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We need a way to put more SB into franchise/transition players.

there is almost no risk to signing their big contracts because of lack of SB.



here is some real contracts..

Panthers agreed to terms with DE Charles Johnson on a six-year, $76 million contract, including a whopping $30 million signing bonus.
almost 40% SB

Eagles agreed to terms with CB Nnamdi Asomugha on a five-year, $60 million contract. The deal includes $25 million guaranteed.
almost 42% guaranteed

Texans agreed to terms with CB Johnathan Joseph on a five-year, $48.75 million contract, including a $12.5 million signing bonus.Joseph cashes in with $23.5 million guaranteed.
48% guaranteed



now some of our contracts (no this is not targeting anyones signings we all do this because of the way the bidding works now)

Pittsburgh has signed unrestricted free agent Harvey Dahl (|G|T|) to a 6 year deal @ 6,500,000/yr with 4,000,000 signing bonus and 0 annual roster bonus (2011-08-21)
9% guaranteed

Tampa Bay has signed transition player Matt Light (|T|) to a 2 year offer-sheet @ 6,500,000/yr with 2,000,000 signing bonus and 500,000 annual roster bonus
12.5% guaranteed

Washington has signed unrestricted free agent Sidney Rice (|WR|) to a 7 year deal @ 6,000,000/yr with 7,000,000 signing bonus and 0 annual roster bonus (2011-08-20) »
14.2% gauranteed

Pittsburgh has signed transition player Wes Welker (|WR|) to a 3 year offer-sheet @ 7,800,000/yr with 0 signing bonus and 0 annual roster bonus
0% gauranteed

Giants has signed unrestricted free agent Stewart Bradley (|LB|OLB|MLB|) to a 3 year deal @ 1,800,000/yr with 300,000 signing bonus and 0 annual roster bonus
5% gauranteed


So what I'm saying is we need to come up with a system where SB means way more. Poor wes welker has no security to stay on that team. This is the case on many players (including my own).

But the reason for some of it is you have to have a huge salary on fran/tran tagged guys. There is no way of making more gauranteed even though you want to offer a big contract.

If you want to fix that part of it, I'm open to the idea, but only if Troy adjusts it so the totals equal what a franchise/transition guy should make, and you're not paying a signing bonus ON TOP of those annual salaries.

In other words, if a franchise tag means you have to pay 10M per year, you shouldn't be required to pay 10M per year on salary, and then another 2-4M annually once the SB is factored in.j

I'm pretty sure that's how its set up right now.

It can be discused. Might have to do something bigger with guaranteed money in general.

There are big problems with low salaries and huge signing bonuses. Sounds good for the sim player and giving them guaranteed money, but problematic for our trade-crazy leagues where almost every player seems like he's traded at some point. Once SB is gone off a contract, if it's the majority of his bidded value, you get an all-pro making peanuts for years and years. That's why we protect the annual cap value currently so no matter how many times a high profile player traded he's still counting a signinificant figure against the cap every year similiar to his significant value, and not just making 600K every year at an all-pro level because his 50M SB was paid by a bottom-feeding team with 80M available towards the cap and swallowed the huge cap hit in order to trade a super star making nearly nothing to all future teams once that big cap hit swallowed.

I agree, because 99 out of a 100 the team signs a long term extension to lower the cap value of the contract. Greenway is 10M per year Franchise value. I am going guess his deal with the Vikes will be like 5 yrs - 40M with around 15M guaranteed.
Also, we cant use this year as an example of lower contracts and signing bonuses because nobody knew what cap would be. When it went down, it strapped quite a few teams. Rookie contracts were lower but only for the top 10-15.

A starting point would be 10M Franchise= 5 yr contract option @ 90% of value for 5@10M and 40% Signing bonus (of Franchise 5 year) woud be 5 yrs 45 million and 20M of that is signing bonus. Comes out to 9M per.

Just a thought and a starting point since we dont really have an option to extend contracts without paying through the nose.

sportznut wrote:If you want to fix that part of it, I'm open to the idea, but only if Troy adjusts it so the totals equal what a franchise/transition guy should make, and you're not paying a signing bonus ON TOP of those annual salaries.

In other words, if a franchise tag means you have to pay 10M per year, you shouldn't be required to pay 10M per year on salary, and then another 2-4M annually once the SB is factored in.j

I'm pretty sure that's how its set up right now.

Goodell wrote:It can be discused. Might have to do something bigger with guaranteed money in general.

