2020 Off-Season Update

[Knighty Knight]

I have 54 active players on my AFFL Giants roster. However, it says I have less than 53 and I am being charged a $610k cap hold for an open roster spot.

I do not see this $610k cap charge reflected in the top 53 salaries table. I think it may just be an error in messaging since we updated roster size to 55 but wanted to make Goodell aware of it.

I just put another player on IR and confirmed there are cap holds being charged for roster spots 54 and 55. I currently have 53 men on my active roster for AFFL Giants.

[tjbarnaba]

Will there be another grade update before our week 1 kickoff?

[Goodell]

Will there be another grade update before our week 1 kickoff?

It depends upon what Madden does. If they do one before NFL games played for week 1, we'll update before our sim games played. I kind of doubt it since there would be nothing to justify a grade change between then and now with no preseason games even. I would think we'd get a new batch of grades from them after week 1 going into week 2, but we'll update whenever they do their updates either way.

[Goodell]

The football season is really here. Kind of snuck up without the preseason warm-ups, but the first NFL game of week 1 is tomorrow night with Houston at KC. Then we've got a full slate of NFL games on Sunday and Monday.

For those new to FanGM, here's what to expect.

We'll lock depth charts for players from KC and HOU tomorrow night. You can't change your depth chart for a player after the fact already knowing their results. You can't, for example, start Mahomes in your depth chart before the game but then switch him out of your starting QB after the game if he throws 5 interceptions. You have to set your depth chart BEFORE knowing the results of games. So we lock the depth chart for only KC/HOU players before that game.

Depth charts remain unlocked for everyone else until Sunday morning. We'll lock depth charts for everyone on Sunday when the morning's NFL games start. You cannot make depth chart changes from then until after we sim our version of week 1.

At the start of a new year we always have a lot of out-of-date depth charts with all the player movement....

Please go in and adjust your depth chart for the new season now.

Also make sure you've cut down to 55 players or less on the active roster and that you're under the salary cap.

Teams have to be in compliance before NFL games start Sunday morning. For the teams that are not in compliance, the league has to take some actions this weekend. That could include GM replacement or league-mandated transactions that get teams into compliance. Teams without depth chart updates get the league going in and updating them for them based upon highest grades. We aren't going to sim any games until all teams in their league are compliant one way or another.

We'll add the injury status from the NFL's official injury list this weekend and we'll gather up all the game box scores from week 1.

Week 1 is rough making sure everybody is good to go, but hopefully we'll whip things into shape and sim our version of week 1 mid next week.

[tjbarnaba]

Will there be another grade update before our week 1 kickoff?

It depends upon what Madden does. If they do one before NFL games played for week 1, we'll update before our sim games played. I kind of doubt it since there would be nothing to justify a grade change between then and now with no preseason games even. I would think we'd get a new batch of grades from them after week 1 going into week 2, but we'll update whenever they do their updates either way.

I ask because there are numerous players with NA for a grade yet they received a madden grade. I can send you a PM about which guys if they were just missed during the initial grade sweep

[Goodell]

Will there be another grade update before our week 1 kickoff?

It depends upon what Madden does. If they do one before NFL games played for week 1, we'll update before our sim games played. I kind of doubt it since there would be nothing to justify a grade change between then and now with no preseason games even. I would think we'd get a new batch of grades from them after week 1 going into week 2, but we'll update whenever they do their updates either way.

I ask because there are numerous players with NA for a grade yet they received a madden grade. I can send you a PM about which guys if they were just missed during the initial grade sweep

Thanks, that would be great. I do have a PM or two that I haven't gotten to yet with some of those also.

Madden updates are going to be difficult this season. Their site changed to where it's very difficult to grab the data there. I was able to find a spreadsheet someone had posted when they first came out and used that for our initial update. Players who signed late in reality may not have been on that initial spreadsheet, but I can add them as I know about them.

I'm not sure how it's going to go updating grade every week this year with their site changes. If people have found ways to do that easily, I'm all ears if you want to send suggestion to my PM. I'm going to go back to the forum where I found someone posted the initial launch grades as a spreadsheet and see if someone continues to do that, in which case I'll use those spreadsheets. If not, I'll probably have to just sort by big movers or look at things a team at a time and see who were the individual changes to manually adjust.

We'll keep updating grades as they come out, but is just going to be a bit more difficult this year possibly. So if you notice someone with a bad grade info, just let me know. We may come across that more this year with update data being less importable possibly.

[Goodell]

I just put another player on IR and confirmed there are cap holds being charged for roster spots 54 and 55. I currently have 53 men on my active roster for AFFL Giants.

Those should be adjusted now.

To double-check the finances with us shifting things a bit this season, I've modified the top 53 salaries page to dig further into the salary cap figure than is on the roster page. So if you want more details on the salary cap calculation, go to this link near the bottom of the team roster page and click:
VIEW TOP 53 SALARIES AGAINST THE CAP AND MORE DETAILS

That'll let you see exactly why your salary cap is what it is. Hopefully that helps some of the financial understanding. You can have 55 active players, but only the top 53 count against the cap.
During the off-season, you can have 90 players but only the top 53 count against the cap. On that page you can see how that's counting. Let me know if any questions.

[Goodell]

To double-check the finances with us shifting things a bit this season, I've modified the top 53 salaries page to dig further into the salary cap figure than is on the roster page. So if you want more details on the salary cap calculation, go to this link near the bottom of the team roster page and click:
VIEW TOP 53 SALARIES AGAINST THE CAP AND MORE DETAILS

Actually I still need to adjust that a little more for regular season finances in this new setup. Realized I have it setup for how we'd do it in the off-season only, but in the regular season it's not currently counting everyone that it should against the cap. There are some cases I hadn't considered such as players signed to minimum contracts during the regular season who were hurt on IR. How we had it they wouldn't count because not a part of the top 53 salaries and someone could sign unlimited numbers of those (since not active on IR), but those cases should still count against the cap. So I need to tweak that a bit to make sure all are counting that should for regular season cap considerations and just that 54th and 55th lowest paid active players not (representing practice squad players activated for the game in reality).

[Goodell]

Also when you're making your final cuts remember that veteran players (4 years experience or more) who are on your roster in week 1 have their full season salary guaranteed like in the NFL.

So if you have a 10-year vet on your team week 1 and decide to cut him week 5, then you'll be on the hook for his full salary. If you sign the player during the season like week 2 then cut them later like week 4 then their salary is prorated on a week-to-week basis and not fully guaranteed for this season. That's why you'll often see fringe veterans cut during training camp before week 1 but perhaps signed back during the season once their salary not guaranteed.

With that and players earning game paychecks, it becomes more difficult to create cap space during the season than the off-season. We add an additional contract restructure for teams during the regular season for that reason that we'll add soon with the season approaching.

[stevebarrett24]

Madden has updated rosters, now if you can find an easy way to update our grade here we will be all set.