Oh Man!!!!

[sportznut]

Let's not forget that while Vick is a great contract now, I signed him right before he went to jail, and got nothing out of it for 3 seasons before last year.

As for the cap number, I don't think its within the best interest of the leagues to have the GMs who know their cap situation already, being the same ones setting the cap number.

Although we usually vote on this stuff, I think we should either adopt the NFL number verbatim, or only the Commish sets the cap number for everyone.

If you want realism, teams who made a lot of poor decisions, should now be forced to tear apart their teams to get under the cap, much like the Redskins or Raiders have done over the years IRL.

I also don't know why people think superstars are going to make next to nothing. That's never going to happen in these leagues unless you unearth a guy who raises his level of play to that eventually. These leagues are far too competitive, especially with fake money.

Its those mid tier and lower tier guys that are going to be some major bargains, as teams look for cheap replacements to those pricey vets they had to cut.

Just my .02

[sportznut]

Also, a couple other things:

One, its easy to point out the Vick deal, but there are plenty of clunkers on my very own team.

Secondly, partly b/c of the Vick signing, and other signings by other GMs, the rules were changed after that to include signing bonuses for the longer contracts. I never had an issue with that, and I've been sitting on Plaxico Burress for 2 years on a much higher deal. Maybe this year I get something out of him too. Maybe not.

[Nathan S.]

I agree 100% nut. I wasn't cutting the Vick signing, you took and risk and it payed off. Noone thought he would come back better then before. That signing is completely fine by me. And I also do not believe that people will be signed cheap - people are to smart to let that happen.

We're pretty much on the same page.

[Goodell]

Although we usually vote on this stuff, I think we should either adopt the NFL number verbatim, or only the Commish sets the cap number for everyone.

Since the beginning we've always used the actual NFL salary cap figure and have every year except for when they went uncapped which we couldn't really do with fake money.

It's definitely something that we'll discuss as hopefully a flood of details are released as the new agreement is voted and approved, but hard for me to see us just make up our own cap figure out of thin air while there is a real one in reality within a sim league founded upon trying to achieve that realism and put our sim GMs in those same real team-building situations. We'd have to see what exactly gets accounted for in the new NFL cap and perhaps make some of our adjustments there (such as that money mentioned set aside on everyone's roster for miscellaneous items), as well as build in room for the exceptions that seem to be part of the real deal.

I'm going to try to update the rosters in the next day or two for the new season which will help everyone see the overall landscape more precisely.

We have some salary cap related rules that are more "artificial" such as a limit on the amount of contract restructurings (1 per year per team) that I could definitely see being increased if there are major financial issues in this transition. There's no real reason for the 1 per year limit other than it seemed somewhat realistic and we wanted to give teams an option that happens in reality. The new reality might be some teams like Dallas/DC/Oakland in reality being forced to make players take pay cuts or cut them loose, so might be a lot more restructurings in reality where increasing our limits there would make logical sense plus make for an easier transition for the higher spending here perhaps than reality generally leading into this season.

[Onyxgem]

I'm going to try to update the rosters in the next day or two for the new season which will help everyone see the overall landscape more precisely.

I think that would help out to really see the cap situation for all teams.

[Goodell]

Okay, so I've updated the team roster pages to reflect 2011 season. Double-check and make sure no issues, but think they should be right.

You can still see your 2010 roster as it was moments ago to verify by typing in a slight adjustment to your team roster URL (roster.php change to roster10.php) for example:
roster10.php?league=affl&team=ATL

The current updated team rosters removes the 2010 salaries/hits and uses 2011 figures for cap calculation. I'm currently using $123M mentioned ($120 + 3M exception) in various reports, but that's subject to change in our rules discussions in the coming days as we learn more about the new landscape of the new NFL salary cap realities.

Honestly, things looked better than I thought they might. We do have a small handful of teams over but most are under (some well under) and that kind of reflects reality I think where a handful of big uncapped spenders are going to have to adjust a bit for the new cap returning, but for the most part most teams okay. The average across all leagues was around $17M UNDER the cap.

Unless I have some mistake on the roster pages, that's looking pretty good I think even without some of the potential adjustments we'd think about making (more restructuring, possible change to miscellaneous cap charge to all teams, etc.)

AFFL:
Number Over: 5
Most Over: 12M
Under: 27
Most Under: 90M
Average Available: 16,736,279

CFFL:
Number Over: 4
Most Over: 13M
Under: 28
Most Under: 56M
Average Available: 17,990,291

DFFL:
Number Over: 6
Most Over: 18M
Under: 26
Most Under: 53M
Average Available: 17,135,973

You can see those by clicking on the Rosters link, and get into your own 2011 team finances by clicking into your team roster from there.

Send me a note if any problems noticed. Players without 2011 salary will still say "active" but are players no longer under contract. We'll get into options for those and the free agency picture as we learn more about how it'll go in NFL.

It's not looking too bad, though, I don't think financially in general.

[Nathan S.]

Just a quick question, did you advance the SBs or no?

[Goodell]

Just a quick question, did you advance the SBs or no?

Good catch. Nope, haven't done that yet. Should stay the same from year to year for most players still under contract with SB (just changes the cap hit if cut/traded with SB left), and shouldn't be counting them in the overall total if no 2011 salary but I'll adjust those soon in case that has an effect (plus needs to be done anyway). Thanks!

[Ben C.]

I think another thing we need to keep an eye on is the spending minimum that is part of the new CBA. It seems teams are required to spend more than 90% of the salary cap on current player costs. It is still unclear what that means, other than that we'll see more front-loaded contracts in the NFL. One way this could work is if signing bonuses are counted towards the cap in the year they are paid instead of prorated over the lifetime of the contract. But that brings up the question of what to do with signing bonuses that are currently being prorated, and dead money. Does it get wiped out altogether? I've read some Raiders blogs that suggest this possibility.

At the very least I think we need to employ some form of the spending minimum - that could be one of the ways we cut down on teams that are significantly below the cap while they rebuild.

As for restructuring, I think we could increase the number of contracts you are allowed to restructure. I don't see a reason for having a limit - or don't remember what the reason used to be.

I also think I may have thought of a way to fairly allow teams to re-sign players without letting them hit the market. What if we said you could sign a guy to a 1 year extension if you double the highest salary in his current contract for the extended year and give him a signing bonus of that amount? For example, on my AFFL Arizona team, I could sign Darnell Dockett to a 1 year extension if I pay him 8,000,000 salary in 2012 and give him an 8,000,000 signing bonus. Then next year if I wanted to add an extra year I'd have to give him 16,000,000 annually and 16,000,000 additional signing bonus. Clearly that would create a natural limit to how many times a guy can be re-signed while giving another option of a way to keep a player.

[Nathan S.]

At the very least I think we need to employ some form of the spending minimum - that could be one of the ways we cut down on teams that are significantly below the cap while they rebuild.

Cough* Jared *Cough