How is "your offer is too low for this stage" determined?
 

Okay, if you're a veteran FOFer you know this response.

You approach a free agent with an offer, trying to get him less expensively than his demands. And you get the response:

Your offer is too low for this stage of free agency and will not be considered.

Cool, cool. So the game has some threshold in place, presumably by some sort of formula. I have always assumed that this was merely a function of the player's age/experience, current ratings, maybe potential future ratings, and that's about it.

Okay, so why ask now?

I'm in a MP league where I see a player I'd like to bid on. I see another MP team has an offer in to that player, and I intend to beat it. But the player gives me the "too low" text back. Hmmmm. So, I try to absolutely max out the bonus and still beat the current offer he is considering. "Too low." I put in the most charitable possible version of the offer he is considering - two years of absolute minsal and all the rest bonus... "too low."

WTF?

Either:

-the game is considering something beyond player metrics in weighing what a given team's offer needs to be to pass this test; or

-my rival in this MP league has cracked some sort of code, and has figured something out here to get around the "too low" message; or

...well I'm out of explanations, tbh.

MP football players desire current salary over a signing bonus, so, try minimizing the bonus and offering flat salaries.
Edit: (Yes, I know this won't get you the winning FA bid, but it might get you past the "too low" threshold, max bonus isn't the end all be all, there appears to be a soft spot in between those two.)

Edit2: I'm in the same league, same thing for my team: doesn't want low bonus, doesn't want high bonus, doesn't want a balanced contract. weird.

That said, it sounds out of place, because the demands usually go down in the next stage, not up.

I have NO earthly idea how this happened. If he signs that deal...whoa.

Is it this maybe?: "When acquiring or retaining free agents, the attitude of the player toward the team (or your general reputation among your players) will factor in that player's willingness to accept your offer."

I would think this only applies to winning the bidding war, not whether he will even consider your offer. Am I reading this correctly that this player is allowing a different base offer based on the team making the offer? I did not think that was possible.

Still unanswered, for what it's worth. The team who put in the weird bid pled ignorance, and the player got a better offer and mooted the issue in the incident league.

I don' think the answer can be the "player preferences" like "Play for Winner" and such... I think the strong consensus there is those items are relatively trivial contributors to tiebreaking situations... not related to this wholesale weirdness.

I'm still stumped.

Speculation, but I think "Wants Winner" and even possible geographic closeness to the player's hometown can have a more significant impact than many believe. Not being in your league, I don't know if the hometown factor entered the equation.

I have had situations with the better offer (including the deal structure) and the player signed with another team.

For context... we;re talking here about a guy demanding a $20m/yr contract, and for me he wouldn't even listen to anything much below that, but another team managed to squeak in an $11m offer.

Not his current team, so not a "loyalty" thing. And that seems WAY off for one of these "other considerations" though I suppose for lack of any other explanation, that could be in play in some absurd degree. That would be a WOW though.

I looked at those two and did again for the purpose of eliminating these factors or making them plausible:

Wants winner should be in QuikSand's favor, by a land slide. He's the reigning champion coming off a 13-2-1 regular season. The weird bid came from a 5-10-1 team.

As far as home town goes, the weird bid came from the 2nd closest team at 183 miles away, QuikSand's team 5th closest at 282 miles away.

Wow, I did not know the context. That does seem very extreme!!!

Was this ever any more light shed on this? I'm experiencing a similar thing currently with this message and I've tried a multitude of factors but feel like I'm operating in the dark with a message as opaque as this one.

I had a similar incident in one league some time back and recall that the player had a request but I was able to come in much lower and the game accepted it. During the next couple of stages other owners called it out as bogus because their offers were not being accepted as is being dicsussed here and my bid was questioned and removed by the commish. On a rebid he wouldn't accept my offer. ??? I don't understand the link to why but I have tweaked both the bonus and annual offers until I get an acceptance notification but there is no rhyme or reason as to what it takes or how it works.