2015 RULES: Waivers / Practice Squad Suggestion

[Goodell]

Here's possibly a workable solution toward cleaning up some of the waivers and practice squad frustrations. Pending further discussion, a poll may be added later once some of the details finalized.

Currently I have an administrative page that manages all the waivers and claims. It shows options for each waived player, including how many teams have claimed him (with options for me to send to whatever team is at the top of the list depending upon what time of year it is and what determines that), if the player was being waived to practice squad and how many players are on that team's practice squad (can't be put there if no room or claimed by another team), and an option to just put them back onto the free agency market. Currently that's where everything happens in terms of waived player transactions. I don't/can't put a ton of time into each waiver one-by-one, I just process them as teams submit them exactly. So if a team chooses to put in 10 waiver claims and nobody higher claims them also, I process all of them to that team as they put them in and let them sort it out for their own roster situation. If it puts them over the roster limits, they have 48 hours to correct. For each claim, you get a minimum 1-week charge whether your cut the guy immediately or not.

My suggestion would be to no longer make my administrative page the last stop where all transactions happen, but instead keep the player within that on waivers state longer and transfer some of that ultimate decision to the teams themselves. It's a waivers management tool for each team that's been discussed somewhat in the past but a little involved to implement. But here's how it could work...

So Denver cuts a rookie with the intent of going to their psquad (if unclaimed). Atlanta claims that player (along with a bunch of other players not sure who they'll get lower on the waiver priorities list). That goes to my waiver administration page. I see nobody else claims that rookie, so I process the claim to Atlanta. Now, though, instead of that being the final say and player added to roster and charges started, his status is changed to be pending confirmation on the Atlanta side.

On team roster page there would be a section at the top if waiver management decisions due. It would list claims a team's won within the past week and give them some options. If they got too many claim wins than they expected and not enough roster spots for them all, they could choose to rescind that claim (resulting in no charges to the team). That would throw the player back to my admin page where it would see if any other team claims or if the player should be sent to the original team's practice squad (if waived to psquad) or right to free agency pool.

Teams would be advised in that waiver management area that if they claimed a player that was waived for the purposes of sending to practice squad by another team that they CANNOT put this player on their practice squad instead (ending that frustrating cycle to many). They'd have to either keep on their active roster if they really wanted player, keep him and then waive him (incurring charges associated with game checks with 1 game minimum), keep him for more than 3 weeks (based upon some NFL rules in that regard) in order for him to be eligible to be added to their own practice squad later (if cut/unclaimed), or rescind the claim and have him go back to my admin tool where if no other claims he'd be processed back to original team practice squad since no successfully completed claims.

If they chose to keep the player but later click to waive him to their own practice squad (if unclaimed), that page would do a new check to see if that player eligible to be waived to psquad -- would have to be on that roster for more than 3 weeks. If not, that choice to waive to own practice squad would be blocked and they'd have to choose another option instead (keep player or just waive outright not to psquad).

If a team didn't sign in for several weeks or missed their waiver management tool alerts, it would default to accepting the won claim if roster/salary room to do so making that choice for the absent GM. If they didn't make an extra roster spot within that time, it would not give them their claim and put it back into my admin system for next consideration.

In re-working some of the waiver processing system and building some new scripts, we'd try to clean up any lingering financial issues there overall.

It may still be possible to have what some would view as some unwanted games there, but I'm thinking something like that might be doable and might lessen some of the issues raised.

There would also be some opportunities in such a tool to require that a team makes a corresponding roster move to clear up a space before they can fully complete a won claim which helps keep everyone at the roster limits and salary cap. That's similar to how we have practice squad matching alerts now. It makes waiver claims less unpredictable if teams can see which they won before that becomes final and decide which of the won claims they want processed or not. It also should result in more waivers to the practice squad going through for their original teams one would think, or at least less of the other teams claim to put on their practice squad cycles since we'd block that option of hijacking someone else's practice squad intentions to try to add player to your practice squad (you'd have to have them on your roster for at least a couple weeks before that became available to you).

May not be perfect. May have some little tweaks that could be done to it to improve. There may be better bigger ideas out there, but this would be a workable idea in the existing systems by slightly adjusting what we already do.

[Ben C.]

This makes sense to me.

One thing I'd add, though, is that you look into the possibility of delegating waiver claim administration/management for the site as a whole to another individual. From the sound of it, your side of the tool seems pretty easy for someone else to oversee and lessen the burden on you.

[Leb]

This issue is a relatively small issue on the scale of roster building so if it is going to take a lot of work to implement I don't think it will be worth it for the overestimated half a guy per team that actually becomes useful.

However, I like this idea. It seems like it will be able to clean things up and alleviate the frustration occurring with the waiver system. So if it is somewhat easy to develop and implement, I am all for it.

[Knighty Knight]

I agree. I think this is a brilliant solution. My only intention with raising issues I have had is to contribute to the dialogue which hopefully makes the league better. This is a very small issue (one I've been frustrated by probably more than any other GM) in the grand scheme of the league. So if this is something that is not too burdensome for Troy to change I think we all agree it's a good step whether it happens this offseason or down the road.

[Ulrich82]

I think I am saying the same thing everyone else here is.

I love this idea. I just worry that it makes too much extra work.

[robroach]

This seems like a very logical solution. I especially like that the player doesn't get on the roster until the spot is cleared up. That makes a ton of sense.

[Goodell]

I think I am saying the same thing everyone else here is.

I love this idea. I just worry that it makes too much extra work.

Yeah, it's something I'll have to see. Might not be part of things until the regular season depending upon the time (and that's when practice squad becomes available anyway).

A lot of the systems here took a lot of initial work to setup, but the idea is that more work then means much less work ahead and things running smoother on their own always. The more automated I make it, the easier things are to just run themselves and the more likely things can stay running ahead no matter different circumstances.

Unless differing opinions throughout these rules discussions, it's something we'll put on the list to work toward ahead and when it's added to the system it'll make things easier for everyone. The good part about this suggestion is that it builds around already existing tools. I already built my waiver management tool for commish, this would be just putting part of that on team pages and adjusting a little. I already built a place where teams manage practice squad matching, so we'd use some of that toward these type of transactions.

If it becomes too difficult might just remain on the "someday" list, but all things considered I'd like to knock some solution out for everyone's benefit.