FOF 5.1a Bug - Showstopper in Single and Multi-Player

[Pyser]

it seems that the majority of players in 5.1a will accept any contract offer of any value, so long as you dont change the signing bonus. even if you offer them the minimum salary for a number of years. for example:

kyle turley wanted a deal that looks like the one on the left, and signed the one on the right


.............................his asking.................what he signed for
signing bonus.............$10,200,000............$10,200,000
year 1.......................990,000..................990,000
year 2.......................5,450,000................990,000
year 3.......................5,760,000................990,000


this seems to work with any player asking for a 3 year deal, and certain players asking for 4 or 5 year deals, too (but not all).

like an idiot, i tried this out on my multiplayer league, and pretty much ruined it until we go back to 5.0d or get an update from jim (if one is deemed needed). i signed multiple players to 3-5 year deals with big bonuses, but only the league minimum for every years salary.

can anyone else confirm this?

[stevew]

Maaan, we were just starting to do free agency in wigfl too.

[VPI97]

I just confirmed it through my own tests with IHOF files. This is very serious, indeed.

[JeeberD]

Crap. I don't like the sound of this...

[Cap Ologist]

I'm so tired of reinstalling and having to go into reshacker to get things back the way I like them.

[VPI97]

Originally Posted by Solecismic

This is as designed. Bonuses mean everything in the NFL, and players do not value raises very highly because they can be released in any year.

If you want to take negotiating to the extreme and offer minimum salary in every year, that's up to you.

Jim, Every example I have tried results in a player accepting an offer for his bonus + minsal for three seasons. This is by design?

[Solecismic]

This is as designed. Bonuses mean everything in the NFL, and players do not value raises very highly because they can be released in any year.

If you want to take negotiating to the extreme and offer minimum salary in every year, that's up to you.

[yabanci]

bonuses do mean a lot, but it's entirely unrealistic to suggest that salaries mean absolutely nothing and that all players will accept the veteran's minimum salary.

[Pyser]

Oh. Sorry, Jim. That's definitely not what I expected to hear. Um...yeah. I've never seen anything near that extreme in real life, but as you say, FOF isn't entirely based on real life.

[Cap Ologist]

But isn't there a rule that by the third year, the base salary has to be equal to a certain percentage of the signing bonus. I think it's called the Deion rule, because when Jerry signed him, he paid him a big bonus, but then minimum base salaries for the first couple of years.

[Nwobhm]

It might be a good design if the player needed a much higher bonus than he was asking for, for him to accept the league minimums. As is stands now, this is unrealistic and clearly needs fixing. Players in real life might accept a smaller overall package if there was more guaranteed money, but this is extreme.

[Solecismic]

So, Pyser, you're privvy to negotiations between players and teams?

I've heard of the Deion rule, but haven't seen it written out, and it isn't implemented in the game. It certainly isn't exactly that. Take a look at any rookie's contract - it's minsal for the first four-five years. This is the trend in the NFL, and so I've placed the movement that once was across the contract more in the salary end.

[stevew]

Is the "excessive backloading with small bonus", ala the "Chubby Contract" now unacceptable to a player, or not valued by them as a plus?

[VPI97]

Here are a couple that I've seen:

current contract = 1 year left with $1,070,000 + $40,000 bonus
	 Asking		Signed
 Bonus   $5,390,000    $5,390,000
 Year 1  $710,000 	$570,000
 Year 2  $2,470,000    $700,000
 Year 3  $3,080,000    $700,000
 Year 4  $3,690,000
 Year 5  $4,560,000
 Year 6  $5,250,000
 
 current contract = 1 year left with $1,260,000 + $40,000 bonus
 	 Asking		Signed
  Bonus   $110,000    $110,000
  Year 1  $700,000 	$700,000
  Year 2  $1,000,000   $700,000
  Year 3  $1,400,000   $800,000

[Cap Ologist]

A quick google search produces:

hxxp://www.vertgame.com/sal_cap.html

NFL Salary Cap and Minimum Salary Scale



Rookie salary pool

Note: the 2004 salary cap is $80,582,000 per team, compared to last year's $75.007 million.



The NFL salary cap is the absolute maximum each club may spend on player salaries in a capped year. For 2003, that amounted to 64.25% of league-wide "Defined Gross Revenues" (divided by 32 teams), made up of preseason, regular-season and postseason gate receipts and radio and television rights. For 2004 it rises slightly, to 64.75% of said revenues. The salary cap remains in effect at all times, although certain exceptions may make it appear as though it's not being applied at times. (See below.)