There are big problems with low salaries and huge signing bonuses. Sounds good for the sim player and giving them guaranteed money, but problematic for our trade-crazy leagues where almost every player seems like he's traded at some point. Once SB is gone off a contract, if it's the majority of his bidded value, you get an all-pro making peanuts for years and years. That's why we protect the annual cap value currently so no matter how many times a high profile player traded he's still counting a signinificant figure against the cap every year similiar to his significant value, and not just making 600K every year at an all-pro level because his 50M SB was paid by a bottom-feeding team with 80M available towards the cap and swallowed the huge cap hit in order to trade a super star making nearly nothing to all future teams once that big cap hit swallowed.

Maybe you find a happy medium then. If a franchise guy is required to make a minimum of 10M annually, you factor both the SB and salary to the annual amount, but you require that at least 50% of his contract is in the salary and/or roster bonuses. I realize this might be a little more complicated for you to program, but I think it would be more fair than everyone being required to spend 12-15M annually on a guy with a 10M franchise tag.

Now, if bidding goes that high, so be it, but it shouldn't be artificially set to overpay so badly.

In my example, that player is still making 5M per year (minimum) in salary no matter how often he's traded, but it also makes the SB's more realistic to those teams originally signing those players, if they should decide to eventually deal them.

I fully understand your point that you don't want someone to sign for 20M SB and 535K salary, then get traded, only counting for 535K after that, but I also think Royce's idea makes a lot of sense as well.

A compromise seems to be in order here.

Just my .02

One last thing on this, should it be implemented next season. I would recommend the following:

For all franchise/transition tagged players:

Minimum requirement of 30% of annual salary be guaranteed (signing bonus)
Minimum requirement of 50% of annual salary be included in roster bonus + annual salary
Required annual salary for franchise/transition tags includes all 3 components of a bid: SB, RB, and annual salary.

This would still give teams a 20% flexibility in how to structure the rest of a contract, but should satisfy both the concerns of Royce and Troy in this discussion.

Im not looking to add more SB to an already high salary. Im saying the salary needs to be lower and the SB needs to be higher specially on franchise players/trans players.


If we had a way of bidding for example.

5 yr 50 mil contract 5% gaur

thats a 2.5 mil SB with 9.5 mil annual salary. Which i know it takes a bigger SB to have someone for 5 years but thats basically what we are seeing right now.

Now if someone wants to add a big SB to the contract to make it a little better they have to leave the annual salary at 9.5 mil. What I would like is a counter bid.

5 yr 50 mil contract 25% gaur

sure its still the same per year. But in the players eyes its a way better contract. In my eyes it makes people think about some of the contracts they offer. Instead right now they can cut most players without much pain. Which puts no risk on these high contracts. There is more risk in drafting high in the draft than buying a big name FA.

I think that's a pretty good point Royce.

Perfect example why we need to change extensions.
Greenway:
9/5/2011: Signed a five-year, $41 million contract. The deal contains $20 million guaranteed.


Still think a rule should be put in if you have a player on your team that is also on the same NFL team and they sign an extension. You get the option to take that extension. It will be the owner's responsibility to notify the commissioner of this signing.
Rewards teams for having their NFL team players. Plus its the only option to solving the extension of Franchise players issues that at least some of us have.
Otherwise we will soon be a 32 team yahoo league.

vikingfan wrote:I agree, because 99 out of a 100 the team signs a long term extension to lower the cap value of the contract. Greenway is 10M per year Franchise value. I am going guess his deal with the Vikes will be like 5 yrs - 40M with around 15M guaranteed.
Also, we cant use this year as an example of lower contracts and signing bonuses because nobody knew what cap would be. When it went down, it strapped quite a few teams. Rookie contracts were lower but only for the top 10-15.

A starting point would be 10M Franchise= 5 yr contract option @ 90% of value for 5@10M and 40% Signing bonus (of Franchise 5 year) woud be 5 yrs 45 million and 20M of that is signing bonus. Comes out to 9M per.

Just a thought and a starting point since we dont really have an option to extend contracts without paying through the nose.

sportznut wrote:If you want to fix that part of it, I'm open to the idea, but only if Troy adjusts it so the totals equal what a franchise/transition guy should make, and you're not paying a signing bonus ON TOP of those annual salaries.

In other words, if a franchise tag means you have to pay 10M per year, you shouldn't be required to pay 10M per year on salary, and then another 2-4M annually once the SB is factored in.j

I'm pretty sure that's how its set up right now.

Why do we need to reward teams for having their real life counterpart's players? What is the point to it?

I might be willing to support a change where if a player signs an extension in real life, you are able to match the same contract here. For example, any team that has Greenway could sign him to a new contract identical to the one he signed in the NFL. The only problem there would be what happens if the new contract is for less money than the contract he currently is playing under here.

But I don't see a point to giving a benefit to having players that are on your NFL counterpart.