FOF 2004 5.0d - Free Agency Problems

[QuikSand]

I don't have a single thing to contribute to this discussion (yet), but I'm having a tough time following everything that is being discussed on this topic, since it's showing up in a variety of different places.

As I understand it, the adjustments made to the free agency process as the game was patched from 5.0b to 5.0c significantly altered the free agency market - at least upon first glance. (Jim has apparently confirmed that the big change was in patch C - so "downgrading" from D to C doesn't address this issue, if that's your plan) There seems to be some evidence that this is partially or wholly due to the widespread use of "custom rosters" generated by outside utilities - and might not be a big deal in the basic game itself. There's also some suggestion that this is a short term issue, which goes away after a generation of players or so (15 years?).

I can't vouch for any of this - just trying to summarize what I have read elsewhere.

Can we perhaps use this thread as a central place for what we have seen and what we know on the topic? (Even links to other discussions would be fine) I'd like to make it as simple as possible for someone from the vast office complex at Solecismic headquarters to be able to tap into the results that these many fingers have generated out here in text-sim land.


So... what do we know?

[fantastic flying froggies]

A very good suggestion QS as I, for one, am utterly and thoroughly confused on the whole subject...

Any clarifications will be more than welcome.

[Ben E Lou]

I am working on a test right now as a matter of fact. I'll post what I've seen so far in a sec...

[QuikSand]

This is a thread launching a good deal of discussion on this topic... but not the only place that I have seen it brought up.

http://dynamic2.gamespy.com/~fof/for...ad.php?t=21936

[Ben E Lou]

The core potential problems that have been mentioned are:

• Too many good free agents still available after late free agency
• Too much roster turnover (still) for the liking of some

Those who believe that the first one is a major problem usually theorize that it is a result of the top players asking for too much money.

I am fast-running a career (only doing 1st/2nd round picks and signing a few starters for free agency) using these settings:

1. Default Rosters
2. Injuries=200
3. Inflation= 2.8-->8.0

Here are the results so far:

	Min	Max	>80	70-79	60-69	50-59
2004	19	26	0	0	0	0
2005	18	28	0	0	1	1
2006	17	29	0	0	0	0
2007	17	31	0	0	1	2
2008	16	29	0	3	4	7
2009	15	27	0	3	2	4
2010	14	29	2	5	0	3
2011	15	29	0	3	2	6
2012	16	28	0	0	1	6
2013	14	26	1	3	3	7
2014	14	27	0	1	1	4
2015	12	27	0	2	1	5

"Min" is the lowest number of players on a roster at the beginning of free agency and "max" is the highest number of players on a roster (not my team) at the beginning of free agency. The last four columns represent the number of players available in those ratings ranges after the 8-stage process is finished. I did not include P/K's or injured players in those numbers. The key seasons are coming up, it would seem. I'm going pretty fast and have some time the rest of this afternoon, so I expect to be through another 10 seasons or so in a relatively short time.

[Ben E Lou]

Here's a key post on this issue from the 5.0d thread from Jim:

Thanks for the support. By risky, I meant that I probably would have heard of crashes by now if something went wrong. There's nothing in 5.0d that should cause anyone to think of staying on 5.0c. The big change in AI FA acquisition was from 5.0b to 5.0c.

Teams in the NFL seem to have a core of 20-30 players that they keep for more than a year. Some go as small as 16 in retention, others as high as 32. Obviously, FOF 2004 is retaining fewer players. If that's what it takes to maintain a competitive AI, that's okay with me. I'll have to see how this issue plays out over the next week or so before I make any decisions on how to proceed.

[QuikSand]

Adding some speculation into the mix...

I wonder what the best result for these "top grade" free agents would be? If people are complaining that superstar players are demanding too much money in the game right now (I don't know if I agree that this is true) maybe the best in-game solution would be this:

As the FA process continues, players who don't receive offers in their target area should make two adjustments:

#1 - They should more rapidly "get realistic" with their salary demands. Currently, players in FOF 2004 ajdust their demands downward, but only pretty modestly. Maybe seeing demands drop by around 50% or even more over the 20 week period would create a more workable environment?

