2017 RULES: Carry Over

[Goodell]

We'll start the off-season rules discussions for the new year off with a question we've asked in previous seasons. There hasn't been strong support for it in the past, but from the league perspective makes a lot of sense to adjust for the new season to keep in line with reality (which is one of the core principles of the simulation league).

Here's an NFLPA update about cap space eligible to be carried over from 2016 season to the current NFL season:
https://twitter.com/NFLPA/status/821764094596263937
http://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/heres ... e-in-2017/

Six teams have over $10M from last year to carry over (ranging from 13M to 50M!). The average amount is $9.1M per team.

Our sim league currently caps unused cap space carry over to the following season at 5M. The league proposes we increase that to 10M for this upcoming season to carry over into next year's off-season. 10M seems to be close to the NFL average, and allows teams to not have to spend it all or lose most of it, arguably further inflating free agency prices in some cases. While doubling our limit to 10M instead of 5M will be a decent size bump and have some impact, it's in line with NFL front office realities and isn't the drastic situation that can happen in the NFL where some teams carry over 20-50M some years. Allowing more carry over arguably helps struggling (or inherited new GM teams) to rebuild more with more strategic alternatives across a longer-term plan. With the limit capped at 10M, no team will ever have more than 10M over the regular salary cap to spend.

[bpboguta1483]

And I thought I was going to have 20+ million to spend, but as long as it's comparable to the NFL averages I'm cool with it.

[Ben C.]

And I thought I was going to have 20+ million to spend, but as long as it's comparable to the NFL averages I'm cool with it.

This is in regards to carrying over your surplus from this year. Looking at your team, you are about 1 mil under the cap right now, so that will carry over to next year and your team's cap will be 1 mil higher than the official NFL cap. So if the cap is $167 mil, your cap will effectively be $168 mil.

As another example, my team is about 5 mil under the cap, so my cap will effectively be $172 mil (based on an estimated $167 NFL cap).

The question at hand is how much of a surplus a team should be allowed to carry forward.

[robroach]

We can't allow too big of a surplus here. I like 10 million, but that should be it. Some owners here have proven that they will sabotage 2 or 3 season just to finally make a big push. That's not realistic.

[tino38]

We can't allow too big of a surplus here. I like 10 million, but that should be it. Some owners here have proven that they will sabotage 2 or 3 season just to finally make a big push. That's not realistic.

I think we set the $5M maximum when the salary cap was at about $137M. I like the idea of increasing it over time as the salary cap continues to grow, but I also don't think we should shut the door on this becoming a topic again in a few years to increase that amount if the salary cap continues to grow substantially year over year. Sure there are guys that will create a ton of cap by selling but it will also help increase league parity as more teams use their salary cap to sign free agents.

[RyanM]

Does the NFL allow surplus carryover? I don't think they do, which means we shouldn't be doing it either.

[tino38]

Does the NFL allow surplus carryover? I don't think they do, which means we shouldn't be doing it either.

4 teams carried over $20M+ and the Browns had carryover of over $50M

[Goodell]

Does the NFL allow surplus carryover? I don't think they do, which means we shouldn't be doing it either.

Yes, that's why we started doing it in previous seasons to match the new NFL rules on that with their new collective bargaining agreement at that time. I'm not into fake stuff and we try very hard not to have fake rules here unless we have to because it's not real people and just simulation. This league is all about trying to replicate the NFL salary cap environment and options NFL teams have to build teams. The links in my description above in the first post in this thread were regarding NFL teams and their salary cap carry-over amounts. Ours are artificially capped low where the real figures in the NFL are very high carry-over for some teams. The suggestion was to increase our artificial limit to better match what most teams on average do for cap carry over. We could go unlimited and allow situations like the NFL's Browns and their 50M carryover but because we have fake money here it's different and capping it makes sense for our simulated world to where we allow teams here to do what most do in reality carrying over some amount each year.

Here's an NFLPA update about cap space eligible to be carried over from 2016 season to the current NFL season:
https://twitter.com/NFLPA/status/821764094596263937
http://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/heres ... e-in-2017/

[whteshark]

My worry with increasing the carry over is that it will give teams even more reason to tank their seasons. Instead of trying to rebuild they can blow out their teams for draft picks and get rewarded with another ten million of cap space the next season.

While The Browns may have spent way under the cap most NFL GM's wouldn't do that because they would be out of a job. Nobody gets fired here for tanking.

[RyanM]

My worry with increasing the carry over is that it will give teams even more reason to tank their seasons. Instead of trying to rebuild they can blow out their teams for draft picks and get rewarded with another ten million of cap space the next season.

While The Browns may have spent way under the cap most NFL GM's wouldn't do that because they would be out of a job. Nobody gets fired here for tanking.

That winds up being a large discussion point in baseball sim leagues as well, Shark. The difference being when you lose, your revenue gets lowered as well. Here there's no stick to go with the carrot. I might suggest we tier the carryover (keep 100% of first $5M, keep 80% of $5-10M, keep 50% of $10-15M , keeps 25% of >$15M).

I will also state that I'm onboard with Ben's philosophy that we let Troy concentrate on the items that increase the timing and efficiency of getting the sims done on a timely basis rather than "nice to have" items like this.