Franchising a Player Rules

[John W.]

Has it never been enforced or has the situation never occured?

If you could show examples where a team wasn't required to commit the 120% to tag a player with the Franchise Tag if it was greater I would accept your argument. If

[Goodell]

I think everybody's got to expect the unexpected and have flexibility in mind. If we try to maintain the realism about our GM jobs based in NFL rules, then our rules here could be vastly different next year if the NFL comes to a new agreement that is vastly different also.

Players don't like franchise tags. It wouldn't be a shocker if they pushed to get rid of them I wouldn't think. Maybe the tags come back under a new NFL agreement, or maybe they no longer exist in the NFL any more after this year, or maybe they come back in a restructured way under different rules for calcuation and different rules for team rights.

Personally because we have such strong UFA home team rights, I don't get as caught up in the tagging. I've let my best players the past two off-season go without tagging and just relied upon the unlimited bidding to secure the player. If we maintained that much at least then there would be strong UFA bidding advantages to retain, or even a possibly newly voted different method of contract extension next year.

We don't know the shape of whatever new NFL rules are coming down the pike, and it's also possibly that we'd vote to change our own internally for extensions here before next off-season. I would say it's likely that we'll maintain at least some advantage for home teams in resigning their own guys in some way.

If we knew for sure what our franchise tag rule was going to be next off-season and that we were going to enforce a salary increase if applicable for the first time like the previous NFL rules on that matter (we haven't before here primarily for efficiency in using the NFL published numbers for all), we could get into it further but I don't know that we should get too hung up on franchise tagging rules for next off-season that who knows what the NFL rules will be at that time, or even if we have a different method of extension also. If nothing changed at all here, but we started to enforce the salary increase, there are also currently other alternatives also to not franchise tagging and still essentially having matching rights in some other form through other advantages.

[John W.]

Al I am saying is that just because someone was unaware of an obscure rule that shouldn't void the rule unless they can show that it wasn't previously enforced.

Rules are rules.

[Onyxgem]

Al I am saying is that just because someone was unaware of an obscure rule that shouldn't void the rule unless they can show that it wasn't previously enforced.

Rules are rules.

Do you have examples that is has been enforced?

[John W.]

Al I am saying is that just because someone was unaware of an obscure rule that shouldn't void the rule unless they can show that it wasn't previously enforced.

Rules are rules.

Do you have examples that is has been enforced?

As long as no one has been tagged for a lower salary than 120% of their last year's contract than it has been enforced.

[Ben C.]

I agree with John here. I have been under the impression this has been the rule. Unless someone can point to specific example(s) of it not being enforced, I think it stays.

The rule has been published since 2007. Ignorance is not a valid defense.

[Goodell]

I agree generally about ignorance of rules, but also can't be overly concerned for current rules applied to a year from now when the NFL and sim reality next year could be under very different ones then. If the player was about to be tagged this year and it was brought up, we'd go with the rules as they are and the team would have other options than franchising if that was too high. But it's a potential tag for next year and potentially very different situation with the uncertain future, so we'll have to see then.

I think it's good that it was brought up because it has been something that we haven't really looked at previously for tagged salaries that we should have been. I just don't know where things will be in a year in terms of our own extension options, a new labor agreement with new rules and new processes for us to consider going along with, etc. But it's good that it was mentioned now and awareness brought to that over-looked detail in our free agency setup. I'd have to go back and find salaries from previous seasons to discover if any sim salaries should have applied for that or not, but I believe we've used the published NFL numbers in all cases here at least in recent memory since tagging has been automated on the team pages I know it just pulls in the published number by position. I don't remember if we considered salary or not in the old days before that taggin was automated. That's probably something that should have another layer of complexity added to it to check the salary calculation before pulling in the NFL figure into the roster as the assigned top5/10 tender amount, but just doesn't have it currently. Something to see about updating that code for next year if it's even applicable then.

My ideal scenario for our league and the NFL this year is that the NFL and players union comes to a long-term agreement and publishes any rules or process changes in that new arrangement so that the new reality is very clear. Then we can discuss how much of those long-term changes we'll also incorporate, and then can write up more rock solid rules (with just small tweaks from year to year possibly for our sim environment only) based upon those new NFL rules and upon our building experience here that we can model into the future and be able to do more long-term planning with rules that we are getting pretty comfortable won't be changing much given the new NFL agreement and having done this for long enough to have most situations covered.

[soonertf]

I have to lean toward agreeing with it being a rule as well. I have always operated under the assumption that it was a rule, and wasn't aware of any different. If it wasn't then what would prevent a team franchising the same person year after year and keeping them at a similar cost?

[Jared A]

The problem is... this is not a rule that has been enforced.


Is it possible to look up previous salaries?

[Ben C.]

The problem is... this is not a rule that has been enforced.


Is it possible to look up previous salaries?

Not being enforced and not being an issue are two very different things.