Changing Length of Contract

[John W.]

Have we always been able to reduce the length of a contract or is that a new rule that we have added on the fly?

[Alex S]

I thought you could do that as long as the bid was higher...could be wrong tho.

[John W.]

I could be wrong too, that was why I was asking. I was just going off what is on the Free Agency bid page. I thought length of contract was a variable.

You cannot lower any amount of another variable when countering (ex. raise the signing bonus but lower annual salary). You can only take what is currently on the table and raise at least one or more factors. Bids that are not countered for 24 hours will result in the sim player "signing" with the highest bidder.

[Goodell]

Have we always been able to reduce the length of a contract or is that a new rule that we have added on the fly?

I don't believe I changed anything related to that recently. It's something that we could discuss for how it should be in the future.

But from what I recall from past discussions the years weren't all that relevant or a requirement in bid matching because lengthening the years actually costs LESS on a per year basis, so shortening the years actually could raise how much you're devoting to them this year under the cap since you're accellerating the sb/year with fewer years. So increasing the years may not really reflect a raising the offer generally, so the years don't currently make a difference in countering a bid as things are now.

Someday if we come up with a complicated formula for all that we might institute something more complex for bid matching, but I kind of like the simplicity now without having to take a finance class to place a bid and just raise the money offered. But I'm definitely open to better ways of doing it in the future to add to discussions for rule adjustments next off-season. thanks

[John W.]

This is fine the way it is, I wasn't trying to stir the pot. I was just curious because I always assumed that length of contract was included when it said you couldn't reduce variables.

I will keep it in mind for future strategy planning sessions.

[Royce R]

I'm fairly certain we have always been able to reduce the years. Makes it tough to do if the original bidder uses a SB though.