Cap rules

[Hammer]

I have noticed teams in a couple of MP leagues going over the cap during the regular season with the game taking no action against them.

It takes action in FA and pre season. In the NFL you have to be under the cap during the regular season right?

We are currently writing league rules to enforce the cap during the regular season in the RZB. Just seems strange the games doesn't deal with this as it does at other times. Perhaps I am missing something?

[aston217]

As far as I know, you can't simply go over the cap during the season; any contracts that push you over the limit will be blocked.

The only scenario I can think of is where a team heads into the offseason over the cap and fails to address this by the season's start. Relatedly if a team can't field a legal roster, the AI will assist regardless of cap.

Won't the game remove draft picks from these teams at some point? I can't see how a team would slip through the cracks.

[stevew]

How much are they going over by? Could be simply some sort of weird rule of 51 thing where they were able to sign the guy midway through the season because he technically fit under but once it displaced another contract it added on the full amount?

[Hammer]

Going over by various amounts. We had 4 over in the CFL last season Aston. I did make Firefly aware. 1 was way, way over after renegs. I only happened to look at the bowl stage as I was sizing up our cap for next year. 2 are currently over in the RZB during the regular season. No penalties enfored by the game.

I only play in 2 leagues so I can't comment further. My first instinct was this shouldn't be happening. Perhaps there is another explanation, but it is lost on me.

[Ben E Lou]

The fact that the game reports that teams are over the cap after some renegs that occur after Regular Season Week 1 has been run is a quirk in the game, if not a flat-out bug. (I'd call it the latter, since it contradicts the Help File, but I'm not going to quibble over the semantics.) You shouldn't be showing over the cap at all. Here's how it works, at least the most simplified version (renegs after Week 17).

1. I have $10M in cap room after Week 17.
2. I have a player who wants a new 5-year deal with a $40M bonus, and $15M salary in year 1.
3. I give him his requested reneg.
4. The game correctly allows the reneg, because $40M/5 = $8M. (The current-year salary is irrelevant, because, as the Help File says, salaries are paid out weekly over the 17 weeks of the regular season. The player gets absolutely none of the year-1 salary in the new contract and as such it shouldn't count against the cap.)
5. The reneg is allowed, but [speculation]the game doesn't save the prior contract anywhere, and as a result[/speculation] when it shows the salary cap *after* the reneg is done, it adds all $15M of the new contract (the part that should be meaningless, because the player doesn't get one thin dime of it,) to the cap, so from that point on, it shows the team being $13M OVER the cap instead of $2M UNDER the cap, the latter being correct.

The same thing holds true for in-season renegs as well, but the math is more complicated because of the x/17 (old contract) and (17-x)/17 (new contract) calculations that should be made, but aren't.

So, bottom line: if you're assessing a cap penalty for being over the cap after regular season or playoff renegs, you're doing it wrong. Once a team does any reneg after Regular Season Week 1 is done, the cap calculation is incorrect.

The reason there is no cap penalty for this is that FOF processes cap penalties at specific stages, and no other time. I have full FOF7 transaction data in databases for four different MP leagues, spanning 70+ seasons. There have been a total of 40 cap violations assessed in those leagues during that time. 100% of the cap violations have been assessed at the following times:

1. Pre-Draft (if you're over the cap after FA1:12 is run)
2. Pre-Training Cap (if you were over the cap after the draft)
3. Ex Season 1 (if you're still over the cap when TC was run. yes, you can lose two picks in the same offseason if you're not paying attention)

But if you check the math as to how it happens, you'll see that it's very clear that there shouldn't be a penalty.

[Hammer]

Ah okay, makes sense. Thanks for the explanation.

[aston217]

Huh, that's interesting. I had always thought that in this game, current year salary was meant to be retroactively applied if it changes so that extension timing doesn't matter. That's the way it's looked...

If the Help File is actually what's implemented, those mystical year 1 salaries can make for odd accounting strategy. I like to increase year 1 salary to lower year 2 and 3 salaries but I always assumed that I was actually paying it out.

Is there some weird inconsistency in what the game treats as "actual cap", then? I thought, for example, the game blocks you from even making offers with excess bonus. I.e, after Ben's hypothetical offer goes through, won't any further extensions be disallowed completely? If 2M is the "correct" number, the game should allow further extensions up to 2M prorated bonus. I do recall a case back in 2k7 days where I was barred from extending a player until another player's extension went through (post-W17) and actually freed up more cap available.

[Ben E Lou]

I might want to amend my comments above. Looking further at this, my speculation appears to be 100% correct, so that throws the contract off a bit from what I mentioned. So the flow is this.

1. When you do the reneg, it calculates the cap amount and whether to accept the reneg based on what the new contract *should* cost under the cap.

2. After the reneg, the old contract is gone, and it calculates the cap amount based entirely on the new contract. In other words, it assumes that the player has received the new salary--which he hasn't.

It happens that FOOL will run the postseason tomorrow and I have only one reneg to do, so this is a nice example. I have $15.89M in cap space at the end of the regular season. QB Oliver Hurt's reneg request is as follows:



I offer him his requested reneg amount. That $38.92M bonus, split over three seasons, is $12.97M per year. I should therefore be able to do the reneg and then have $2.92M left. I offer him his requested reneg amount and get no message about it being over the cap. (If you offer a reneg that will put you over, the game will warn you.)

Based on the deeper look, here's what I think will actually happen:

1. He'll have a new contract of

1: Salary = 21.03, Bonus = 31.82 (oldbonus of 18.85 + newbonus of 12.97)
2. Salary = 26.02, Bonus = 12.97
3: Salary = 27.28, Bonus = 12.97

So that total "this year" contract of 52.85M will be the only thing that FOF7 sees, and as a result, it will think I am 6.11M over the cap. (oldcaphit=30.85M, newcaphit=52.85M, diff = 2.002M, 15.89-22.00= -6.11)

And yes, aston, in this scenario, if I had another guy to reneg who had a bonus request of $8.76M or less, I'd get cheated out of the ability to do so because the game will think that I am over the cap once I do Hurt's reneg.

Here's the section of the Help File that this contradicts.

Originally Posted by Help File

Contracts which reduce the player's salary once the regular season has begun may not fit under the cap even if the cap cost of the proposal is less than the cap value available. This is because contracts are paid out each week.

For example, if a player is making a salary of $1.7 million, or $100,000 per week (the season has 17 weeks), and you are renegotiating in week 15, $1.5 million of that salary has already been paid, and will still count under the cap.

So, if you renegotiate him down to $1,020,000, or $60,000 per week, this will only reduce the contract by $40,000 per week, and you will only save $80,000 under the cap. Since any bonus still would apply to the current year, you might not be able to keep a new offer under the cap under these conditions.

[aston217]

Wow. That's very interesting.

[Ben E Lou]

Yup. $6.11M over the cap with no other transactions this stage.

[stevew]

Oh those sneaky Raiders...just win baby!!

[aston217]

I'd call this an interesting (and very non-obvious) quirk of the game. Now that we know about it, the easiest thing to do I think is to roll with it -- meantime, maybe Jim can implement accurate cap reporting or other tweaks for the next version/update.