Rules suggestion

[Nathan S.]

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.

Brilliant.

[jacobsaces]

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.

I'm ok with that. It makes sense however I have bid up players I did not want because I thought they were being undervalued I can go either way with this. But I think being able to see signing soon allows us to keep players at market value. Whereas without it I'm sure we we see a lot of players getting paid much less then they should

[Jared A]

Well... another thing. Are multi-year deals at league minimum realistic?


Most players playing at the league minimum are doing so on one year contracts, right?


(just thoughts)

[Goodell]

It's an interesting idea to get more feedback on. I'm trying to imagine peak free agency if you have no idea who has bids on them or not, or no idea when their clock is going to expire. May be hard (or a very different experience here) to get a strategy for how you're going to distribute your limited 5 bids per day without that information I'd think.

One of the reasons we have timestamps and countdowns is that the "trigger" that tells the system to check if a player should be signed or not happens on the bid page. A player isn't signed at all until someone goes to his bid page and it checks if 24 hours is expired for him or not. If not, let them bid. If past 24 hours, announce player signed and trigger movement to roster and transaction logs, etc. It's possible we could re-do some of the scripts to not make them dependent upon that, but would be a bit more involved. Ultimately I want to get the best thing long term and will be experimenting a bit with that if we do some new leagues this summer.

What I'd really like to see as I put a poll up this off-season are:

- Stronger first bidder advantages where if you're going to counter someone who puts in a bid for a rookie-type player it has to be someone worth more money than offered and where teams are REALLY willing to pay more for, not just up the unguaranteed salary a little. Might be tied into our bid score system where instead of just 5% raises required for no guaranteed SB bids that we tweak the bid score more in regards to successful counters to a 420K bid must be more significant. Then to counter someone you'd really have to pony up something real and be more costly to you if you're just relying on others to find and bid first. Maybe if someone puts up 420K bid on a rookie and you want to counter, you have to put up at least some guaranteed money for a qualified counter as well as 5% or whatever salary raise, making that a less attractive practice to do frequently (since it's 100% going to cost you real money against the cap with guaranteed SB) and only in cases where player worth it and deserving of more money. The bidding system is mostly concerned about establishing a fair market price.

- Reasonable limit on last minute bidding. I'm probably too thin skinned about complaints, but it's the biggest thing people complain about during free agency probably and I wouldn't mind less complaints probably. To me, it's understandable that sometimes you have to put in a last minute bid (especially at the start of peak free agency as new bids become available again), but there's probably a difference between sometimes having to do that and constantly doing a last minute bid. If there was a reasonable limit on that (say 5 or 10 that would be reset at the start of every year) then you could put in a last minute bid so long as you haven't been abusing that, but if you're doing that all the time it's going to cut you off after so many and wouldn't allow a bid in the last hour (or last 10 minutes or whatever's decided) if you're constantly doing last minute bids and already used up all those it would block you from bidding at the last minute (similar to scripts already blocking people over roster/cap limits).

[Goodell]

Well... another thing. Are multi-year deals at league minimum realistic?

Most players playing at the league minimum are doing so on one year contracts, right?

(just thoughts)

Most of the structure of how things were initially created was based upon some realism. We had to make initial decisions and the best way was looking around at what was happening in reality as was a primary driver of what we wanted to do here.

For veteran league minimums, I think 1-year deals are more common for veterans. Usually that might be an old guy on his last legs given one more try or someone on the verge of being out of the league brought in for depth with no long-term expectations. A lot of guys who get signed late in free agency who don't have a lot of demand get the 1-year type deals for veterans. Our teams can give a 35-year-old on his last legs a 3-year veteran minimum deal, but it's likely just going to be a short term situation if they have little left for a minimum veteran backup with low demand and minimum deal. Whether we forced a 1-year deal or allowed 3-year deals in those cases may not make a lot of difference in most cases with those type of older backups probably without meaningful or extended careers ahead outside of getting really fortunate with a late bloomer who takes off in value after having no demand and having to settle for minimum deal before.

But where we came in with 3-year minimum type deals was based upon the reality of what younger players were signing for then and now.

Take C.J. Anderson for example. Not picked in the draft. Undrafted free agent. Signs a 3-year deal with Broncos and earns a backup RB job. Still on that 3-year undrafted rookie contract (and would become a restricted free agent at the end of the contract unlike draft picks with 4-year deal standards).

C.J. Anderson - 4/27/2013: Signed a three-year, $1.503 million contract. The deal included a $12,500 signing bonus. 2013: $405,000, 2014: $495,000, 2015: $585,000, 2016: Restricted Free Agent

That's the kind of deal the league should encourage IMO because it both mirrors reality of what these young players are signing in reality and gives that extra restricted free agent protection to keep building with a young player that develops into something to further reward the team signing that young talent who emerges.

That's the deal with most undrafted young free agents getting those rookie minimum deals for 3-years in many cases I've looked up and the reason why it was setup that way based upon examples at that time.

I read here about average undrafted free agent contracts: Undrafted rookies....had an average signing bonus of $4,268 last year:
http://www.cbssports.com/nfl/eye-on-foo ... act-in-nfl

That might be part of what we're missing and with frustrations from teams putting in late, lowest possible raise bids on players other GMs "find". If we start fostering bid environment giving the better young players of merit some more guaranteed money (even if small amounts from $1000-10,000) by forcing counter bids to have at least some guaranteed money, that makes those young player deals a little more realistic with more having at least some SB guarantees, gives first bidders an advantage and better odds their finds go through because it raises the cost of counter-offers where it's going to cost the counter-signing team no matter if the player makes the team or not because they have to put up at least a small SB to have a valid counter on a player initially bid by another team.

So more of the 420K rookie minimum bids from first bidders finding those players would go through with the higher cost to counter (with fewer low-ball counter reactions), but the the best of those guys would get real money counters probably and those would be the ones worth more money and deserving of getting at least a small SB as they all do in reality from a league perspective.

[Strategist]

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.

This is a terrible idea unless you have unlimited bids.

[Jared A]

This is a terrible idea unless you have unlimited bids.

I disagree... NFL teams can't negotiate with all players either. It isn't a bad idea, and could help with people sitting on last second bids.

[Onyxgem]

This is a terrible idea unless you have unlimited bids.

I disagree... NFL teams can't negotiate with all players either. It isn't a bad idea, and could help with people sitting on last second bids.

I agree 100%

[Ben C.]

Yeah, I'd be very interested in having this idea put to a poll next offseason.

[Aftermath2531]

I don't see how that is a terrible idea. Every offseason NFL teams set up a target list that fits with in the there salary cap and bring these players in for visits. These players realistically set up 3 or 4 visits and in each visit the said player receives the best contract that team can offer. There is no certain time(time stamp) when this player makes up his mind he just takes the best offer. I know we cant completely replicate this experience but if there wasn't a time stamp you would make your 5 bids even more valuable causing teams to make there best offer for the said player. In my opinion it would make teams actually strategize a plan and execute it. If teams with there first bid would just make a real fair offer you would knock a lot of teams out of the bidding. Instead teams go low and gradually up the bid day by day. I understand going low on your own free agents since you do have unlimited bids. These are just ideas but its nice to see I'm not the only one that feels this away about it. For people that haven't read the entire thread I do believe players you have bids on should have a time stamp but only you can see it.