2017 RULES: UDFA Bonus Cap

[Goodell]

There was some frustration expressed last off-season regarding undrafted free agents and the bidding wars over them that can get out of control. Sometimes it's something where the smarter teams avoid the most ridiculous situations while letting other teams learn from their mistakes the hard way, but there was also some discussion about ways to address rules to improve situations.

In the NFL there's a signing bonus cap for a team's undrafted free agent signings. In 2014, for example, teams got $80,362 for total UDFA signing bonuses. Sign as many undrafted players as you want, but their combined signing bonuses couldn't exceed that limit.

We previously did an off-season rules discussion poll on that which went 50/50:
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1193

It would require building of some additional programming tools, but assuming that's doable this poll will gauge interest in a new mini-game within the off-season team building game that treats undrafted free agents differently than other free agents right after the draft, where our sim teams can't spend unlimited amounts on ridiculous contracts for undrafted players unlikely to even make their NFL teams, but instead would force sim teams to use more strategy to decide which UDFAs they wanted to prioritize within their signing bonus limit amount.

One thing to keep in mind is that UDFA contracts started to get larger with some NFL teams circumventing that with salary guarantees, etc. and who knows how the UDFA contracts will shape up in reality this year.

The league believes this could be an exiting new addition to off-season team building game play, and end all the annual complaints about overspending on UDFAs by instead turning that into a new bidding event with it's own rules that attempted to mirror NFL restrictions on UDFAs that would result in more realistic UDFA contracts.

If this proposed change is supported, it would only go into effect this off-season after the draft if programming could be updated to allow for that. All UDFAs would get a standard rookie contract salaries, with a signing bonus amount based upon competitive bidding among teams that have an equal limit on the amount of signing bonuses they can give to UDFAs. After June 1st, any UDFAs that didn't get a bid in that new UDFA bidding process would turn into normal free agents on the market like usual for the rest of the season.

[Ben C.]

I voted yes to this but again I'd like to suggest all programming changes be put on the back burner until changes are made to make the running of the games more efficient. The number one complaint seems to be running behind, so we should focus on solving that issue first.

We all understand the reasons why it happens, but many of us are also willing to help out to keep things on schedule. If you can find a way to streamline it further or bring more people in to the mix with some checks and balances then that would be the biggest improvement to the game. Only after that should we be trying to improve little things like UDFA signing bonuses.

[Zapotek]

Yep, I've voted yes on the basis that it would be a 'nice to have' feature, but it's not going to make a big difference from my point of view. If the time could be spent on streamlining things/implementing more significant features I'd favour that.

[Jared A]

I voted no.


There's really no point in making things more complicated than need be. I am for this at some point, but as Ben stated... if there's time to make changes/improvements, it should be used in other ways.


Just my 2 cents.

[JonC]

I voted yes to this but again I'd like to suggest all programming changes be put on the back burner until changes are made to make the running of the games more efficient. The number one complaint seems to be running behind, so we should focus on solving that issue first.

We all understand the reasons why it happens, but many of us are also willing to help out to keep things on schedule. If you can find a way to streamline it further or bring more people in to the mix with some checks and balances then that would be the biggest improvement to the game. Only after that should we be trying to improve little things like UDFA signing bonuses.

This is my feeling.

[robroach]

My feeling is this: we should keep it like it is. It brings about more strategy and gives us more to do here. Plus, if we're going to limit the carryover cap (which I approve of doing), we have to give owners something to spend their money on. It also helps to keep a competitive balance. Good teams are usually right up against the cap, so this gives other teams an opportunity to get better. I took great advantage of UDFAs when I first took over, mainly because I had the money. I overpaid for some, and hit big on some, but it was a tool that I had in my toolbox that some of the top owners in the league didn't have, and it helped with the rebuilding process.

[Goodell]

CONCLUSION: With a good deal of support for it, we'll work toward an undrafted free agent budget limit for signing undrafted players immediately after the draft, similar to the NFL.