House Rules_Free Agency

[mmarra82]

Guys, I am about to enter my first off-season in SP mode, was wondering how some of you handle the FA period? One thought I had is that I can only have an offer out to one player at a time, or perhaps can make only one offer per period. It does appear that you can go out and land a lot of free agents still in free agency, and build your team rather quickly. Any thoughts out there?

[QuikSand]

Back in FOF 2004, I think many people used house rules of different stripes here. I'm not sure if any consensus has emerged on what makes sense in FOF 2007.

A few I can recall using:

-Must offer a bonus at least as big as the highest salary year in any multi-year contract offered

-The only contract you may offer to any player is what he requests, with only the bonus part being negotiable

-No editing of an offer to any player - once you make your first offer, you're done, win or lose


The trouble as I recall it was that while waiting until late in the FA process means you lose out on the top-level stars, it does mean that you have virtually unimpeded access to the many decent players who tend to stick around. At one point I recall using various rules to keep me out of the early FA stages, but then I ended up making an awful lot of hay from the late stages, getting lots of real bargains that way.

My guess is that this is ripe territory in FOF 2007 for some exploration, to see what areas are still "weak" and perhaps in need of a curb.

[yabanci]

These are the ones that I use in FOF2k7:

1. no renegotiations in last year of contract to prevent players from testing free agent market unless loyalty = "very high" and, if you didn't have a winning record, "wants winner" rating < "very strong";

2. no offers in first stage of pre-draft or post-draft free agency;

3. no offer to your own own players unless and until another team has an offer on the table;

4. offer exactly what player demands with no modifications;

5. no more than one offer per position;

6. if your team had 8-8 record or worse, no offers to players with "wants winner" rating higher than 50; if better than 8-8, no offer to player with "wants winner" rating less than 50;

6. no offers to undrafted rookie free agents in post-draft free agency.

7. in post-draft free agency, ignore "wants winner" rule.