Free Agency-1 year deals

[mmarra82]

I am in two leagues, and it seems in one of them that there is constant talk about how to handle free agency in the early rounds. How to avoid the part of the game that allows teams to sign a player to a one year deal when many other teams have offered multi year deals.

The rule we have in place is, you may not bid a one year contract on a player during stages 2-9. Easy to monitor, and if a player does sign for a one year deal, the Commish simly releases that player back into the FA pool and teams can re bid on him.

How do some of the other leagues out there handle this? I am looking for suggestions that I can bring back to the league I participate in, and try to ease some of the tension surrounding this.

Thanks!

[QuikSand]

IHOF debated this issue for a pretty long time, and eventually passed a rule to forbid any one year contract with more bonus than salary. It doesn't wipe out the one year deals, but it makes them somewhat less attractive to the player (particularly when compared to rich long term deals) and definitely reduces the attractiveness of a "sign and trade" plan. IHOF has also forbidden trading such players until after the "cutdown to 53" stage following training camp.

I'm sure some people think this rule doesn't go far enough, but it was a compromise that addressed the worst perceived problems in the in-game contract evaluation AI.

[Yoda]

Yeah, in the FFL actually in yesterdays sim, I had a FB in FA that I offered a 2 year 3.95mil contract too, and he turned it down for a 1 year 1.65mil contract. Hate when that happens.

[QuikSand]

By the way, I don't think that the contract logic is as bad as most seem to. Football contracts are necessarily tougher to comprehend than other sports where every penny is guaranteed, so it becomes a fairly soft judgment about how much "real" money is in any given contract - the longer the term, the more true that becomes.

It's also hard to judge whether for a given player a short-term deal would be better than a long term deal. I don't know anything about your FB, from above, but for a generic fairly young player who believes his real value is higher than either of the two contracts he is being offered, I'd be perfectly fine with a logical decision to take a shorter and cheaper deal, even if things like bonus/yr were completely even between the two offers (which, in your example, I'm confident was not the case).

FOF has trouble, it seems, judging between the "per year" and the "total amount of likely/guaranteed money" elements of contracts, and how to weight each one. It seems very heavily weighted to the "per year" figures, with bonus counting much more heavily than salary -- which works in most situations, but there are exceptions, principally centered on one year, bonus-rich offers.

[marcmoustache]

In my league we don't have any restrictions and we've not seen any silly deals that I know of.

In the NAFL I had a player signed to a $12m 1 year deal ($10m bonus) because I had $30m of cap room and no-one really to spend it on. But I think that was more a factor of lots of cap room in that league than any sort of playing the system by me.

[sovereignstar]

Yeah, in the FFL actually in yesterdays sim, I had a FB in FA that I offered a 2 year 3.95mil contract too, and he turned it down for a 1 year 1.65mil contract. Hate when that happens.

Eye for an eye. Next season you should strictly offer free agent targets one-year deals. Yeah, that'll show them.

[Ben E Lou]

The biggest factor is bonus per season, which very much makes sense for younger players. I don't know the details of the contracts contrasted above by Yoda, but I'd hazard a guess that it was something like this:

ONE-YEAR DEAL
Bonus: $1M
Sal1: $650K
TOTAL: 1 year, $1.65M

TWO-YEAR DEAL
Bonus: $1.5M
Sal1: $750K
Sal2: $1.7M
TOTAL: 2 years, $3.95M

The former contract gives the player $1M per year in guaranteed (bonus) money, then in the following year, he can get (in his mind) the same amount again. The latter is only $.75M per year in bonus money. That's why the former option is more desirable. As another example, a contract offer structured like this:

B: 20M
1: 5M
2: 5M
3: 5M
4: 5M
5: 5M

is less likely to be signed (because it's longer) than a contract structured like this:

B: $4M
1: $5M

Both have the same per-year bonus amount ($4M) and the same per-year salary ($5M). People get up in arms when they see a guy having signed a 1-year deal for $9M, and turn down a 5-year deal for $45M. But mathematically, going on the premise that the guy can command the same value next year, it makes complete sense that he'd take the second one. (The obvious problem here is older players, but that's another discussion. The algorithm is what it is, and it's fairly clear how it works. Jim himself made a half-joking comment at IHOF along the lines of "FOF players have big egos about their value not dropping.")

Anyway, the one-year deal is good for the team because there's no long-term salary commitment. It's bad for the team because there's no long-term contract commitment. http://www.gstelmack.com/woof/forum/images/smilies/smilewinkgrin.gif If you're signing only one guy to a one-year deal, then you can franchise him next year. Signing more than one can end up just creating a revolving door.

My personal opinion on the matter is that it's pretty clear how it works, so if you've offered a guy a $15M bonus on a 3-year deal, and someone else has offered him $9M for one year, the odds are that the other guy's deal will be seen as a better deal, so either up your bonus, shorten the deal, or both.

[Joe]

I don't like rules restricting any offers that may be made.

[RedKingGold]

I don't like rules restricting any offers that may be made.

I agree. CAPITALIZIM BIZITCHES!

The only problem I have is the "after" situation. After the one-year deal expires, I don't think you should be allowed to franchise them, as they would often (in the past) accept much cheaper deals. Fortunately, this was turned down a little (lot?) in the newer version and tagging a person (regardless of skill level) results in that player wanted close to top-five player value.

So, I really don't have a problem with anything else (including sign-and-trades) but that's just me.

[RedKingGold]

Eye for an eye. Next season you should strictly offer free agent targets one-year deals. Yeah, that'll show them.

:D

[Hoya1]

Eye for an eye. Next season you should strictly offer free agent targets one-year deals. Yeah, that'll show them.

that always works

[stevew]

The only problem I have is the "after" situation. After the one-year deal expires, I don't think you should be allowed to franchise them, as they would often (in the past) accept much cheaper deals. Fortunately, this was turned down a little (lot?) in the newer version and tagging a person (regardless of skill level) results in that player wanted close to top-five player value.



Agreed-

The franchise # is almost always much lower than the guys previous 1 year deal. IRL, the guy would get 120% of his previous compensation....the game just doesn't adequately emulate that.