#2 - They should start to focus more on a short term deal rather than a long term deal. Currently in FOF 2004 it seems that nearly ever player is willing to sign for either a 1yr, 2yr, or 3yr deal at about the same $/yr... and that some star players are willing to accept lucrative deals for longer periods. Maybe player demands should adjust in terms of time as well as money - especially for younger players. A 5th year player, who doesn't get the $5m/yr deal he wants ought to look at a $2m deal... but probably only for one year, maybe two.


I don't think either of these is exactly groundbreaking stuff... but they ought to be part of this discussion, I think.

[Ben E Lou]

A couple more observations from the career above (just so I don't forget as I go along)

1. In the last 2 years, nearly half of the players tracked on the spreadsheet above have been centers. I don't know if this is going to be a trend or not, but it is worth writing down at least.

2. The distribution between the minimum number of players kept and maximum seems to be pretty even.

[Buzzbee]

SD - Game generated rosters or 3rd party rosters? I'm assuming HR's utility generated rosters.

[Lucky Jim]

I think he said default rosters.

I've also noticed that the majority of these "great" players left in free agency are not at premium positions. Centers or Guards for the most part, maybe an RB or QB occasionally, but not as a rule.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by Buzzbee

SD - Game generated rosters or 3rd party rosters? I'm assuming HR's utility generated rosters.

Originally Posted by SkyDog

1. Default Rosters

There ya go.

[Ben E Lou]

2016 Update

Rosters: 13-->27

4 players 50-59 available at end of late free agency, and none any better. Didn't check positions, but henceforth I'll start looking at Lucky Jim's assertion.

[amdaily]

I just typed up a long post on the subject and lost it . Off to retype...

SkyDog,

Can you track the number of players that a team carries after the 8 step process. It's been my experience that teams will go with as low as 26 players at that point, then fill the roster with 1 year deals to stars post training camp and a dozen or so undrafted free agents.

This is one reason that I feel the changes to the FA system made the AI less agressive to an extent (wish I had patch B to compare). And that does make sense considering half the league will have over $6 million in cap money left after the 8 step process, but not have more than 26 players.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by amdaily

I just typed up a long post on the subject and lost it . Off to retype...

SkyDog,

Can you track the number of players that a team carries after the 8 step process. It's been my experience that teams will go with as low as 26 players at that point, then fill the roster with 1 year deals to stars post training camp and a dozen or so undrafted free agents.

This is one reason that I feel the changes to the FA system made the AI less agressive to an extent (wish I had patch B to compare). And that does make sense considering half the league will have over $6 million in cap money left after the 8 step process, but not have more than 26 players.

Just to clarify: you mean the number that they have on the roster right before training camp?

[Buzzbee]

Originally Posted by SkyDog

The core potential problems that have been mentioned are:

I am fast-running a career (only doing 1st/2nd round picks and signing a few starters for free agency) using these settings:

1. Default Rosters
2. Injuries=200
3. Inflation= 2.8-->8.0

*Cleans glasses*

Oh, there it is.

[amdaily]

Originally Posted by SkyDog

Just to clarify: you mean the number that they have on the roster right before training camp?

Yes. I find it odd that some teams will have over $10 million in cap room going into training camp, yet only have 30 players on there roster. Why didn't they pursue free agents? This would seem to indicate the free Agent AI isn't agressive enough.



And as for high salaries, it is a proven fact as far as I'm concerned. In the other thread I posted a comparison between the NFL and FOF. The main finding was the the NFL has 2 players making $10 million per year while FOF has 21 (league wide). No wonder "very good" players requesting $3-4 million a year won't be signed in FA - some teams have upwards of 42% of the cap room invested in 2 players.

[Dutch]

#1 - They should more rapidly "get realistic" with their salary demands. Currently, players in FOF 2004 ajdust their demands downward, but only pretty modestly. Maybe seeing demands drop by around 50% or even more over the 20 week period would create a more workable environment?

If this could be added to the difficulty settings so that the AI see's this option a couple of phases before the human player, it could really begin to make the FA process more challenging as well as more realistic. The AI should receive some sort of "help" on a user defined basis with this regard. Simply allowing the contracts to go down in price drastically could hurt the overall engine if the AI doesn't act on it before the player does.

Basically, I think making their prices cheaper allows them the AI to fill out their team better, but would probably cause us to install another house rule to avoid us from getting all the good guys cheap (before the AI even considers them, which would be post FA, I presume unless they become more aggressive during FA to hunt for good deals).

