Here's what you should be able to do now:
- Check-in on your team roster page
- Long-term contract extensions
- Franchise or Transition tags
- Restricted free agent (RFA) tenders
- Pick up 5th year options and offer immediate extensions
- Player cuts
- Check the top and bottom of your team roster page for those options.
For new players, teams get 2 long-term contract extensions (LTC) each year. You want to check those prior to tagging players. The LTC price given to you by the sim player's sim agent is based upon calculations of players of similar grade and position. The intention is that if a team is willing to pay a fair price for a homegrown player, that they can sign them to an extension -- but in some cases depending upon various factors of what players at that position in your league are being paid, you may have to pay a little more to keep them from testing the market. You can sign pending free agents or players with 1 year left under contract to LTCs. You have all year to use your LTCs if you want.
Franchise and transition tags are designed to be similar to the NFL. Because of their high cost, you shouldn't tag a player unless they are elite (top 5 or top 10 at their position). If you have interest in tagging and trading a player, you need to accept the 1-year franchise tag option where the player signs their tender immediately and is under a 1-year contract that you can deal like any active roster player. That's the only way to trade a pending free agent is to sign them to that 1-year tender. You can't deal the rights to a player not under contract with anyone. If you do a non-exclusive franchise tag, you can match any offer or get 2 first round picks. If you transition tag a player, you don't get any compensation but can match any offer.
Teams have UNLIMITED bidding on their own unrestricted free agents (UFA), so if you are hesitant to pay high LTC or tag prices just know that you still have advantages in re-signing your own players with unlimited bids on them while other teams are limited to 5 bids per day on other teams' players.
Don't cut players who are UFA free agents. Even if you don't care to sign them, if other teams do and they are associated with your team it helps with possible compensatory picks to lose more UFAs than you sign. If you do cut a player in the off-season, their 2021 unguaranteed salary goes away but you owe the remaining guaranteed signing bonus left as a cap hit.
For restricted free agents (RFAs) who have less than 4 years experience and were on your active roster to end last season (not practice squad), you can chose to give them a 1st, 2nd or original round tender. You have the option to match any contract given to a restricted free agent. For 1st/2nd round tenders, you get those draft picks if you don't match. For original round tenders, we use the ACTUAL NFL round of the player in real life (not sim draft). If they were drafted in the 7th round in reality and you give them an original round tender, you could get a 7th rounder if you don't match. If they were undrafted in reality, you'd get no compensation unless you offer them a 1st/2nd round tender. If the RFA isn't worth the tender amounts, you can choose to turn them into unrestricted free agents also where you'd have unlimited bidding to try to keep but no matching rights or compensation.
Send me a PM if you have any questions or are confused. Better to ask than make mistakes, and I'm glad to help (especially new GMs).
If no problems with these activities being turned on, we'll move onto the next set of functions like contract restructuring and trades in the coming days.
Keep an eye on this thread for any off-season announcements.