A team may not exceed this cap with the salaries of players that are under contract and on their roster. If a team does exceed the salary cap at any time, the NFL can waive players from the team, starting with those earning the lowest salaries, until the team's payroll has fallen under the cap. In addition, the NFL may fine a team up to $1 million per day for exceeding the cap.

Teams must spend at least $67.3 million under the cap rules.

Only players under contract count toward the salary cap. Free agents do not count toward the cap until they sign a contract with the team.

Often it may appear that the cap is not in effect. How, for example, can teams have up to 80 players on the roster (in training camp) yet not exceed the cap? Here's the explanation.

From the day free agency begins—this year, that's March 3, 2004—to the day before the season begins, a club's top 51 salaried players count towards the cap, plus pro-rated signing bonuses, incentives, etc., but not base salaries of other players on the roster up to 80. Thereafter, all salaries on a club's roster count towards the cap.

To get around the cap, teams typically structure their player contracts in such a way that much of the money is designated as "signing" or "roster" bonuses, or "incentive clauses." A signing bonus or roster bonus does count toward the cap but is prorated over the length of the contract, even though the entire bonus has been paid in cash 'up front' to the player. When you read about a player and team agreeing to restructure a contract, it virtually always means that the player has agreed to convert at least a good part of his coming season's base salary into a signing bonus.

Incentive clauses are often made easy to reach as an indirect means of playing a player more while keeping his "base salary" low. Too easy to reach, however, and they're likely to be considered salary by the NFL, which must approve all contracts. For instance, if Drew Bledsoe, who's big and known for being immobile, had an incentive clause paying him $1 million for each game he started, the NFL would almost certainly rule that such payments are salary rather than genuine incentives, since Bledsoe has been a starter for many years. But a clause paying Bledsoe a bonus if he rushes for 500 yards would be legitimate, since he's known for his lack of mobility.

There are many additional rules, some of them highly technical. An example is the so-called "Deion Sanders rule" that was enacted after Dallas owner Jerry Jones gave Sanders a (then-)astronomical $13 million signing bonus, combined with base salaries of the then-minimum salary of $178,000 for the first three years. The new rule states that the first three years of any player's salary must equal the prorated amount of the signing bonus. The intent is to restrict circumvention of the salary cap.

Here's another little-known technicality. Those "likely to be earned" incentives mentioned above? Well, when they're not reached, they become cap credits the following year, which can mean a hidden bonanza for an underachieving franchise. A team that plays poorly, and which writes incentives into many of its player contracts, may actually reap a reward the year after. Case in point: the 2004 Vikings, who are an astounding $33 million under the cap. In actuality, the Vikings' cap is almost $95 million, because Minnesota gets more than $14 million in cap credits this year for "likely to be earned" incentives that weren't earned by their players in 2003.

Player benefits currently are $12,156,000 per club above the salary cap number.

[Pyser]

i never claimed to to be privvy to negotiations.

I just can't recall a top tackle signing a 3 year, $13-mil deal, with $10-mil being a signing bonus. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong.

I see rookies sign those deals all the time. But not top veterans. That's what I was trying to say. I guess I don't understand why it's up to us to determine what a fair contract is. The goal of the salary cap is to charge your players as little as possible. Why do they even ask for $5-million if they'll settle for less than $1-mil in every year?

[Solecismic]

Yes, that strategy would not work well. It really didn't work all that well after 5.0b.

In case people didn't notice, renegotiation was broken in version 5, period. Players never accepted anything less than they wanted unless you really jacked up the salaries. So what you're seeing is 1) a bug fix and 2) a much greater emphasis on bonus money.

Before you declare it broken, understand that it was broken in the past, and I never got a single bug report on it.

[VPI97]

All I'm saying is that it seems weird when all you have to do to renegotiate is give the bonus + minsal. Anytime negotiations seem to boil down to a steadfast rule like that indicates to me that it's likely a bug.

[yabanci]

Here you can look at the salaries of any player in the NFLPA:

http://www.nflpa.org/members/main.as...+Player+Search

[Pyser]

i labelled it a bug because a good number of people in my MP league immediately complained about my renegotiated contracts, and asked me to post about it here. and others in the thread certainly seem to agree. if this is the way the game is intended to be, im sure my league, and others, will have to institute house rules.

[stevew]

I dont have FOF working right now, my windows computer is currently broken. In a multiplayer situation, say if one team was to offer the min sal plus the guys desired bonus, and the other team was to offer one million less than the desired bonus and the desired salaries, which would the player choose.

