2022 Off-Season Update

[Goodell]

I have updated the draft pages to reflect actual pick window times for your selections. They are based upon one round per day, starting at 10am ET most days with 20 minutes between picks. On some of the compensatory pick days if there are too many picks that took the day over midnight ET, I started those days an hour earlier. I believe there was only one of those slightly earlier days in a couple of the leagues.

You will now know exactly when your picks are going to be due. You'll be on the clock at least 20 minutes prior to those due dates (earlier if teams before you selected early). If you can't make that draft window, just make sure you have your draft queue rankings set to have enough players you are most interested in listed for that spot. If you don't have any players left in your queue and aren't there to manually select by that time, you'll get the highest available player based upon NFL draft selection.

Let me know if any problems noticed. Thanks!

[Goodell]

With some of the free agency markets slowing down, we'll set the end date for peak free agency to be Wednesday May 4th. That'll be the last day teams can bid on tagged or restricted free agents. At that point, those players who haven't had any bids will be returned to their teams at their tender amount. Franchise tagged players with no bids do have some extension options from there. That'll also be the last day that UFAs are associated with their former teams with unlimited bidding. After that, all UFAs will still be available but nobody will have unlimited bidding on those. Signing soon links and notices of players with bids on them will also go away after that as usual as free agency changes after this peak period for the rest of the season.

Now that we're past that announced end date for peak free agency, the rosters and site have been updated accordingly. If you had a tagged player who didn't get any bids in free agency, they've been returned to your team and you do have some extension options based upon the franchise value at the bottom of your team roster page. You have to decide those before June 1st or they'll just be at the 1-year tender amount. If you had any RFAs return to your team who didn't get any bids and they are at the original round RFA tender price and you think that's more than you want to pay, you can cut those players without any salary cap implications (no SB) and attempt to re-sign at lower than the original RFA tender either put on them or put on them by default by not choosing otherwise before.

Although peak free agency is over, the market is open 24/7 through the end of the regular season in the months ahead any time you uncover stories about players on the market you want to sign.

The college draft starts next week already, so gear up for that and look at your pick windows and draft rankings accordingly.

[Goodell]

Excited for the draft starting tomorrow (at least for most leagues -- BRFL got an early start Thursday night).

Remember to click on the DRAFT link and check the time deadlines for your picks. If you aren't online before that time, the system will automatically draft for you based upon your ranked queue players. So make sure you have the players you prefer listed in your queue especially if you won't be online. If you don't have any players left in the queue or they've all been taken otherwise, you'll get the highest available player based upon NFL draft order. Let me know if any questions. Good luck with your selections!

[Goodell]

And we're through the top 10 of all drafts now! Here's a statistical breakdown with average position selected. If the player hadn't been selected in a league yet, I assigned them the 11th spot outside the top 10. In the BRFL paid league they've already gone through a couple rounds so used the player's real draft position there.

1. Neal - 2.5
2. Ekwonu - 3.5
3. Huchinson - 3.5
4. T.Walker - 5.3
5. Cross - 6.7
6. Thibodeaux - 6.8
7. T.Linderbaum - 7.8
8. D.London - 8.0
9. Sauce - 8.5
10. K. Hamilton - 9.7
J.Davis - 10.5
Z.Johnson - 10.7
K.Green - 10.8
D.Lloyd - 11.5
D.Stingley - 11.7
J.Williams - 12.0
Pickett - 12.3

Evan Neal had the best average position selected. He went first overall in half of the leagues (fell to 6th in one league). Another OL Ekwonu went 2nd overall in 2/3 of the leagues (fell to 9th in one league). Many draft experts had Huchinson rated at the top of their boards, and he went #1 in two leagues here (fell to 8th in one league).

After Neal, Ekwonu and Huchinson, there's a drop off in average positions. Controversial first overall in the NFL Travon Walker went as high as 2nd here and as low as 10th in a couple leagues.

Keeping in the trenches, Cross, Thibodeaux and Linderbaum were next in average position. All of them went as high as 3rd overall in their leagues.

London was the highest WR followed by Gardner as the highest CB average position.

Hamilton rounded out the average position top 10.

Hoping to be able to have a little more fun with stats and data on the site ahead, if I'm able to program in some cool calculations.

