| aston217 |
09-20-2012 11:21 AM |
I work hard at staying out of cap hell myself, but if you accumulate enough talent, even in a non-cap crunch league, it can get difficult.
Resigning Practices- I always resign to even cap costs / year if I can. That way I take on a big hit in Year 1 of the reneg, where I am well aware of my cap situation, in order to save in each of the future years, where cap situation is unknown. This maximizes flexibility.
- Timing is important. Last year reneg is ideal, because you only take the overlapping bonus hit for one year.
- More timing stuff: Break the above rule if you have to. Think young creepers who are about to make big offseason or TC jumps, or guys who are stepping into their starting role for the first time. Contract demands don't really change in-season. If you see a guy who just started his first 16 games for you at the end of the year, you can save with a reneg before the offseason hits.
- More timing stuff: don't reneg older fully developed guys (year 6 or so or above) or guys who are droppers, before TC of their current deal's final year. They stand to drop, and you stand to benefit from that.
- Capouts: bite the poison pill if you have to, if you're talking about a guy who has way outperformed a cheapish deal and would ask for THE BANK on a holdout. It may be that holdouts can only occur with two or one years left on a deal, so maybe don't cap out further in advance of that.
- Free Agency: sometimes, you just gotta let a guy who wants to be overpaid, go into unrestricted free agency. Of course, you might lose him this way. But if he's a fringe 40-something mediocre player, and some other team wants to offer him $5mil/year, then it's their loss. You don't have to literally re-sign every possible player.
- Wait to re-neg: this runs the risk of you forgetting. But sometimes, this pays dividends. That aging player you are having to extend might just get a Week 9 25-week ACL tear. You just never know.
- I use this spreadsheet for most of my major renegotiations now. Not that it really helps me save money, but it helps keep me organized, so I can progressively lowball my players in a calculated and deliberate way ;)
Making extra space- Identify the guys who have high salary. These are guys who will save you $$ if you cut or trade them early on in a season, or during the offseason.
- You could also reneg older players with high salary to reduce their current year salary, clearing some space, while backloading their deals. This is sorta a desperation move, though. I hate adding to future year $$.
Be Organized!- This is very important. Each offseason, be aware of what your draft picks are going to cost you. Most importantly, be aware of what extensions you are going to have to get done in the following year, and maybe the following two years. You can get a rough estimate of how much that might cost - use this to adjust your FA budget.
- If I really need to get down to it, I keep a spreadsheet. Helps me keep a running list of major renegs, and sums up estimated cost of those renegs to add to my current cap space.
- As an example -- we're about to start the offseason in one of my leagues, and my book-keeping tells me this: with a projected cap of $198 million, I'm going to have approximately 181.6 million tied up in 56 players. That's really high, but I don't plan on spending in free agency, have no major renegotiations to do, and the 181.6 number factors in a franchise tag and my only RFA of significance. I've also identified three high-salary veterans who could save me a combined $12.5 million if I really needed it, so I actually end up in decently safe territory. I'm also factoring in four renegotiations I still have to do for this year - one of which I may not have the cap space to pull off. If that happens, I'll likely save money re-signing him as a UFA - or lose him and get saved the trouble of overpaying significantly for an 8th year 3-4 nose tackle.
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