[Pyser]

steve, with unrestricted free agents, id assume it works like normal. the most upfront (bonus+first year) money generally wins the player.

we are talking more specifically about renegotiating players on your own team.

[Solecismic]

I have been reviewing the code over the last hour. If there's a bug here that's been revealed by fixing the bug that essentially prevented renegotiations, I'll find it.

VPI's examples don't seem too serious to me - the player isn't giving back a lot when you look at it based on guaranteed money and money per season. The Turley one, though, is a little odd in that I'd be okay if he were willing to drop to about $3 million in years 2 and 3, but what's being reported seems like it might be outside what I programmed in as the lowest valuing possible of this type of contract.

[Eaglesfan27]

There are literally dozens of contracts like the Turley one in our MP league, as Pyser renegotiated his whole team to similar deals. Only a few players said no.

[yabanci]

Where you really see the effect of this is when you have good young players late in their contracts.

I have a 4th year quarterback, one of the best to have come through our drafts, and he's willing to do a 6 year deal with a $5 million bonus. That means I can lock him up for career years 4-9 for just $1.7 million per year. He's demanding $30 million, but under the new system I only have to pay him about $8.5 million

I also have a 5th year running back in the last year of his contract. He wants a 5 year, $40 million deal, but now I only have to pay him about $13 million, which would be about $2.6 million per year during years 5-9 of his career.

In other words, under the new system I can buy a total of 11 prime years of service at two of the most expensive positions for just $22 million instead the $70 million I normally would have had to pay.

I have a 3rd year LT, picked #7 in the draft, with 3 years left on his rookie contract. After I renegotiate to give him 2 more years, I'll save money on each of the three existing years and in years 6 and 7 of his career I'll only have pay him about $1.2 million per year. A top LT in years 6 and 7 of his career being paid only $1.2 million.

The effect is that you can lock up all of your players for so little money that the salary cap, which assumes players are actually being paid salary, becomes irrelevant. Our salary cap is $105 million now. Three years from now it will be $126 million and I'll be paying my QB, RB, and LT a combined total of $5.5 million. I have a bunch of other positions I can lock up for dirt cheap also, and everywhere else I'll be able to save loads of money by eliminating salary.

Another example from pyser's team. He has a 5th year RT, rated 50/55, a starter for the last four years. He was signed to a 5 year, $6.19 million contract. That's five prime years at an average of about $1.24 million with essentially no risk because the max cap hit if something went wrong would be a little over $2 million, which is irrelevant when all your players are so cheap.

The examples are endless, but one thing that's for certain is the financial ramifcations of effectively eliminating salaries from the game are huge. I've been looking at this for hours and all I can see is that our league will go haywire if we go forward on 5.1a.

[Buzzbee]

Originally Posted by Pyser

we are talking more specifically about renegotiating players on your own team.

Just to clarify, is this ONLY with renegotiations, or does this happen with free agency as well?

[Samdari]

Originally Posted by Solecismic

VPI's examples don't seem too serious to me

Except that they violate NFL rules for player contracts.

"the first three years of any player's salary must equal the prorated amount of the signing bonus."

Thus, if the contract is three years or less, the salary must equal the bonus.

[gstelmack]

I'd have no problem with this if it is happening in Free Agency only. Other teams can step in and offer more than the minimum salary and steal the player away if you're trying to get away with just min sal.

If I can renegotiate a guy in his last year to bonus + minsal, that would be a much bigger deal, as it will greatly reduce the number of free agents and make it much easier to keep a team intact. I don't know how much the new financial model will kick in to counter this, though, so it's hard to gauge the full impact. And I'd have to know if guys expect a larger bonus to sign an extension vs. sign in FA where they have the potential to earn more (i.e. if the same player wants an $8mil bonus during the season but only a $6mil bonus in FA, that means he is wanting more to extend).

As to why no one "noticed" in the last version, I actually remember it being commented on (guys just won't reduce their demands much), but no one complained hard because it made signing people more difficult and made the game more of a challenge. This issue seems to swing in the other direction.

Of course, people were also griping that the big names wanted astronomically ridiculous salaries and were taking up too large a chunk of the salary cap, and this would sure fix that problem, wouldn't it?

So my conclusion after all that rambling? I think we need to play out some seasons to see if this has a real impact or not.

