09 Rules: Unlimited Bids on your own

[Goodell]

Currently we give teams unlimited bidding on resigning their own unrestricted free agents (versus other teams limited to 5 bids per day for players on other teams). This is a significant advantage to retaining your own players so long as willing to pay the price the player can get on the free market. Teams can also franchise/transition tag elite players. We have extended transition tag here in part to give more matching rights to teams to retain important players if willing to pay the price and have cap space.

Don't know about major changes this year with FA approaching but maybe room for some little ones or feedback toward bigger changes down the road. Here are some options to consider:

- Making teams pick a limited number of UFAs they want to focus on resigning and the rest become UFAs with no team affiliation or benefit to existing team. Maybe making teams pick 3 non-tagged UFAs to retain unlimited bidding rights. But this may also just complicate things unneccessarily or add more steps than currently allowing teams to have those rights on all their upcoming free agents.

We are going to have a UFA lost/gained counter (as we did in CFFL last year) which may also entice teams let go of players in hopes of getting compensatory picks for more losses than gains. That would require the team affiliation remain on all players and not just select ones without some reprogramming.

- Scrapping the unlimited bids on your own FA at market prices and generate contracts that teams could re-sign their own players to like many sim baseball leagues do without any market forces involved. We do that for franchise tagged players who get no bids, but that's at a set NFL price per position for top 5 players and easy to do versus generating unique contracts for all other players to be re-signed at before FA. I'd prefer to keep contracts at being market-generated instead of me doing it outide of that but understand the interest and reality of players re-upping with current club.

- In thinking about baseball leagues I wanted to add some incentive for not letting prospects waste away in the minors on bad teams, so thought about creating some kind of happiness index where if a prospect was unhappy with sim club leaving him in the minors too long while in majors in reality he would be unhappy and less willing to re-sign with matching rights removed. Not as relevant in football, but perhaps some cases where teams either intentionally tank and bench top players or sign several top RBs but make them split duties to where the happiness of the players would change and if those players became UFAs that unlimited bidding rights removed for those players because they don't want to stay with mistreatment. Teams could re-sign if highest bidder, but not advantages for unhappy players. Might add realism, but complication also and would be more long-term but just getting feedback.

[soonertf]

I think the current system gives plenty of opportunity to sign your FAs. Unlike Baseball, all teams have the same spending limit and with unlimited bids on your FAs, it pretty much makes it where you can have the player if you really want him. Also 95% players these days take the most money anyway!

[yaddleme]

I do like the current system. You have transition and franchise tags to do your best players. NFL teams always have a better chance to sign their own players assuming they want to come back. There is more than enough oppotunity for teams to place a bid on your players.

[Goodell]

Because there was some interest in some kind of "happiness index", we will explore that in future seasons. Not saying it will happen, but just something to keep in the back of your mind as a possibility in the future.

It will not come into play this year, but might possibly NEXT off-season, where for example if you have two stud RBs forced to share carries (or one star being a backup) with much reduced roles compared to reality that such player would have LESS interest in resigning with the team to return to that reduced role -- and if he was a UFA that team would not get unlimited rights to resign as they do now because the player not happy with his existing situation.

It wouldn't be fair to spring that on teams, so that's why getting the head's up that it will probably be voted on again next off-season and if supported put into play possibly next year before free agency. That's not saying team's can't out-bid other teams to resign that player (or even use franchise/transition tags to keep him), but if he was a UFA the team association for "unhappy" players would be removed and no advantage in resigning as the player most likely to look elsewhere for better opportunities.

In real life, teams can't often sign two STUD QBs or RBs and not encourter problems with the benching or reduced role of one who demands to get out.

Other than exploring that further in the future (and giving teams fair warning that it MIGHT be coming down the line in future seasons), looks like most are happy with the way things are in re-signing your own free agents with unlimited bids so long as you are willing to pay the price and keeping the extended Transition tag also.