2024 Off-Season Update

[Goodell]

If you picked up a previous 1st rounder's 5th year option this off-season and extended the contract as part of that, there seems to have been some glitches with that. I went through all the leagues and manually entered those if they didn't show up on the roster. Sometimes they did and sometimes they didn't.

There may also be a miscalculation in it using one less years than would be remaining under contract to split the signing bonus over. That would mean paying a little more SB/yr than equally split over the years under contract. If that's the case for you and it's doing more SB/yr than total divided by years left, you'd still pay 100% of the SB as everyone has to but would just pay it off a year early. If you picked up a 5th year option and extended it this off-season and would prefer the smaller SB/yr, let me know and I can manually adjust it. Total SB gets paid off either way.

[Goodell]

As peak free agency is starting to slow down, we'll set the two week mark deadline of Monday, April 29th as when bids will no longer be allowed for restricted free agents or tagged players. We'll also remove team affiliations from UFAs so no longer unlimited bidding or compensatory pick implications for new bids after that.

This week into the weekend is the last chance to bid on any RFA, tagged or have unlimited bidding rights for your own team UFAs. Come Monday 4/29, everyone left on the market are just street free agents. Any RFAs or tagged players without bids return to their teams on their 1-year tender. Franchise tagged players without bids can be extended beyond that.

[Goodell]

Hope everyone's enjoying the draft. We've got the draft tools up now, so if you notice a player you may want to draft in our sim version in May you can start adding players to your draft queue rankings list.

I haven't set exact draft times per pick, as there may be some league-by-league differences under discussion. Check your league forum thread this weekend for some discussion on that.

But you can start entering your player rankings. If you aren't online when your pick hits its deadline, you'll get your highest rated player on your draft queue rankings order. If you don't have players left in your queue, you'll get the highest undrafted player available by the NFL draft order.

[Goodell]

As peak free agency is starting to slow down, we'll set the two week mark deadline of Monday, April 29th as when bids will no longer be allowed for restricted free agents or tagged players. We'll also remove team affiliations from UFAs so no longer unlimited bidding or compensatory pick implications for new bids after that.

This week into the weekend is the last chance to bid on any RFA, tagged or have unlimited bidding rights for your own team UFAs. Come Monday 4/29, everyone left on the market are just street free agents. Any RFAs or tagged players without bids return to their teams on their 1-year tender. Franchise tagged players without bids can be extended beyond that.

As noted, this weekend was the last chance to place bids on tagged, restricted or unlimited bidding players.

All tagged players without bids have been returned to their teams on that 1-year value. You should see an option at the bottom of your team roster to either have them sign their 1-year tender or you can extend that deal. If you want to extend them, you have to do that before June 1st. Otherwise they are just back on the team at that 1-year franchise tag tender.

All RFA (restricted free agents) have been returned to their teams on their 1-year tender value. If you don't want them at that price, you can always cut them for no cap hit (no SB) and try to re-sign for less on the market.

The only exceptions are RFAs or tagged players who had active bidding underway that hasn't been resolved yet.

All UFAs have also had their team affiliations and unlimited bidding removed (other than a couple still in active bidding situations). For the most part outside of a couple still unresolved, that means the compensatory pick situation for the 2025 draft have pretty much been completed.

Are you likely to get a compensatory pick in 2025 for UFA losses this year?
- Check the homepage, free agency or team roster scoreboard of UFA losses/gains. You can't get a comp pick if you have more UFA gains than losses on that. Only teams that lose more eligible UFAs than gain can get comp picks.
- If you had more UFA losses than gains on that scoreboard, how do they compare? From each league homepage there's a chart near the top right that shows UFA losses/gains and has a link for more details. Click that: https://www.fangm.com/football/comppicks.php

If you're team is eligible (more UFA losses than gains on the scoreboard), see how your biggest UFA losses by grade there compare to you biggest UFA gains. If you lost a 7.0-ish grade UFA there but equally signed a 7.0-ish grade UFA, that cancels the loss out. If you lost 10 grade 5.0 backup guys but signed a handful of 6.0 types, that cancels out your biggest low grade losses, and only the 32 biggest unbalanced losses get comp picks so those low 5.0 and 4.0 grade backup losses probably won't make the top 32 biggest losses. There's also a max of 4 picks if you're eligible for 4 picks or more.

As the vast majority of free agents now on the market are without team affiliations and unlimited bidding, those street free agent signings moving forward do not impact the compensatory pick calculations (outside of a couple team-affiliated UFA bidding wars still unresolved at the moment).

Let me know if any questions.

I put up some polls in each league forum about sim draft kickoffs. Depending upon those early results, I'll start to pop in some actual deadlines for your draft picks probably this week so you'll know when you'll be on the clock later in May.

[Goodell]

The deadlines for all draft picks have now been updated, so you'll know exactly when all your picks are going to be due and when you'll be on the clock (at least 20 minutes prior to that deadline). Make sure you have players ranked in your draft queue if you aren't going to be online at that time so the system will pick a player based upon your preferences.

[Goodell]

Draft day starts tomorrow for most leagues! We've turned it on early tonight if anyone at the top wants to get things started. Check your due dates for your picks, and make sure you have players in your draft queue rankings if you aren't going to be online before those deadlines. Otherwise you'll get the highest available player based upon NFL draft order, but make sure you have players in your queue to get ones you want.

[Goodell]

Is it already June 1st? Some things on the site will be changing this weekend now that we're past that date. UDFAs will be turned to regular UFAs (without SB max budget implications), teams can make cuts or trades with unlimited splitting of cap hits, etc.

[Goodell]

Draft picks for rounds 3-7 were auto-signed last week, and now teams can manually sign their 1st and 2nd round picks as salary cap allows. Sorry for the delays, but our only child going off to college soon so things pretty busy and family-focused at the moment.

If you don't sign your draft picks you risk losing them back to the draft next year for nothing. Teams that have cap space but don't manually sign may have the league auto-sign those players as space allows before the season.

If you're looking for more cap space to sign picks, we add an additional contract restructure before the regular season (as it's difficult to create cap space during the regular season once games start and veterans salaries guaranteed).

[Goodell]

Madden grades have been updated. I'm still going through things to ensure no issues, so let me know if you notice a player who doesn't have a grade but is listed on Madden's public player grades here: https://www.ea.com/games/madden-nfl/ratings

[soonertf]

Da'ron Payne needs a grade. Madden has it spelt different than this site, which is probably the issue.

thanks