[Warhammer]

Just some stuff I found from doing some digging on St. Louis Rams contracts:

Players playing for league minimum, or close to it:
Torry Holt
Marc Bulger
Kyle Turley

Players playing for more than vet minimum:
Isaac Bruce (4.7 mil)
Marshall Faulk (2 mil)
Aeneas Williams (2 mil)
Orlando Pace (6 mil, but he was franchised)

I think the one thing that all of these point out (with the exception of Bruce), most of the players are paid far below what I would consider an average salary. Some of their bigger name players are playing for the league minimum. I think this backs up Jim fairly well.

[Chubby]

Come on I want this to be "Chubby's Front Office Football" not Jim's vision of the game. I want 5 pt field goals and 5000 sack LBs every season, I demand a fix to the "bugs" that prevent these.

[cthomer5000]

Originally Posted by Chubby

Come on I want this to be "Chubby's Front Office Football" not Jim's vision of the game. I want 5 pt field goals and 5000 sack LBs every season, I demand a fix to the "bugs" that prevent these.

It's nice that we always have your cool head to contribute to these situations.

You're arguing making it "more realistic" over on the IHOF boards, but some have pointed out that this allows contracts that violate NFL rules. To me (and apparently others), this seems like much top big a swing in the other direction as far as contract negotiation.

[Samdari]

Originally Posted by cthomer5000

It's nice that we always have your cool head to contribute to these situations.

You're arguing making it "more realistic" over on the IHOF boards, but some have pointed out that this allows contracts that violate NFL rules. To me (and apparently others), this seems like much top big a swing in the other direction as far as contract negotiation.

I think that having players consider the bonus plus first year as most of their decision on which contract to accept is accurate. I just think that the Deion rule quoted several times here limits the amount of time before owners have to make hard decisions about players (or simply renegotitate). This is, IMO, a good thing and more accurately models the decisions NFL GM's need to make. THAT is what those of us who consider this a problem are looking for - simulation of those kinds of decisions. I think most people who are looking for that feel that FOF is the best such simulator, but there is a clear, defineable failure to achieve that goal in this case.

[Blackadar]

Originally Posted by Chubby

Come on I want this to be "Chubby's Front Office Football" not Jim's vision of the game. I want 5 pt field goals and 5000 sack LBs every season, I demand a fix to the "bugs" that prevent these.

Don't troll. 'nuff said.

[Abe Sargent]

I consider it a showstopper as well.

-Anxety

[cuervo72]

Originally Posted by Solecismic

In case people didn't notice, renegotiation was broken in version 5, period. Players never accepted anything less than they wanted unless you really jacked up the salaries. So what you're seeing is 1) a bug fix and 2) a much greater emphasis on bonus money.

Before you declare it broken, understand that it was broken in the past, and I never got a single bug report on it.

We certainly had an owner in FOFL bitch about it stage after stage of failed negotiations (not sure why he didn't report is as an official bug).

[sachmo71]

Originally Posted by Subby

That's a huge exploit...especially since salary is often converted to bonus dollars as a term of renegotiation. If a player only has a minsal salary every year, the need to renegotiate disappears - and renegs that do happen are as cheap as possible.

I agree.

[Subby]

That's a huge exploit...especially since salary is often converted to bonus dollars as a term of renegotiation. If a player only has a minsal salary every year, the need to renegotiate disappears - and renegs that do happen are as cheap as possible.

[Warhammer]

Another thing though, by having everything based upon minimum salary and a big bonus, you will not gain much, if anything by further renogtiations.

[cuervo72]

Oh, how I love renegotiations...I have a 6th year RG who is rated by my scout at 79/83. He is making $10M/$11M the next two years, half of that in bonus. He wants to renegotiate a new deal for $4.4M over 3, saving me $4M this year, $5M next, and getting a year added to his deal for $2M.

Behold, the power of loyalty (82)!

[Suicane75]

As someone in a MP league, this really worries me, it seems as though a league could be brought to a dead stop if this is exploited as far as Free Agency goes.

[RealDeal]

Sorry, Jim. But this just wasn't a good idea.

[stevew]

I did think that contracts didnt work all that well before, but i thought it was just "in my opinion." So i started just offering guys what they want so that i could get a deal done. I suppose what I'd be looking to see is a combo of the old way to extend, and the new way. Guys wanting a Big bonus, but maybe half-3/4 of the contracts they signed previously.

I think one of the issues is that in real life, a team and a player may agree on a 3 year 15 million dollar contract, with a 10 million bonus, but it will be reported as like a 5 year 27 million contract for the papers & salary cap.

