2015 RULES: Add another LTC, Restructure

[Goodell]

Teams currently can restructure 2 contracts and sign one long-term contract (LTC) at comparable value to a player's peers per season.

There has been a recommendation to add another LTC so teams could retain 2 pending free agents to long-term deals. Pros it lets teams keep their players and continue building internally. Cons it takes more players off the market, and the market already setup to give home teams huge advantages in re-signing their own. If widely supported would also need to figure if that's a this-year thing with the off-season just weeks away or more prudent for that addition coming next year outside of any short-term considerations for teams about to lose free agents. For this poll purposes, we'll assume it's a next season rule so that team's immediate free agent situations aren't the deciding factor in self-interest votes.

I also have to deal with teams that go over their cap during the regular season, and it's much more difficult to create cap space during a season with contract guarantees and salaries already partially paid. To me, I think we'd be best served adding one more contract restructuring option that would only become available once the regular season started for teams to be able to dig out of undiggable holes without my further involvement to manually help teams in those cases. It also would allow flexibility for in-season wave of injuries to allow teams some room to sign/acquire replacements. Unless people are overwhelmingly against that, it's something that would be helpful from a league management perspective to give teams some self-help options during the season for cap issues.

[Nathan S.]

I'm a big fan of adding another LTC.

It will make the FA pool smaller, I understand that concern, but FA is a pain in the ass if you have more than two high rated FAs expiring the same year.

I voted no to the restructure option, but really don't have an opinion because I've only used it one or two times since it was implemented.

[Jared A]

Adding another LTC will hurt the turnover. It will help good teams, and drastically slow down the rebuilding process.

[JonC]

Adding another LTC will hurt the turnover. It will help good teams, and drastically slow down the rebuilding process.

This.

If you want to re-sign your guy, you have unlimited bids to do so. Not everyone should come back at a discount, and not every sim-player is going to want to re-sign without testing the market. I think the current way is both more challenging and more realistic.

[JonC]

I also think it's inevitable that we'll see overwhelming majority in favor of adding LTC and restructure. Of course everyone will want to keep all their players.

[Goodell]

One "advantage" to teams restructuring contracts is that often those players will hit the market SOONER than they would have otherwise if their contract not restructured. It adds a balloon payment to the last year that normally would end most of those restructured contracts a year early with the teams not wanting or able to pay a much higher salary so forced to cut them to the market a year earlier than if no restructuring.

I tend to agree that one LTC and unlimited bidding for your own free agents plus franchise/transition tags should be enough, but it's something to look at down the road for future seasons if a lot of support for it.

[robroach]

My vote is for 1 LTC. If you want to keep your guy, you still have the franchise tag, transition tag, and unlimited bids. We need to keep the game playable.

[Jared A]

I am just fine with adding more restructures. There are a lot of GM's who don't use them anymore, because of how much it ends up costing you.

[stevebarrett24]

I like the 1 LTC, depending on who you are keeping, 2 LTC and a franchise or Transition tag could be pretty damn pricey anyway.

[Goodell]

I like the 1 LTC, depending on who you are keeping, 2 LTC and a franchise or Transition tag could be pretty damn pricey anyway.

Yeah. The other side of it might be that if teams had an additional LTC, perhaps a team could decide between a franchise tag or an LTC for one of their higher profile free agents. So they might still just take action on two high profile players (although three would be possible if affordable). Sometimes our franchise tags can get a little troublesome too if too many tagged undeserving players go without offers or when their rights get traded around frequently, compared to just giving some of those guys another LTC instead simpler.