2013 RULES: Off-Season Rosters and Cap

[hoopie44641]

I changed my vote to
Yes - Use NFL rules of 90 man roster limit in off-season (53 active in season). because after I thought about it. It makes since because it is what the NFL does.

[RebelFan]

I voted yes to the 90 man roster (obviously), and I voted for the top 53 to count against the cap so that Troy doesn't have to do any extra work or programming for the negligible or even non-existant benefits of adhering to the actual NFL rule of 51.
I think everyone participating in these discussions should bear in mind that Commish works very hard on this league despite having a job, family, life outside of this league. I think the primary focus of these off-season discussions should be streamlining the league & making it easier for him to manage going forward. Especially nit-picky stuff like whether the top 53 or top 51 salaries count during the offseason.

[Zapotek]

I voted for the 51 just because it's what the NFL does, but would absolutely vote for the 53 if it makes any difference to the difficulty of the programming. The 52nd and 53rd guys are going to be pulling pretty negligible salaries anyway.

[Goodell]

If people remain for this, I'll probably try to work out some mixture of the two in terms of information for the GM to manage his roster.

At the bottom where it adds up all the current salaries now, in the off-season it might show both a Rule of 51 salary cap total as well as the top 53 salaries on the next line so that it's easier on teams to know their financial situation as they cut down to the final roster. On the main rosters page where it lists all the teams and their available cap space across the league, it would pull in that rule of 51 total and any cap violations in the off-season would be based upon that figure, but we'd share more info with the GMs on their team pages.

For generated salary cap estimates on trades, especially this first year, it might have to do some assumptions that guys involved in a trade are likely to impact their top 51 salaries (or have salaries so small as to not make a huge difference on the estimate) and do the estimates as it's been doing them otherwise until we can eventually tweak some of that further down the line.

[Goodell]

Per popular support, we'll institute off-season roster rules based upon NFL practices of 90 man limits during the off-season with the top 51 players counting against your off-season cap.

Once the regular season starts, teams need to be cut down to 53 man rosters and all will count against the cap at that time in the regular season.

I will adjust our team rosters for that prior to free agency in April.

[RebelFan]

And there was much rejoicing!

I know it's probably late in the offseason discussions to bring this up, but what about instituting a PUP list?

[Ben C.]

Related question - should we implement roster cutdowns to 80 and 75 (or whatever the NFL numbers are, I can't find them quickly enough right now) in addition to the cut down to 53?

[Goodell]

Last year there were last minute changes to NFL injury lists that I deemed to involved for us to quickly institute into our sim systems (such as a player designated for IR but eligible to return). I mentioned we'd attempt to get those in the future. We'll institute that and PUP this year if we can, although information on those lists wasn't published on NFL.com transactions list always I was thinking last year causing us to miss guys sometimes who went on IR-Return lists.

We can look at roster cut downs from 90. I read somewhere: Under NFL bylaws first active list cut-downs are on Tuesday after the third preseason weekend with final cuts on Saturday after week four of the preseason, which usually ends on Thursday.

That's kind of a tight window. I think for this first year, we might use those as guidelines to send out reminders to teams at those times that they need to be cut down to 53 soon. Part of the issue for us is we don't see all the guys in practice like the coaches making cuts earlier, and often won't see a lot of them until the very last preseason games where the guys lower on the roster get the most playing time.

So perhaps for this year in this first season of this change keeping hard to the 53 man roster cut-down date before regular season primarily, but we can think about other cut-down dates and perhaps discuss more when it rolls around to that time this season to see if those would make sense to add ahead.

[RebelFan]

We can look at roster cut downs from 90. I read somewhere: Under NFL bylaws first active list cut-downs are on Tuesday after the third preseason weekend with final cuts on Saturday after week four of the preseason, which usually ends on Thursday.
That's kind of a tight window. I think for this first year, we might use those as guidelines to send out reminders to teams at those times that they need to be cut down to 53 soon. Part of the issue for us is we don't see all the guys in practice like the coaches making cuts earlier, and often won't see a lot of them until the very last preseason games where the guys lower on the roster get the most playing time.

I agree with this 100%. I think that's one issue in particular where we need all the time we can get for player evaluation, as we try to mimic reality more, and incorporate more real-NFL based deadlines, it's important for us to keep in mind that we as GMs don't get to see the guys in practice as the real-life GMs working off the same deadlines have.
I think that can easily apply to drafted rookies as well as there has seemingly been a push in recent years to get them signed earlier. But we as GMs don't get much opportunity to evaluate a 6th/7th rd pick without having to give them a SB. When you have a lot of 6th/7th picks, that can be quite expensive, though I understand that a part of that is payment for exclusive access to the player via draft, we still need all the time we can get to make informed personnel decisions.