[Ben E Lou]

I think we may be onto something here. I think I mentioned this in my dynasty thread. It appears that some teams don't sign any free agents at all some years. The range in this area is pretty large in 2017. At one extreme, Chicago goes into training camp with 50 players signed, and $28.88M in cap room (almost 20% of the cap). On the other end is Denver, with 28 players under contract, and $11.92M over the cap.

Looking further at Denver, I have an odd hypothesis: is the FA routine skipping over some teams entirely? They did no renegotiations, and signed no free agents. For comparison, Cleveland renegotiated with 9 players, and signed 14 free agents (included in that number are the restricted players that they re-signed).

The teams range, at the end of the 8-step process from 28 to 52 players under contract. Most are in the 40's, which looks pretty good, but a small handful are very low.

Just looking around:

Atlanta has $5.59M in cap room, signed no free agents, and goes to camp with 34 players.

Cincinnati has $7.9M in cap room, signed no free agents, and goes into camp with 33.

Detroit has $14.16M in cap room, signed no free agents, and goes to camp with 30.

New England has $9.65M in cap room and signed none, and goes into camp with 32.

San Diego has $9.77 in cap room, signed none, and goes into camp with 34.

The six teams I've mentioned are the only ones with less than 35 players going into training camp.

[Ben E Lou]

Sorry for the slow-down to pursue that information. Another overall good year in 2017 with regard to the number of guys still available at the end of the 8-step process. There were 2 guys >50, and one 60-69.

[Dutch]

Originally Posted by SkyDog

Just looking around:

Atlanta has $5.59M in cap room, signed no free agents, and goes to camp with 34 players.

Cincinnati has $7.9M in cap room, signed no free agents, and goes into camp with 33.

Detroit has $14.16M in cap room, signed no free agents, and goes to camp with 30.

New England has $9.65M in cap room and signed none, and goes into camp with 32.

San Diego has $9.77 in cap room, signed none, and goes into camp with 34.

The six teams I've mentioned are the only ones with less than 35 players going into training camp.

I wonder if they even made any bids. Perhaps they did, they lost, and then gave up?

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by Dutch

I wonder if they even made any bids. Perhaps they did, they lost, and then gave up?

I didn't see any "turned down contract offer" comments I don't think, but I'll check this year.

[Buzzbee]

Or could there be a flaw in the "General Manager won't allow you to spend that much" logic?

[Ben E Lou]

I definitely think we're on to something here. After late free agency in 2018, the same thing can be observed. A small handful of teams has <35 players on the roster, and most of them have in common that they didn't sign FA's at all, and I'm pretty sure no offers were tendered. (I didn't look in detail at all five or six of the teams, but the first three I checked had made no offers.) They were different teams this year, but roughly the same number.

[Ben E Lou]

Dola--and the huge majority of the rest of the teams for the most part had in the high 30's up to 52 players under contract at the end of late free agency. On the positive side, this year there were *zero* non-injured players with ratings >49 available after the 8-step process.

[amdaily]

In the lastest year of my league 6 times offered no renegioations and signed no FA's in the twenty step process. However, they were the 6 teams with the least cap room.

But, there are some teams that are signing no FA's, in the 20 step or 8 step, yet have plently of cap room, although they did renegioate some contracts.

Definitely something that needs looked into more.

[cthomer5000]

Originally Posted by SkyDog

I definitely think we're on to something here. After late free agency in 2018, the same thing can be observed. A small handful of teams has <35 players on the roster, and most of them have in common that they didn't sign FA's at all, and I'm pretty sure no offers were tendered. (I didn't look in detail at all five or six of the teams, but the first three I checked had made no offers.) They were different teams this year, but roughly the same number.

Can you take a look at the balance sheet of those 5 or 6 teams? Maybe they lost significant amounts of money the year before?

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by cthomer5000

Can you take a look at the balance sheet of those 5 or 6 teams? Maybe they lost significant amounts of money the year before?

I'm finished up 2019 free agency right now. I'll check into it this year. Good thought.