We'll have to see how these picks all turn out down the road. Best of luck to all the teams and players selected so far!

[tino38]

Great analysis on this!

[Goodell]

As the college drafts come to a close, we’ll put all I drafted players from the draft pool into free agency tomorrow morning. For unstaffed free agents (udfa) the most you can offer is a veteran minimum salary and 100k signing bonus max. All teams have a 100k budget for any udfa signing bonuses, so you have to be strategic with bids if you want to spread that 100k around to many players or all in on one.

UDFA starts at noon ET Saturday morning (tomorrow). If you know you want to sign someone not in the draft pool, send me a pm.

[Goodell]

June 1st is tomorrow. There are a couple of changes to keep in mind with that date.

• Any player that has a ROSTER bonus (RB on the team roster page) will be paid that amount on 6/1. It doesn't change your available cap as that's already factored in to your totals, but what changes is that once it's paid it's going to remain on your team's books and cannot be passed off to another team or removed if you cut the player later. If the player is on your roster on 6/1 then that roster bonus will 100% be on your team's cap this season and cannot be removed or transferred to another team as you will have already paid it. If you're unsure if you'll be keeping a player with a big roster bonus, may make sense to get rid of them before you're stuck with their roster bonus paid this year.
• Unlimited splitting of cap hits after June 1st over 2 years.
• If you had a tagged player who didn't receive any bids, you have contract extension options through 6/1 at the bottom of your team roster. After 6/1, the player will just be on a 1-year deal at that franchise amount.
• We'll make all UDFAs regular UFAs so if you used up all your UDFA signing bonus limit that won't matter after 6/1 as everyone will be a regular UFA.

[Goodell]

As the NFL gets into training camps and with that most/all NFL draft picks get signed to participate, so we'll be looking over those rookie NFL contracts and beginning the process to start signing our own college drafted players here later this month.

Just a heads up if you have a drafted player you wish you didn't, that all players from our draft will have some kind of signing bonus guaranteed money so before then would be the best time to trade or cut them with no signing bonus.

For teams with tight budgets, we add another contract restructuring as we get toward the regular season and I'm also hoping to finish another contract restructure option that was discussed in off-season rules discussions.

[bpboguta1483]

Question, for example Alec Pierce was drafted 53 by the colts in the NFL, will Desmond Ridder's contract be the exact same considering I drafted him 53 in CFFL? Just curious....Never too soon to get team finances in order.

[Goodell]

Question, for example Alec Pierce was drafted 53 by the colts in the NFL, will Desmond Ridder's contract be the exact same considering I drafted him 53 in CFFL? Just curious....Never too soon to get team finances in order.

Between the leagues the exact salary for exact draft slot are slightly different depending upon when compensatory picks happen in each league. That impacts lower round picks more than upper since we don't hit compensatory picks until after the 3rd round. But I go round by round, starting with the 7th. We take the NFL contract ranges for NFL 7th rounders and then apply them to our 7th rounders in each league. So they won't be exact because some leagues have more 7th round picks than others between that salary range of high 7th to low 7th in NFL. But the first draft pick and last draft pick in all our 7th rounds across the league should have the same. The difference between each pick is slightly different in each league depending upon how many 7th rounders they have to fit between those high and low ranges. Then I move onto the 6th round and repeat. There is no QB added money or anything, just keep it simple and not go pick-by-pick across all leagues individually. Just averaging out generic picks between the realistic salary range for each round. It's just all based upon the NFL high and low for a particular round and averaging the picks between that range. Once I get into the contracts for 1st and 2nd rounders it's a little different. Instead of just looking at highs and lows for the whole round we look at NFL salary ranges for sections of the particular round and then get a bit more specific toward the top for what 1st overall and 2nd overall and 3rd overall, etc. but might be taking the 5th overall and 10th overall more exactly and then averaging the money difference between that range for those costs between those picks. When doing that it's not always exactly the same every year because I try to avoid complicated situations or holdouts or perhaps QB at an NFL slot getting higher than otherwise, but I have a spreadsheet I use every year where I fill in particular picks and then it averages out the range between them. We just try to get a reasonable figure based upon NFL salaries for players around those areas fairly efficiently.