if the NFL sees him as employable.

[Goodell]

Thanks for the info. It's our week 1. The scripts are based upon the designated league week at the time of the transaction. I switch it to Week 1 right before I start simming games.

We can hold another vote for changes next off-season, but it was passed by more than 2-to-1 previously I believe. It took a bit of doing to incorporate it into our programming, but worth it in my opinion.

- Realism. Not everyone agrees entirely with this aim, but league founded in large part to be realistic putting our GMs in the shoes of real GMs as much as we can. Some of the small details are not as easily understood in full by us or worth the complexity here, but ideally we try to be as realistic overall as possible in the big picture of most common transactions that fans read about generally. At the time this change was supported in votes, we were reading stories about veteran guarantees impacting roster decisions in NFL which brought it to my attention to vote at that time and the majority wanted to add that element of realism. It was doable in the system and well supported, so added.

- I and others liked the additional benefit that it helps curtail some of the unrealistic cutting of veterans during the season in hopes teams could try to re-sign for less than they might in the off-season when more teams had more money, etc. The regular season shouldn't be a time to have new bidding wars on veteran stars cut to try to manipulate better bidding environments.

As sim GMs we don't have that perfect information or direct knowledge of player health or teams of doctors of scouts evaluating players. We do have to make almost every decision with imperfect information as fans on the sidelines. As such, we probably won't get as many right as we could if the NFL allowed all of us into the real GM offices to talk to their doctors/scouts, but it's all in fun. Overall, over time, even without 100% perfect information and even with getting some wrong, hopefully the best still rise to the top in a sim world where we are all on the same imperfect information footing and all facing tough decisions not knowing everything always. But we all have to make those decisions based upon what we do know and what risks we want to take involving what we don't know.