Salaries
 

I'm entering the 4th offseason in my first universe and my stud QB is coming up on the final year of his deal. Our team is great, having just won our 2nd Front Office Bowl in 4 years, and he is one of the top QB's in the league. So clearly, dude deserves to get paid.


That said, his ask is blowing my mind:



The cap for 2027 is set for 251m, so his cap hit of 40m in year one would be about 16% of the cap. Some googling indicates this is in line with current reality: Mahomes earned about 16.5% of the NFL cap this year.

But once we go into 2028 and beyond we are starting to look at likely 20-25% of the cap being used by this contact based on the rate at which the cap has increased so far in the game. That feels untenable, and also a bit unrealistic.


I then looked at the top salaries report in my league and saw this:



We've got dudes already pulling down salaries almost twice that of real-life Mahomes. This seems crazy to me.

So my question(s): is this normal? Are there tricks to mitigate this by re-working his contract every couple years? Or is the league just going to get super top-heavy in salaries and I can expect to get some pretty good deals on mid-tier players as teams use so much of the cap on their stars?

First comment: looking at the date on that report, you may be looking at numbers before the AI teams do their contract renegotations, so it's possible that some of those numbers will not be realized. That said, I have a career in 2123 and I just checked: a handful of top-tier QBs do have deals that pay them 20-30% of the cap, but the great majority of them (and all other players...I'm seeing only QBs in that range) are under that percentage of the cap.

That said, it's pure speculation at this point to try to get a feel for the FA market long-term because of the stated intent to likely make changes in how AI teams handle the cap. As far as players in the relative prime of their careers (say, years 4-8 for most positions,) right now what I'm seeing in a given offseason are a whole bunch of centers and guards, and then a relatively small sprinkling of 60+ players at other positions. (In the league I have open right now, that looks like one RB, one WR, 2 OTs, 2 DEs, 2 DTs, 4 ILBs, 4 OLBs, one CB, one S. But again, if he changes how AI teams handle the cap, that will change what the talent in FA looks like.)

As far as managing it, I don't see a ton of difference from previous FOFs, so the #1 priority likely remains that you need to check every single player every offseason for a favorable renegotiation request. Guys who didn't play much last year may take substantially less money in particular. There are also times when a younger guy wants a long-term deal that may cost more in cap room this year, but that will save you a lot down the road. All that said, cap management in FOF isn't easy, and in most instances it's harder for the AI to do it than for humans.

For all sorts of contract comparisons...


Cheers to this sort of analysis, % of cap is what matters


Jeers to this, flat dollar amounts don't, just get over the sticker shock

Thanks for the great feedback. That last paragraph is extremely useful, as I was not doing any sort of check for renegotiation never mind an exhaustive one. I did not having not played much would change their demands, either.

Yeah, sorry about that. I was running out of time before I had to leave the house for the day and shortcut that part instead of doing the math. I figured with the cap still being only 250mil the relative doubling of value over real life quarterback contracts in today's dollar would still be a meaningful statement. That defense aside, your point is valid and I'll try to stick to percentages going forward.

Looking at my current season, the franchise tag for a QB was 70MM on a 285MM cap, so 25% There are a few other QBs in that range.