Off-Season Topics

[Goodell]

Another question since I noticed we've updated for 2014 financials. I have two rookies who I signed from practice squad last season listed as UFA. Do we not do exclusive rights for players under a certain number of years experience like the NFL? Can't remember if it's 2 or 3 years but I should have the ability to sign them exclusively to the league minimum without them hitting the open market.

We don't have real players with their real agents so difficult to simulate player negotiations between player and team. So we must rely upon markets to set a player's demand and price. The few instances we have it where teams can avoid market competition altogether involves paying a player top 10 salary at his position as that's one way we can say a player would demand to receive top bucks if not going to be involved in other bids determining his price. Otherwise we really need a market to set fair prices since we have no real players on the other side of the negotiating table.

I would advise signing someone with future interest to more than 1 year contract. Most of the time teams sign young guys to 3 year deals (don't need SB if 3 years or less). If you end up not wanting them more than a year, they can be cut with no salary cap hit (beyond games played checks) if no signing bonus.

If it's a practice squad player you have high interest in keeping, there are unlimited UFA rights to retain, but I'd advise actually signing those of most interest to a spot on the 53 man roster as practice squad players have no contract with our teams and remain on free agent list for anyone to sign at any time during the season (teams just have matching rights to also match a contract if another team tries to sign).

We give teams UNLIMITED bidding rights to retain UFAs from their roster and that's been seen as a massive advantage in retaining players of interest if willing to pay market price. We used to just have practice squad guys to right back on the market since they have no contract in our leagues, but in recent years have kept the team affiliation as they become UFAs so teams can have advantages over keeping their own practice squad guys if wanting to give them a contract.

I haven't updated years of service and made some UFAs into restricted free agents yet. Historically that has only been active roster players. The switch to 2014 as noted in the league chat sidebar is still in progress.

Since all teams have 5 bids per day during free agency, most of the time they are going to put those 5 valuable bids toward player of interest and higher priority value, so it's very common that teams can retain most of their very young lower grade players in free agency (with unlimited bidding for your own) especially in cases of practice squad guys who anyone could have offered a contract not too long ago during the season but didn't so usually won't give up one of their valuable 5 daily bids to do so now.

[Knighty Knight]

Thanks, that all makes perfect sense.

In this case I actually kept a practice squad player and signed one from another team by leveraging my cap space and paying over market value. In one instance, over $1M to ensure the rival team was unable to match given their cap predicament. However, that is not a salary I would be willing to pay over 3 years nor did I want to risk a lower amount and have the player potentially locked up by his current team for 3 years. I'm fairly confident I'll be able to resign them regardless but was just curios.

How does restricted free agency work, as far services years, is it any players with 3 years or less service time become a restricted free agent, or is it only 3 year service players?

[Goodell]

Thanks, that all makes perfect sense.

In this case I actually kept a practice squad player and signed one from another team by leveraging my cap space and paying over market value. In one instance, over $1M to ensure the rival team was unable to match given their cap predicament. However, that is not a salary I would be willing to pay over 3 years nor did I want to risk a lower amount and have the player potentially locked up by his current team for 3 years. I'm fairly confident I'll be able to resign them regardless but was just curios.

How does restricted free agency work, as far services years, is it any players with 3 years or less service time become a restricted free agent, or is it only 3 year service players?

That scenario makes sense for where a shorter deal makes sense there.

For RFA it's 3 years or less here so long as they are on active 53 man roster (not just practice squad).