2020/2021 RULES: Opt-Outs / Hold-Outs

[Goodell]

There has been a fair amount of discussion recently about NFL opt-outs in the news and how we deal with them. Contractual hold-outs have also come up in discussions of players choosing to not play for various reasons and how we deal with those here if future season rules should be updated there.

There are new NFL rules and agreed processes in place for the new COVID-19 realities. "The NFL season opt-out rules are simple. Anybody is free to decide not to play in 2020, and per multiple reports, the contracts for all players who opt out will toll to 2021. NFL players who opt out for 2020 also will receive salary advances. Those who opt out for medical reasons because they are at high risk regarding COVID-19 will receive $350,000 for the season, and those who opt out voluntarily will receive $150,000 for the season. (Undrafted rookies who opt out voluntarily are not eligible to earn the $150,000 stipend.)"

The numerous opt-outs for COVID around the league is something new. Contract hold-outs aren't. Historically since we have completely different contract agreements, our sim league hasn't kept players off the sim field for contractual holdouts. The argument there is the player wants more money and maybe his real team isn't willing to give him more, but his sim team here could. He might be on a crappy rookie deal in reality unhappily underpaid, but perhaps his sim team here just signed him to a LTC making him fantastically over-paid here. Why would he hold out here if his contract is completely different?

The most common hold-out examples in the past were drafted rookies. These days rookies sign faster under different CBA where rookie deals are more restricted, but in the past it was common for rookies to take longer to sign. So when we set the league up long ago where rookies would hold out more, it didn't make much sense to say a rookie couldn't play in our sim league because he wasn't signed since he actually was signed in our league. If some NFL team was being super cheap with their draft picks or didn't have enough cap space, but you as a sim team GM did have plenty of cap space here and did sign your drafted players, why would you be punished in sim world because a player's NFL team's salary cap situation or cheapness when it has nothing to do with your sim team and your sim team decisions on signing the player? So we separated NFL contract situations from our completely different sim contract situations. After all, we were a simulated environment where you decide your own team financial decisions, not dependent upon an NFL team's contract negotiations that you couldn't do anything about.

Of course however you do that, though, there are some complexities to deal with. The fewer the hold-outs, the better for us to not have to deal with those problems. Fortunately there have been fewer hold-outs with CBA changes.

But as more players choose to not play for one reason this season (with new reasons not to play with COVID concerns), perhaps it makes sense to re-examine how other cases of players choosing to not play for different reasons are implemented here.

[Jared A]

First question... will a player's rating be adjusted downward if they are not playing in real life? Seems like we have done that in the past, and that action would influence many people's votes here.


Secondly... if madden adjusts players who are holding out downward, will we follow suit?


Last question... if we do not do opt-outs, what kind of statistics will a RB or QB that did opt out in real life be given?

[Goodell]

First question... will a player's rating be adjusted downward if they are not playing in real life? Seems like we have done that in the past, and that action would influence many people's votes here.


Secondly... if madden adjusts players who are holding out downward, will we follow suit?


Last question... if we do not do opt-outs, what kind of statistics will a RB or QB that did opt out in real life be given?

If someone is on the NFL list of players who opted-out this season and we recognized that here also (as seems to be the most popular choice so far), we would treat it similarly to as if they simply retired and left the league temporarily and then came back to next season with their suspended contracts re-started with their existing teams then. Their grades, like retired players, would be 0 as we'd be implementing the NFL allowing players not to play this season also not playing here. Not playing here would be 0 grade.

We use Madden grades 100% for everything and anything with all eligible players. Whatever Madden does with their grades for whatever reasons we adjust with them (so long as we're still using them). I don't think Madden changes grades really for holdouts (as they'd have no on-field performance leading to reasons to move the grade up/down), but whatever they do with any players grade (whether active, holdout, whatever) we use the objective madden grade for all eligible players and adjust however they update their grades.

The only time we don't has to do with the problem of players who get cut in the off-season and end up out of the league. That's problematic since then Madden no longer updates them since not on an NFL roster. Maybe an old veteran with good reputation but getting over-the-hill or facing new injuries had a strong off-season grade but got cut in reality before the season and nobody else wanted him so he never has his madden grade updated ever again (unless he officially retires and we turn it to zero as no longer eligible to play as retired). But if he doesn't retire and working to get back in the league, his grade would stay frozen here at a high off-season grade that wouldn't be updated since Madden only updates players on teams. So instead of being washed up out of the league with low value in reality, he'd remain great here and with no chance of injury or grade drop all season. So we take that extra step of checking NFL rosters after week 4 and cutting the grades of all players out of the league now by 25% -- at least until they get back in the league at which time Madden would update their grades again. But that's the only time our grades here are not 100% madden for eligible players.

To that last question, if we didn't honor opt-outs we'd have to look more into the operational problems that presents for how we've always run games based upon real-time game data each week. I wouldn't really see us reprogramming game simulations or making massive changes there. The default position that matches how we've always handled every case of a player who was active for a game but didn't have any stats would be to have the sim use a default update for them that tends to be fairly mediocre but gets adjusted with grade dis/advantages. Just like if your sim team only had poor backup young QBs on your roster who weren't starting NFL games, they still get stats for the simulator to use if you start them with no real game stats but it uses generic default updates. Usually those not great for your team unless you have massive grade advantages that boost mediocre default updates.

