Guaranteed Contracts

[Jared A]

I'm going to start this by saying that I hate them. I don't think we can enforce them the way the NFL does. Plus, the NFL has a ton of ways around them...

Perfect example, Quinn is going to be cut and resigned so that his contract is not guaranteed. We don't have that option here.


http://espn.go.com/new-york/nfl/story/_ ... sed-source

[whteshark]

I'm going to start this by saying that I hate them. I don't think we can enforce them the way the NFL does. Plus, the NFL has a ton of ways around them...

Perfect example, Quinn is going to be cut and resigned so that his contract is not guaranteed. We don't have that option here.


http://espn.go.com/new-york/nfl/story/_ ... sed-source

I'm with Jared: I hate them as well. I found when I was getting down to 53 there were players on the bubble that I didn't want to cut but at the same time I wasn't sure they would be around for all 16 games but I would be forced to pay them for 16 games.

[Ben C.]

Isn't the point to mimic the NFL, where GMs have to make decisions like this involving players they aren't sure they want to keep for a full season?

[RebelFan]

Is it 4+ year veterans only? Or all players on the roster week 1?

[Jared A]

Isn't the point to mimic the NFL, where GMs have to make decisions like this involving players they aren't sure they want to keep for a full season?

No, the point is not to mimic the NFL. The point is to make a fun league, while mirroring the NFL in as many things as possible/feasible. There's a ton of rules that we just can't do. A simulated league has restrictions, and having rules that impact teams in ways that they don't impact REAL NFL teams is unrealistic.


If we were to mimic the NFL, we could restructure as many players as many times as we wanted.
We could offer as many LTC's as we wanted
We could "cut" players and immediately sign them back just to avoid making their contracts guaranteed


Guaranteed contracts are the same in the NFL, except we don't have any of the loop holes to get around them like NFL teams do.

[Ulrich82]

I agree we shouldn't have them. I posted this in the thread "Termination Pay" (http://www.fangm.com/sportstalk/viewtop ... 726#p10726), but I'll add it here as well.

Here is a breakdown of what is actually "guaranteed": http://overthecap.com/veteran-players-a ... ation-pay/

In summary, veteran players are eligible to claim 100% of their annual salary as termination pay if they are on the roster on week1 and they have never claimed termination pay before in their career. Personally, I think this is just an added complication, and proof that we cannot really handle guaranteed contracts like the NFL does.

Especially given the point that since our players don't have agents, we can't negotiate resigning a player in advance.

[BrianMac]

I was under the impression that the signing bonus was the only guaranteed money..... well thats the way it was when I was in the league before... I guess thats changed because I release a player and I had to pay 100% of his salary..... I don't think this is correct... think about McNabb's Washington contract... didn't they only have to pay him his bonus money....

[Jared A]

Brian, it's only guaranteed for one year. Also, it's only guaranteed after week one.


But, I agree we should do away with it. We tried it, and I don't believe it works like it does in the NFL.

[Goodell]

Really important to click the View New Posts to stay updated. When we head into a new phase of play, I always try to remind people of previously passed rules coming into play at certain times as I did. That's been our rule in that respect for this year and last year.

http://www.fangm.com/sportstalk/viewtop ... 962#p10781

http://www.fangm.com/sportstalk/viewtop ... =guarantee

The league highly supported that rule change because that's how it works in the NFL. The only small difference with us is the case of veterans cut repeatedly over and over in his career in mid-season, that we/I decided it was excess work to have to track that for every individual over the course of their entire career as it really only effects marginal players for the most part who are deemed worthy of cutting in the middle of a season. If a veteran player is cut multiple times over and over in his career after making the team in week 1 but cut mid-season, it's probably not a highly paid player being cut over and over in the middle of a season where this would apply. So building new systems to track players over their lives for that marginal player being cut over and over in the middle of a season seemed like a small detail we didn't necessarily need to devote tons of resources toward or track forever. May have to built that into it in the future, though, as that always seems to come up. Otherwise, with the exception of veterans being cut repeatedly over their career mid-season, we instituted that rule because the NFL does that with veteran salaries after week 1.

When teams go to cut a player it gives their game-check total including the warning about veterans. Another reason for doing this, besides being a part of NFL reality (and why many vets are cut) is that it helps cut down on our sim teams cutting lose veterans mid-season for trying to bid on new contracts for them which becomes unrealistic if we have a flood of mid-season veteran cuts for contract bidding and could also effect playoff races, so there is that additional cost for cutting veterans once they've made the team like reality.

[BrianMac]

So I cut a player and he makes 5 Million a season and hes on the IR.... I cut him I would have to pay his signing bonus and 1 year of his contract? He didn't play a game for me... so do i pay him because I placed him on the IR?