That type of situation is probably impossible or very hard to code.

[Gallifrey]

When there are talks about salary and bonus money in the NFL I remember what my late father in law who played in the league for six years told me;

'It is all about the bonus. ***k the salary, you might cut me and I'm screwed. Give me the money up front and it is you (I think he was saying 'team' here) who is ***ked if you cut me'.

Those old school football guys were a trip.

[Abe Sargent]

Originally Posted by Gallifrey

When there are talks about salary and bonus money in the NFL I remember what my late father in law who played in the league for six years told me;

'It is all about the bonus. ***k the salary, you might cut me and I'm screwed. Give me the money up front and it is you (I think he was saying 'team' here) who is ***ked if you cut me'.

Those old school football guys were a trip.

Heh, that's a good story.

To those who are unconvinced, you can build a super-powerful team because the overall cap impications are reduced significantly. One of the main reasons for this, in fact, is that it is unrealistic. There are very few cases where a player wants a contract with 50 million dollars, 12 million of it as a signing bonus and just agrees to the signing bonus in full and an additional 2 mill in salaries over four years. You can cut ALL requested salary by any player no matter the demands. That's broken folks.

-Anxiety

[amdaily]

Can't believe it took someone so long to notice this. I've just be negotiating as usual, and hence never came across a problem like this.

It could explain why a handful of AI teams have 20% of the cap room free each season and another dozen have about 10% free. I don't recall that being as issue before.

But on another note, I consider this an exploit, especially in single player, as the AI doesn't seem to be taking advantage of the "bug fix." They still sign both their free agents and renegotiated deals to more traditional contracts (2 years at minimum, 3-4 at a high salary).

[Icy]

Probably the best would be a mid term, players giving a big value to bonus but also to the salary after the two first years.

[Thul]

But in this version, will there be any salary to convert? You can never get rid of bonus money. Renegotiating is just going to pile it on. The problem comes, because most leagues have "old version" contracts with high bases and low bonuses, which don't convert well to the new version. As those phase out, and as competition rises (raising bonus money), I think this will begin to even out.

I agree with Jim's point on the spirit of the change, even if it's a bit extreme at the moment. Bonus should count for something, and it didn't in the previous version.

There have always been quirks we've had to adapt to. Being a player who jumped from FOF 2 to FOF 2004, I'm glad to see him bring up the point that the previous negotiation code was downright broken. I never understood why I couldn't negotiate downwards at all...except maybe 500k or so. It took me a long while to adapt to that version's quirks. I finally realized that, in the previous version, bonus money was really undervalued. All I had to do was pump up the base salaries and the contract would be more attactive.

At any rate...being able to offer the min base in all cases is extreme, but I'm not sure its a game stopper anymore than the past quirks were. House rules may be needed until some of the old contracts phase out.

Edit: Of course, the one flaw in my logic is that there will be competition in the first place. I'm seeing now that players may never get to the point of going to free agency so that competition can kick in.

Originally Posted by Subby

That's a huge exploit...especially since salary is often converted to bonus dollars as a term of renegotiation. If a player only has a minsal salary every year, the need to renegotiate disappears - and renegs that do happen are as cheap as possible.

[stevew]

Are holdouts signficantly upped? Them being upped would at least make this more realistic.

[chinaski]

I dont see how this could be considered anything but a show stopping bug. When a player will automatically accept any offer, as long as his bonus demands are met, thats a major flaw. In solo leagues you could get by on a house rule, but this is unpolicable in multiplayer leagues.

[Godzilla Blitz]

Some thoughts...

In the NFL, the ridiculous backloaded years of player contracts (usually the last couple of years) are as a rule never paid, as the contracts are either renegotiated at that time or the player will be released. In one sense, they are meaningless, in that they will never be paid.

However, they do serve a critical function in that they determine, de facto, the length of the contract. If a quarterback sings a five-year deal, with the last two years at a ridiculous salary, in essence, the contract becomes a three-year deal, with renegotiation happening at the end of the third year. In FOF, if quarterback accepts any salary amount for the last few years, he is essentially agreeing to a five-year deal with great advantage going to the signing team, as there is no reason the team would want to renegotiate the last two years if they are at minimum salary. This, IMHO, would have a huge impact on the game, especially if the human player does this and the AI doesn't. In essence, it serves to lengthen contracts by a significant amount and make them cheaper for the team.

Having said that, in single player, I don't allow myself to renegotiate contracts, so this isn't a problem for me personally.