LTC figures

[Ben C.]

Ok, what if we had two options for LTCs:

1. Each team granted one LTC based on top 5 salaries of similarly rated (or lower) players of the same position. SB is a small part of the deal (maybe equal to the annual salary for a 5 year deal?). This would probably be used on occasions when the GM wants to eat the SB to get some trade value out of the player.

2. Each team granted unlimited LTC based on top 20 salaries of similarly rated (or lower) players of the same position. SB is 3x the annual salary for a 5 year deal. In reality, this wouldn't be used very often if the GM has any intent to trade the player within the next couple of years. As a result, though it is called "unlimited," teams would be hesitant to use the option.

Either way, I really think these would not be used as often as you fear, and many players would still hit the market.

[Ben C.]

I should add that I agree that LTCs shouldn't be a way for elite players to be paid a pittance of what they could get on the market. Every player should be paid what they could get on the market.

I'm just advocating for LTC options that mimic the market but avoid some of the uncertainty involved (i.e. is the first person to bid on my player going to structure the contract as a 1 year deal worth $25 million, forcing me to back off?).

Solid teams should always be forced to make tough decisions about which players to keep when free agency comes around, but too often we see those solid teams lose all of their free agents just because someone else tanked the year before, had $80 million in cap room, and structured contracts to be impossible to match.

[tino38]

With unlimited bids though that then supports guys selling out, getting 80 million available in some cases and then trading for guys that another team can't sign and alleging him to potentially land 5-8 big time players that never were allowed to be out bid. This just suggests that guys trade for players on a 1 year deal with low round picks because they know another team can't afford to pay them and then lock them up without ever allowing other bids. I'd say 1 LTC and a franchise tag but I could be swayed into 2 LTCs but not unlimited.

[Ulrich82]

I don't see any reason to offer unlimited LTC, even ones which are not cap palatable. Free agency is generally good for the leagues.

I honestly don't understand all the concern about the LTC options being too high. If you think the LTC is too high for a player, then just resign him as a free agent. Either you were right, and you can resign him for less or the player will get a better contract than the LTC offer (in which case you really don't have an argument that the LTC offer was too high). I don't see anything unfair with the average of the top 10 salaries as discussed. Even the WR numbers presented earlier make sense to me. Does anyone think 99 rated Calvin Johnson wouldn't get an offer in the range of 12 million/year on the open market?

Also, SB is no longer king in the NFL. Guaranteed money is. I don't think the Buccaneers have given out a signing bonus in the past two offseasons despite signing 4 major free agent contract in the past two seasons. Instead, they give high annual salaries which are guaranteed for the first two or three years of the deal. There has been some talk about how to incorporate that into the annual salary of a player, but I really haven't seen a good option that I think would be workable here.

As for no trade contracts, I think we worked out a decent system. Last year, when we did franchise tag extensions, you had several options of signing bonus which corresponded to contract length. The short term extensions (2 or 3 years) with lower signing bonus came with a 1 year no trade clause. I decided to go this route with Frank Gore and knew he could not be traded until this offseason. The longer term deals with higher bonuses were tradable. I used that kind of deal on Joe Flacco. My plan was to keep Flacco for 2 or 3 years while Russel Wilson sat on the bench in Seattle. Wilson blew up, and I decided to see what kind of value I could get for Flacco. I'll have to eat about a 9million in dead money trading Flacco, but I decided that was in the best interest of my team. I don't see any problem with any of this. I do see how this could be exploited by a rebulding team. They could LTC their best player as a sign and trade move and eat the SB. But since we are limited to 2 extensions per season, I don't think this is a major loophole. Eventually that team will want to use their draft picks and improve. Unless someone is colluding and feeding a top rated team on purpose over several years, this shouldn't cause a significant problem.

[tino38]

I don't see any reason to offer unlimited LTC, even ones which are not cap palatable. Free agency is generally good for the leagues.

I honestly don't understand all the concern about the LTC options being too high. If you think the LTC is too high for a player, then just resign him as a free agent. Either you were right, and you can resign him for less or the player will get a better contract than the LTC offer (in which case you really don't have an argument that the LTC offer was too high). I don't see anything unfair with the average of the top 10 salaries as discussed. Even the WR numbers presented earlier make sense to me. Does anyone think 99 rated Calvin Johnson wouldn't get an offer in the range of 12 million/year on the open market?

