2019 RULES: Early Bidding

[Goodell]

Some of these suggested tweaks to free agency have been discussed before. Seeing if any of them are more popular than others and if strong support. Most of them are centered around limiting the players who fall through the cracks and get under-valued deals on the first day or two of free agency sometimes. Often those are players who aren't the most in demand to attract bids from other teams on the first day, but get a low-ball unlimited bid from home-team and slip through without counter offer in first 24 hours.

One way to address that might be to focus just on starting grade players the first week before opening it up to everyone. There is some realism to that also, as we see in NFL today, as mostly it's the starters signed first in free agency and then the market turns to other players after. In our game, everyone of any interest with a home team bidding may get a first day bid in hopes that the lower attention players get through on discount deals while all the counter-offers are on the higher profile ones. It's easy enough to implement on the bid page to check the grade and only allow first week bids if a grade higher than 6.0 or whatever. Then once the starter market has settled, then floodgates opened to all players where there may be less likelihood of an under valued deal if no bigger names getting all the counters.

Another way might be to say no free agent will realistically settle for a 1-year minimum deal the first week of free agency even with his own unlimited bidding team. Realistically those types of deals come later in the off-season. Only a free agent worthy of multi-year offer could get first week bid. If 1-year bid isn't a choice the first week, then none of those minimum deals slip through without counters. And if an under-valued deal did slip through, at least it's not too low with higher multi-year bid requirements compared to 1-year minimum ones. The 1-year minimum option would be available after first week, and by then less likely to slip through after other big signings done.

I don't know if another option has been discussed before, but another idea might be to have the signing period be 48 hours the first week or during peak free agency period instead of 24 hours. That would allow teams to get two chances to use one of their 5 bids/day before the player signed. It would drag out free agency longer and be longer to wait to see if you get a player, but it's the off-season and we have a lot of time and not too much other than free agency and the draft anyway.

Another option would be to give a bonus bid to successful teams to have a real tangible reward for those teams, as well as reflect the reality of players drawn to more successful teams. We could also just give all teams extra first day bids to deal with the floodgates of everyone hitting the market and help reduce times when an under-valued contract gets signed but wouldn't if more teams had a bid available in the early going.

Just seeing if any of these ideas have more support.

[stevebarrett24]

Maybe we could throw in a 2 day tampering period like the NFL somehow. For example maybe we get 5 bids for both days, a total of 10. The 24 hour clock on these bids would start at the beginning of free agency. I don't know if that would even be a possibility programming wise. If each team uses all 10 bids that would be an additional 320 bids before free agency starts. I don't even know how I feel about it yet but just throwing it out there while I try to answer this poll question.

[bpboguta1483]

What about the NFL veteran minimum benefits? Say you want to sign a 10+ year vet and you know the $450,000 is unrealistic as heck, you are forced to sign the one year contract at the $1,030,000 price. The max bonus is $90,000 but that could be adjusted based on experience and grade, just a thought. http://www.spotrac.com/blog/nfl-minimum ... -for-2019/

[Knighty Knight]

What about the NFL veteran minimum benefits? Say you want to sign a 10+ year vet and you know the $450,000 is unrealistic as heck, you are forced to sign the one year contract at the $1,030,000 price. The max bonus is $90,000 but that could be adjusted based on experience and grade, just a thought. http://www.spotrac.com/blog/nfl-minimum ... -for-2019/

You can offer a vet 1 year at $450k in FanGM. The reason we do that here is to reflect the rule in the NFL where a veteran can earn his total minimum salary of $1M but only be charged the cap minimum. This is only valid for one year deals.

[Sharkbait]

I like the idea of extending bidding period at the start of FA (48hrs). Limiting to only starters may work but I like to fill out my team and know where I can spend my money on the 1-2 key positions.

Another option is to actually limit the number of bids per team (2) but allow unlimited bids to players currently in negotiations. This would prevent the flood of players actively negotiating, max 64, instead of 160. This means I can start the bidding process on two players but can bid on any other players which have currently been extended an offer.

[jmdaz44]

I don't like the idea of FA by grade. I think that this approach would penalize teams that have built up quality depth.

[Goodell]

CONCLUSION: The most popular option selected was no change, but that was less than 50% who wanted no change and the slight majority wanting some kind of change.

A good compromise to test this year may be removing the 1-year option in bidding for just the first day. No 1-day bids for the first week was the most popular of the change options presented in the poll, so maybe just doing that for 1 day this one year may be a way to test if that's a good thing and if we want to extend it in the future.

So, in conclusion, we'll test out this slight change for no 1-year bids for just the first day of free agency. Once we hit day 2, the 1-year option will be added back to the bidding form.