Proposal

[charlie813brown]

With all the cap cutting moves that are needed, I am wondering about the feasibility of allowing a team to cut a player but retain rights in FA to not count against their total number of FA bids in 24 hours. This would only be a small advantage and maybe could only be applied to a certain number of players each year, what do we think?

[Royce R]

its worth talking about.

almost like renegotiating?

[charlie813brown]

Yes, except everyone would get a crack at them, much like the real world, but you would be given the slight advantage of not using one of your bids on them.

[Goodell]

Possibly... the thought for something similar this year was the additional contract restructuring to be allowed. We've always allowed one, but were going to allow at least two this year for situations somewhat like this would be for with a player making too much under the cap now but a team wanting to retain him at a renegotiated salary. For the built-in restructurings, that cuts their salary by half this year (deferred to later) and adds a little SB. We'd have additional options of doing that this year with built-in programming.

We could possibly add this too, but would be another type of transaction (acting slightly different from cutting a player) to built into the system. Suggestions always welcome, and an interesting one perhaps here. If wildly popular in feedback, we can look at adding that programming for different type of "cutting" a player and tracking that, but the additional contract restructuring was the intended avenue for those types of cost-cutting actions.

[RebelFan]

Sounds like a pretty good idea to me

[Ben C.]

With all the cap cutting moves that are needed, I am wondering about the feasibility of allowing a team to cut a player but retain rights in FA to not count against their total number of FA bids in 24 hours. This would only be a small advantage and maybe could only be applied to a certain number of players each year, what do we think?

I'd be against this I think. The team that cuts a player takes the risk of losing them to another team. That's different from the team who has an unrestricted free agent because in real life if that team wanted to keep them they would've re-signed them before they hit the market.

One way this might make sense to me would be to make it available only for certain veteran players that have played for the team for X number of years. Then it would work like a hometown discount.

[Jared A]

I like the idea. As the team would only have matching rights. There'd be a chance that his contract would actually be more expensive than the previous one. But, I would say it shouldnt' be allowed until week 2 of free agency. That way there's not the "sneak" bids. Another option would be not to allow the team to bid on him... only match offers.


Another option would be to allow the team to match at 105% of the highest offer.

[charlie813brown]

I didn't mean it as matching rights, I just meant it as a way to cut players but then not fill up your bids on resigning them. The only advantage would be that it wouldn't count against your 5 bids in 24 hours and I like the wrinkle of the player has to be on your team a certain time or be a certain number of years in the league if possible.

[Leb]

I don't really like the idea very much. If a player is that important the GM has to find a way to make his salary fit within the cap. If he is cut because of cap reasons but is still important to the team, there should be no issue using one of the five bids on them. Additionally the realism of cutting a player then actually having an advantage in signing him is false. Look at the cases of Nate Clements or Lofa Tatupu. They didn't want to take the lower salary, the team cut them, then the players had zero interest in returning to the team that cut them.

[Strategist]

I don't really like the idea very much. If a player is that important the GM has to find a way to make his salary fit within the cap. If he is cut because of cap reasons but is still important to the team, there should be no issue using one of the five bids on them. Additionally the realism of cutting a player then actually having an advantage in signing him is false. Look at the cases of Nate Clements or Lofa Tatupu. They didn't want to take the lower salary, the team cut them, then the players had zero interest in returning to the team that cut them.

I would have to agree with this point. It seems like maybe a 50/50 split in real life between the players that would want to play for the same team after being cut and just going out and finding a new team. Therefore I don't think a team should be given any advantage in signing a FA that they cut.