FA Signing Case

[Narcizo]

Ok this is a case that caused quite a bit of discussion on HFL. Bill Bergey has a history of injury, as you can see. However last year he was an all-pro OLB, thanks to the old "getting lots of tackles in a rubbishy defence" trick in 2004.

Anyway his contract expired and he hit free agency.

Firstly it's a bit odd that with 100 loyalty he didn't accepted an offer from his current team, the Texans, which more than matched his demands but that's neither here nor there for the purposes of this discussion.

Bergey is currently a 10-year vet, with, as I have pointed out, injury issues. My experience of LBs in FOF2007 is that you can't really rely on them hanging around after 10 years or so. He was asking for a two-year contract $730k with $280k guaranteed.

He received a lot of offers but the two best in their category were
1) 1 year contract for $900k, $450k guaranteed
2) 2 year contact for $1.93m, $960k ($480k/year) guaranteed (and the salary evenly divided across the two years).

He's an injury-prone, player coming to the end of his playing career (although, I'll grant you he might not see it that way), but he accepts the one year contract.

Now I know that Jim has done a lot of research and discovered that agents love one year contracts. I can see a player who is on his way up taking the one year offer - he'll figure that his stock is still increasing so he won't want to commit to a longer contract than necessary. But would a linebacker who's stock is currently sky-high at the moment because of an all-pro award really run the risk of taking a one-year contract that pays out less money (both in terms of salary and bonus money per year) in these circumstances. Even if he doesn't get an injury he's still banking on being able to keep his stock as high for when he hits free agency next year (we have a rule preventing franchising FA players signed to a one-year contract).

Maybe the negotiation AI should be tweaked so that aging/injury prone players are more likely to accept longer contracts. And, as an afterthought, maybe "wants winner" should weigh in more importantly for older players as they look for success before they retire.

PS His Wants Winner is 16, so I don't know how much of a factor that is. Although admittedly he did go to a high-prestige team rather than an, erm, not so high prestige team.