Also, SB is no longer king in the NFL. Guaranteed money is. I don't think the Buccaneers have given out a signing bonus in the past two offseasons despite signing 4 major free agent contract in the past two seasons. Instead, they give high annual salaries which are guaranteed for the first two or three years of the deal. There has been some talk about how to incorporate that into the annual salary of a player, but I really haven't seen a good option that I think would be workable here.

As for no trade contracts, I think we worked out a decent system. Last year, when we did franchise tag extensions, you had several options of signing bonus which corresponded to contract length. The short term extensions (2 or 3 years) with lower signing bonus came with a 1 year no trade clause. I decided to go this route with Frank Gore and knew he could not be traded until this offseason. The longer term deals with higher bonuses were tradable. I used that kind of deal on Joe Flacco. My plan was to keep Flacco for 2 or 3 years while Russel Wilson sat on the bench in Seattle. Wilson blew up, and I decided to see what kind of value I could get for Flacco. I'll have to eat about a 9million in dead money trading Flacco, but I decided that was in the best interest of my team. I don't see any problem with any of this. I do see how this could be exploited by a rebulding team. They could LTC their best player as a sign and trade move and eat the SB. But since we are limited to 2 extensions per season, I don't think this is a major loophole. Eventually that team will want to use their draft picks and improve. Unless someone is colluding and feeding a top rated team on purpose over several years, this shouldn't cause a significant problem.

I do agree, teams are starting to allow more guaranteed money rather than SB. Denver and Elway have been masters of this recently. They guarantee contracts without sacrificing their future. Perhaps there is a way to incorporate a large amount of guaranteed rather than SB. Player rated 99 gets top 10 salary average with 10% bump and with that LTC 50% of that contract is guaranteed. I know 50% is high but for a trade happy league like us it's where I'm starting. Can keep SB but it won't be the huge factor except more so in free agency. Makes the LTC risky, makes teams weary of trading a lot of picks for a guy with 50% of his contract guaranteed and it gives realistic amount of money to elite players and players valued within the same contract range based on their grade. So Manning in NFL say makes 15,000,000 this yr. gets the LTC tag and new price goes to 19 but 10% takes it lets just say for whole numbers 20 million even. Gets a 3 year LTC. Now that team is paying 20 mill each year for 3 years (60 total) but 30 of it is guaranteed due to the 50% stipulation. Only way this deal hurts someone is injury but that is part of the risk.

[tino38]

Perhaps also, another way to make decisions on the LTC is that with any LTC, a 1 year no trade is applied.

[Leb]

I agree with most of the points made throughout the discussion that the main problem with LTCs is that the elite players can get extremely low extensions and also that someone graded higher at the same position has the potential to get a cheaper deal that someone rated lower in the current system.

I like the proposal of the 10 ten salaries graded lower than the player to fix the issue. One small problem i see with this method is that a player who signed a contract while elite but has decayed grade wise. A prime example of this would be Asomugha who signed a new contract while one of the elite corners but is currently an 86. His cap number is over 7 million which is an exorbitant value for a midlevel corner but with the proposed method he would affect a large number of LTCs for corners. This might be desirable to account for some of the variability but still allows for deviation from what might be market value.

I don't know how well this would work or how easy it would be to implement into the system but a solution could follow the pattern of the following. Sort all of the salaries at a position then sort all of the grades at the position. Find the ranking of the grade of the player and match it up with the corresponding salary ranking. The salary ranking +/- 2 or some other value could be used to provide some averaging. So if the grade indicates that the player is the 20th best at his position his contract is generated by averaging the 18th-22nd highest contracts for that position.

Additionally i like the idea of making all LTCs include a one-year no trade clause and do not like the idea of more than one LTC per year.

[tino38]

I think that with the LTC along with any contract, is that you never know when a player is going to fall from his top status. The guys in the NFL don't really either. You take that risk, just like they do. If you don't feel comfortable IMO you let him walk, trade him, or try to sign him cheaper in free agency.

[Jared A]

One LTC. Anymore takes away from free agency.


The idea is to create an even playing field. Not to allow great teams to keep their best players.

[hoopie44641]

I agree with that