2020 Off-Season Update

[Goodell]

Will we have the draft pick budget projections up prior to FA?

Yes, that's still on my list. Hopefully early this week, if not later tonight. It will be an estimate of how much your draft pick contracts should cost. Things are a little different this year with the new CBA and we haven't see new draft contracts yet under new agreement, but we'll try to estimate those as best we can. Most years we take last year's figures and boost them up a little.

Estimate costs for your draft picks are on the team roster now.

We took past draft signing bonuses for each slot and increased them slightly plus added the new rookie minimum under the new CBA.

Those are just estimates, as our rookie contracts for draft picks will be signed once we start seeing how the real rookie draft pick contracts look in the months ahead, but are meant as a way of making sure teams keep some space in free agency for draft pick dollars.

[Goodell]

With the NFL draft tomorrow and our free agency Friday, time to pencil in dates for our draft.

Usually it's a couple weeks after our free agency. In the past I've done polls on draft date preferences and Saturday-Tuesdays have been the favored times. Things could be different this year with many people perhaps having different situations than usual, but if we stick with what's been popular in the past I propose this as the draft dates.

PROPOSED DRAFT DATES:
Saturday, May 16th - Tuesday, May 19th.

The weekend before is Mother's Day and before that may be too close to free agency still.

For new GMs, our college draft (based upon players selected in this upcoming NFL draft) goes over 4 days. Day 1 is round 1, then 2 rounds per day for 3 more days. Every team has an assigned pick window when their draft selection is due (ex. Saturday at 1:15 pm). If they can't be there to manually pick, they can pre-load a draft queue list ahead of time to get their top preferred player available. If they don't manually pick and didn't pre-load a list (or not long enough and all players listed gone) they get the highest available from actual NFL draft order.

Let me know if you have any feedback on that draft date either in response here or PM. If we don't hear a lot of objection, we'll make those proposed dates official by this weekend.

[larry linke]

I still wonder why we rush through it, especially this year. If we do 1 round a day, it equals more time between picks which should equal more trading. Multiple times in previous years I have tried to move up but find it impossible to make sure your guy will be there and then find a willing partner. A couple of GM's replied that they didn't see my message until after they picked.

Larry
Minnesota AFFL

[Strategist]

Agree Larry.

[tjbarnaba]

I also agree, one round per day would lead to a lot more action in regards to trades

[Goodell]

Probably won't be changing things too much this year at last moment, but open to feedback.

There are always multiple sides of these things. In comments that get to me, the reaction of the masses is opposite here during the draft I've sat through for dozens of years. We never hear people here saying during the draft I wish the next pick was a couple more hours away. Or the next pick due 20 minutes or even an hour from now is coming up too soon. Maybe some, but the vast majority of comments during the draft, especially when things get ahead and we do get that more space between picks, from people here tend to be ugh this is so slow.

So we're never going to make one system that works perfectly for 160 teams.

To me, we walk the fence and try to find that line that's a compromise between those who want an hour between each pick and those who want everyone here live and making picks almost instantly once they are on the clock like a fantasy draft.

[jmdaz44]

My major draft complaint gets overruled every year. I'm not available most weekends to make my picks so I always end up auto-drafting the first few rounds of picks, aka the important ones. Last year I got stuck with 4 Secondary players, a position I wasn't targeting at all. I probably could have populated my draft queue better but the problem is I always hope I might be able to make my picks in person, and thus don't prepare a ton for autodraft. I don't know for sure I won't be able to make my picks, it just depends on how the day flows with the kids and the wife and everything they have going on. I know it isn't the case for every one, but I am actually better able to devote time during the week to this stuff and would rather start the draft on a Monday.

Yes, I would like some cheese with my whine.

[Goodell]

My major draft complaint gets overruled every year.

Not so much overruled, but just out-voted as most years we have a vote on days people want to start. The vast majority most years just voted differently. Others complain about not being able to play football games during the work week while at work, so it's a mix of people who weekends are better than weekdays and vice-versa. Again, can't get one thing perfectly for all 160 teams. So most years it ends up compromising with half on the weekend and half on the week days.

There are some options, though, for teams looking to get a pick when they're available:

- Pick windows will be known soon (once finalize date this weekend) at least a couple weeks before the draft. If a pick window didn't work for someone and they didn't want to rely upon player ranking queue, they could trade that pick for pick(s) in different pick window times moving down or up.

- Spend time on the draft queue to make sure it only has players you'd be okay selecting.

- Have an assistant GM (some do here) or buddy who you trust who knows what you want to do and have them log in for you at that time.

I know it would be great to have everything perfect for every single individual, but it's just not possible. If you took just two people at random, they probably have opposite preferences and no way to have something perfect for both. So we just have to do the best we can, go with vast majority rules, provide options, etc.

[brhlbryce]

SLACK!

[Goodell]

Is there a way to turn on the "bookmark" feature before FA starts, so we can "queue" guys we're looking at?

You should be able to do that now prior to free agency being turned on. Just click the player's name in free agency to see the bookmark button.