Free Agency Start Date

[JonC]

A trade window would be so much more helpful to a smooth FA period, no?

Perhaps opening trades the Friday previous?

[DavidK]

i agree there should be trading before FA starts.

[dhaeman]

I don't see why we shouldn't have a week of trading before FA starts. Everyone is always busy and things take time to develop. A week really gets us enough time to sort out our rosters before FA hits.

[tino38]

Not like there isnt rading already anyways. Lol

[Goodell]

I still have some work to do in terms of adding players to rosters within the new rule of 51 rules adjustment, adding overall draft picks into the system, and ensuring trading is good to go. I am going away for a couple days 3/30-4/2, but will have my laptop with me and hoping to work on finishing things up at night.

Aim was trades turned on this weekend, but I'm actually leaving a day earlier than thought then, so hoping trades ready toward when I get back early next week and free agency the next week starting 4/8.

[Goodell]

Monday, April 8th is pulling ahead now a bit and most of the conflicts mentioned had to do with the other popular choice, so we'll mark it on the calendar now.

Free agency will start Monday, April 8th at 8AM ET.

Some of you may rush to make sure you're first to put in some bids then, but there's also something to be said also for analyzing what's happening in free agency a bit first before leaping. Once you place one of your 5 limited bids per 24 hours, you won't be able to use that bid again for 24 hours. If you put in all 5 bids immediately, you may see others counter your bids and you won't be able to do anything about that for 24 hours when your bids renew. Of course you have unlimited bidding (so long as you want to pay the price and can fit it under your cap) on your own UFAs. You can't bid on your own RFAs or tagged players, you have matching rights so have to wait until they sign an offer-sheet with another team and then you can match or not. A player is signed only once he's gone 24 hours without any counter bids. A difference this year as posted in an off-season rules discussion thread is that you won't know what other teams specifically you are bidding against, just the contracts being offered and if you want to place a higher bid or not. Another change is your off-season salary cap will only count the top 51 salaries toward the cap in the off-season but you can have up to 90 on your roster similar to NFL off-season cap management. That change hasn't been made yet to rosters, but will be prior to free agency.

We'll have trading open before then next week (no specific date announcement yet as it's dependent upon other factors and some work to do on getting it ready still with some new rule changes this off-season).

[Chad55]

Are we still planning on the start of FA to begin on Monday the 8th?