Rules suggestion

[Jared A]

Any chance we could move to blind bids after the first couple weeks of FA?


Its kind of silly that a player can sit as a FA for 2 weeks with zero interest, and then as soon as he gets a bid, there's GM's out there raising it for no reason.


I think what should be done is that you can just auto sign players for a one year contract. If you want a longer contract, it has to be "bid".


(just a thought)

[rpete10]

problem with that was there were bids on different players for high 1 year deals. a couple of those were after a couple of weeks. if no one else could bid on 1 year deals then those players would have been gone with no one getting a chance at them. then what would happen if 2 people threw 1 year deals at players? does it automatically go to the person who bid first and he bid just the minimum? don't think that would be fair to anyone

[Jared A]

I disagree. Maybe make it a month after. Right now there is nothing but C+ players being signed. Nothing important. However, some GM's just watch the "signing soon" and make bids. Rather than do a little bit of research.

[Onyxgem]

Yeah but then you will have somebody with a over priced guy cut him and sign him for penny's right away and be the only one allowed to make a bid....

[Goodell]

We can't reasonably have multiple different types of bid systems to me. It's hard enough to build and maintain one automated system, no less different types of systems that change throughout the year. I have always disliked the baseball simulation leagues free agency processes I'm in because it's just a guessing game (someone puts in 1.5M and someone else guesses 1.51M and wins). That's not a way to fairly compete for free agents nor does it replicate reality at all in my mind. It's more real and more fair competition to allow players/teams to solicit multiple bids from multiple teams when value is ultimately resolved through those negotiations versus having two teams just guess at a number and if they both have similar values in mind who gets the right decimal in a price-is-right type gameshow guess. I created a new type of league in new ways to get away from that and have more open bidding where it's not just a guess and you're out, but chances to compete on the open capitalist market determining the fairest price in the open.

I put in a poll this past off-season and previous ones regarding more first bidder advantages. Not as much support there for that as I would hope, but as I look at writing up stronger rules documents and starting new leagues this summer may test out some ideas on first bidder advantages within the system.

[jacobsaces]

I use the signing soon because I don't have the time to do the amount of research that I used to. I am married 3 children I work close to 14 hour nights throughout the week with OT pretty regularly. I love football and enjoy this site as much as anyone and do not want to be punished for not having the time to do research. And I do feel I do a good amount of research getting the Roto updates and skimming through almost daily. There are just way to many FAs to punish anyone for using that tool. And by the way it is rare that an nfl team signs someone that the other teams did not know about and how many scouts do those teams have? How many do we have? We should stop complaining about someone else stealing our researched players and last minute bids is also fair game I see no issue with that. Both are sound strategies.

[Onyxgem]

I use the signing soon because I don't have the time to do the amount of research that I used to. I am married 3 children I work close to 14 hour nights throughout the week with OT pretty regularly. I love football and enjoy this site as much as anyone and do not want to be punished for not having the time to do research. And I do feel I do a good amount of research getting the Roto updates and skimming through almost daily. There are just way to many FAs to punish anyone for using that tool. And by the way it is rare that an nfl team signs someone that the other teams did not know about and how many scouts do those teams have? How many do we have? We should stop complaining about someone else stealing our researched players and last minute bids is also fair game I see no issue with that. Both are sound strategies.

Disagree with both those comments....but nothing we can do right now to change it so it is with it is, but just feeding off research done by somebody else....not a huge fan at all

[Aftermath2531]

As this being my first off season in this league there has been a lot of new experiences but this is the one thing that truly bothered me about the free agent process. In my opinion there's no need for the signing soon tool or the time stamp on each player for the league to see. The only time stamp you should see is on your own players that you have placed bids on. If our goal is to replicate the real NFL GM experience then not knowing when a player is signing is the way to go. If you want a player then you bid on him not because its the last minute and you want to run another team up. In this scenario I see more players getting fair market value. Just a thought.

[jacobsaces]

I use the signing soon because I don't have the time to do the amount of research that I used to. I am married 3 children I work close to 14 hour nights throughout the week with OT pretty regularly. I love football and enjoy this site as much as anyone and do not want to be punished for not having the time to do research. And I do feel I do a good amount of research getting the Roto updates and skimming through almost daily. There are just way to many FAs to punish anyone for using that tool. And by the way it is rare that an nfl team signs someone that the other teams did not know about and how many scouts do those teams have? How many do we have? We should stop complaining about someone else stealing our researched players and last minute bids is also fair game I see no issue with that. Both are sound strategies.

Disagree with both those comments....but nothing we can do right now to change it so it is with it is, but just feeding off research done by somebody else....not a huge fan at all

And how do we simulate the work of nfl scouts? Teams in nfl have aolt of people working for them no matter how hard I try I cannot get my wife to help me out. The only thing you are trying to do is make the haves have more. Which is already to me the biggest issue in this league to many good teams also equals a lot of bad teams. We should be trying to equal it out. And the desire to get away from using signing soon tool would severely (severely) cripple our league. For as long as I remember in the nfl it has always been a goal to give the league parity. (Hope I'm using that correctly) and it should be something we try to do here as well. Even if it means doing something the nfl does not or adapting a bit. If teams that have time to scour the FA market are given more advantages then they already have be it they already do more research then other teams, then our league is doomed. It would end up an elitist group of owners. Again nfl teams do not sign players that others teams do not know about. So the signing soon tool is acting as my scouts. Your research will go a long way for the draft I cannot hope to duplicate what some of you do as far as research there.

[Aftermath2531]

The signing soon tool just tells you who is about to sign.. You can also click on the most recent tool to see what players have been bid on to help you out. I'm fine with you using other peoples research to your advantage. I'm just saying do away with the time stamp for the world to see. It serves no purpose other than a symbol for people to run things up other than just bidding because they are actually interested the said player. Time stamps should only be visible for the players you have placed bids on. So basically your the only person that can see it.