2016 RULES: Free Agency Adjustments

[Nathan S.]

I have a quick proposal for next year. Not quite sure how it would work but is something that is infuriating every year.

After the first four or five days of FA most of the big names are gone and all that's left is depth pieces and the occasional guy who is under the radar that may get a starting spot. We have people who look through bios and bid on these guys only to be outbid hours later by someone who clearly wasn't interested the week prior. It's way too easy to go to "signing soon" after the first week or so and see who's been bid on and use this as your research towards players.

I'm not quite sure how to fix this but it's something that bugs me every year. Perhaps after the first six to seven days of FA blind the bidding process and only allow teams to know if someone has been bid on by clicking on their name. This way teams can't just rely on other people to know who to bid on and who not to bid on.

Maybe it's just me.

[Goodell]

The signing soon does go away. Just not during peak free agency.

I know those kinds of things bug people from their team perspective wanting to sign their guy, but the league wants that. The league wants a public, open information, fair market generating competitive bid pricing. It doesn't want steals. It doesn't want you to get your player for less. If steals happen, as far as I'm concerned it's on other teams for not using their multitude of counter offers available daily. A complaint about a steal happening should come in the form of a counter-bid to actually prevent it. That's how the market place was designed. The league sets it up during peak free agency to avoid secrets. To avoid players slipping through. If they do, it's on teams for not bidding when that information was highly public and sorted in a way to prevent steals from happening.

Every player, including undrafted free agents later the off-season, get their fair chance to go through a fully open information public market. Everyone fairly goes through that open information system designed to prevent secretive steals.

Once everyone has gone through that, later in the off-season (after June 1st specifically), we do change how free agency works the rest of the off-season and into the regular season. Signing soon goes away after that. Bids are much less public. Only teams looking at a specific player already will know if they have bids or not. But not until every player in the system has first gone through the fully open market designed to try to prevent teams from sneaking players through under their values. That change couldn't happen much sooner IMO because the league does want undrafted free agents (really all players equally) to also first go through open information market to set their competitive value before they become available to bid more secretly later.

It's somewhat of a compromise system in this very mixed opinion environment where we have a peak period of fully open information designed for optimizing market prices, and another period once everyone goes through that open market where bids can be placed a little more privately and less cherry-picking of other team ideas happens after peak free agency.

[lucky7jc]

I have a quick proposal for next year. Not quite sure how it would work but is something that is infuriating every year.

After the first four or five days of FA most of the big names are gone and all that's left is depth pieces and the occasional guy who is under the radar that may get a starting spot. We have people who look through bios and bid on these guys only to be outbid hours later by someone who clearly wasn't interested the week prior. It's way too easy to go to "signing soon" after the first week or so and see who's been bid on and use this as your research towards players.

I'm not quite sure how to fix this but it's something that bugs me every year. Perhaps after the first six to seven days of FA blind the bidding process and only allow teams to know if someone has been bid on by clicking on their name. This way teams can't just rely on other people to know who to bid on and who not to bid on.

Maybe it's just me.

The problem with that is you could do the same thing by sorting by Grade. Those with a real chance of starting are going to have a better grade unless something drastic happens, or it's a grade miscalculation. In real life, said player may have a workout day for multiple teams. I think it's very realistic to see what you're seeing. I get your peeved that you had to pay more to get a guy, or didn't get him because you didn't have the budget, etc. That's how it really works out in r.l. though. It drives us all crazy honestly, but that's what adds to the insanity of it all and why we keep coming back. It's the thrill of the kill. I'd love to have snuck Antonio Gates for the league vet minimum, but a few others had other plans and how I'm paying $6M for a year of work where the QB and team is an uncertainty at best, and an overall terrible team where he'll be double teamed every snap.

[vikingfan]

I don't like the higher contracts either. Let the market determine the salaries. LTC has already seen large increases. No more.

[bpboguta1483]

If anything, I would like to see the SB increase for 2 yr deals for vets whom you have to sign for 760,000. These are the players who will never be stars but they play an important role in regards to depth for their respective teams. $3000 just seems awfully low. Just a thought. I cannot deny with my team being in a cap crunch that this has helped my team to a degree, especially with so many holdovers from last years team either not playing in 2015 or have virtually no chance of making a roster, an overhaul in depth was needed.