[bpboguta1483]

Will opt outs count against the 53 man roster? My guess is that it shouldn't, and another question is will there be an expanded practice squad as it has been bumped to 16 for this year with 4 of them being protected from being poached from other rosters? Or do we still have to match the qualifying offer that another team proposes?

[Goodell]

Will opt outs count against the 53 man roster? My guess is that it shouldn't, and another question is will there be an expanded practice squad as it has been bumped to 16 for this year with 4 of them being protected from being poached from other rosters? Or do we still have to match the qualifying offer that another team proposes?

Roster limits and practice squads were already changing this year with the new CBA and we were already adjusting up with them. I would imagine we may adjust limits further where it's possible. We aren't going to re-program our site, though, for short-term real life things that aren't as relevant to sim world and just temporary that would have to be undone soon. I don't see us, for example, re-writing programming around some practice squad players being different from other practice squad players, etc. It's a massive amount of work and changing things for a temporary situation that might not even come up if pro football eventually went the way of college football, so with a lot of uncertainty and possibility of those kinds of temporary rules changing even more on the fly as the NFL dealt with real issues, we can't re-do all our roster management programming for everything COVID related.

Opt-outs wouldn't count against the active roster. I assume that's the case with NFL since those guys aren't going to play but still need to dig on all the specifics. We'd treat them similarly to a temporary retirement and then returning to the league a year later with their contract picking back up then where it left off, outside of other research into how the NFL's doing that which contradicts that intent.

Even before COVID the NFL's new CBA made practice squads and active roster spots more complicated with ability of teams to elevate either one or two players from its practice squad on game day. We weren't going to change our programming to that degree of teams having to log in on Sunday mornings and move two practice squad players to active players. Just too complicated of a change and unnecessary with how the games are simmed. But we recognize that rule shift and implemented it in a different way allowing 55 active players as the team roster pages say.

Changing the limit for practice squad additions per team is easy to adjust, so I'd think we'll likely go with whatever the NFL limit is for practice squad totals. Changing how things work entirely with practice squads and treating some different from others would be much more challenging and I wouldn't see us doing that, other than if they stopped being temporary and became permanent in which case we'd plan to re-write some things for permanent changes there.

[bpboguta1483]

Thank you for clearing that up, yeah no need to rewrite scripts and other things its a lot of work so whether its 12 or 16 same rules someone makes an offer, I either match and activate or lose that player.

[dcpuck]

Appreciate all the hard work. Sounds like a great plan in place.

Will opt outs count against the 53 man roster? My guess is that it shouldn't, and another question is will there be an expanded practice squad as it has been bumped to 16 for this year with 4 of them being protected from being poached from other rosters? Or do we still have to match the qualifying offer that another team proposes?

Roster limits and practice squads were already changing this year with the new CBA and we were already adjusting up with them. I would imagine we may adjust limits further where it's possible. We aren't going to re-program our site, though, for short-term real life things that aren't as relevant to sim world and just temporary that would have to be undone soon. I don't see us, for example, re-writing programming around some practice squad players being different from other practice squad players, etc. It's a massive amount of work and changing things for a temporary situation that might not even come up if pro football eventually went the way of college football, so with a lot of uncertainty and possibility of those kinds of temporary rules changing even more on the fly as the NFL dealt with real issues, we can't re-do all our roster management programming for everything COVID related.

Opt-outs wouldn't count against the active roster. I assume that's the case with NFL since those guys aren't going to play but still need to dig on all the specifics. We'd treat them similarly to a temporary retirement and then returning to the league a year later with their contract picking back up then where it left off, outside of other research into how the NFL's doing that which contradicts that intent.

Even before COVID the NFL's new CBA made practice squads and active roster spots more complicated with ability of teams to elevate either one or two players from its practice squad on game day. We weren't going to change our programming to that degree of teams having to log in on Sunday mornings and move two practice squad players to active players. Just too complicated of a change and unnecessary with how the games are simmed. But we recognize that rule shift and implemented it in a different way allowing 55 active players as the team roster pages say.

Changing the limit for practice squad additions per team is easy to adjust, so I'd think we'll likely go with whatever the NFL limit is for practice squad totals. Changing how things work entirely with practice squads and treating some different from others would be much more challenging and I wouldn't see us doing that, other than if they stopped being temporary and became permanent in which case we'd plan to re-write some things for permanent changes there.

[Goodell]

CONCLUSION: With overwhelming 50-10 support, we'll incorporate NFL opt-outs due to COVID-19 this season. I have updated the database. Let me know if I missed someone from your team. Here is a list of guys opted-out: https://www.nbcsports.com/boston/patrio ... 020-season

We made their 2020 salary zero and moved it to 2021 (as well as subsequent contract years all moved down one season). We also zeroed out the annual signing bonus per year this season, so their financial impact is zero. Their contracts will pick back up where they left off next season with salary and sb/yr. They also won't appear on the dept charts so their grades are essentially zeroed out also for no impact (may turn them to 0 depending on how grade updates are going to go with some changes with the madden site).

No changes with hold-outs in future seasons (at least at this time), as most voted to not change anything there but more mixed opinions on that so something to perhaps examine again in future seasons.