[Lucky Jim]

My initial observations regarding the positions that seemed to be prevalent were based on the first few seasons of a couple new careers I've started with 5.0d. After running a long test I've got some new info. Using an HR roster set it looks like the number of players rated 60+ available after late FA explodes in the year 2008. Up until 2008 there are roughly a handful of players at non premium positions available, but beginning in 2008 the number balloons to a full page in the "reccomend" window of varying positions. This seems to be the general case until around the year 2016 when that number falls to about half. Now in the year 2020 there are 6 players available rated better than 60, one of whom is above 80, an LT. The others by position are a FB, QB, C, LCB, TE, and C. So there seems to be a big jump after the first four or so seasons and initial contracts have expired, but it also seems to correct itself around 2016, until it is back to being a small number of players. And on another note, all of those players except a 12yr QB rated 71/71 were signed after training camp, with the next best player being a 45/47 FS.

[Buzzbee]

Originally Posted by cthomer5000

Can you take a look at the balance sheet of those 5 or 6 teams? Maybe they lost significant amounts of money the year before?

Originally Posted by SkyDog

I'm finished up 2019 free agency right now. I'll check into it this year. Good thought.

I get no love.

Originally Posted by Buzzbee

Or could there be a flaw in the "General Manager won't allow you to spend that much" logic?

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by Lucky Jim

My initial observations regarding the positions that seemed to be prevalent were based on the first few seasons of a couple new careers I've started with 5.0d. After running a long test I've got some new info. Using an HR roster set it looks like the number of players rated 60+ available after late FA explodes in the year 2008. Up until 2008 there are roughly a handful of players at non premium positions available, but beginning in 2008 the number balloons to a full page in the "reccomend" window of varying positions. This seems to be the general case until around the year 2016 when that number falls to about half. Now in the year 2020 there are 6 players available rated better than 60, one of whom is above 80, an LT. The others by position are a FB, QB, C, LCB, TE, and C. So there seems to be a big jump after the first four or so seasons and initial contracts have expired, but it also seems to correct itself around 2016, until it is back to being a small number of players. And on another note, all of those players except a 12yr QB rated 71/71 were signed after training camp, with the next best player being a 45/47 FS.

It is also important to check how many of the guys still remaining were injured.

I saw similar results over roughly the same time periods, when you consider I'm not reporting injured players. Here's an update:

	Min	Max	>80	70-79	60-69	50-59
2004	19	26	0	0	0	0
2005	18	28	0	0	1	1
2006	17	29	0	0	0	0
2007	17	31	0	0	1	2
2008	16	29	0	3	4	7
2009	15	27	0	3	2	4
2010	14	29	2	5	0	3
2011	15	29	0	3	2	6
2012	16	28	0	0	1	6
2013	14	26	1	3	3	7
2014	14	27	0	1	1	4
2015	12	27	0	2	1	5
2016	13	27	0	0	0	4
2017	14	25	0	0	1	2
2018	14	28	0	0	0	0
2019	16	25	0	0	2	3

[Lucky Jim]

Good point, none of the guys in the last year I mentioned were currently injured but that 71/71 QB started only 4 games in each of the last two seasons, which would point to some injury proneness.

[Ben E Lou]

Checking for Buzzbee and cthomer (sorry Buzzbee...missed that)

Cleveland, 33 players, signed no FA's, lost $57.43M last year, $70.33M the year before.

Green Bay, 27 players, signed no FA's, made $4.48M last year, lost $6.32M the year before. Paid a massive bonus this year when renegotiating with their star QB.

New England, 29 players, no FA's, no renegotiations this year. Lost $165.79M last year, $32.35M the year before.

Washington, 33 players, no FA's. Lost $77.87M last year. Lost $66.95M the year before.


Well, a strong case could be made for these teams not pursuing any FA's--a very strong case actually.

[amdaily]

But conversely you can say that teams that do lose alot ($47 million this year, $118 million last year) will sign alot of FA's (8) and go into camp with a good roster (41), as Oakland did in current test league, so the bottom line profit is not the single indicator preventing some teams from pursing free agents.

[amdaily]

Dola,

Out of the top 5 teams (in terms of cap room), one signed 0 free agents despite having $7.9 million in cap room available going into training camp (with only a mid second round pick holding out) and only 27 players on the roster. This team also had a positive cash flow of $6.5 million last season. So the question is, why did not they not pursue even a single FA (no turned down offers)?

[Ben E Lou]

The first team I checked that lost lots of money the last two years did sign FA's, but they were very cheap ones. Still looking around...

[Ben E Lou]

OK. I did find one that lost over $130M over the last two seasons that pursued FA's, so that isn't the whole story.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by amdaily

Dola,

Out of the top 5 teams (in terms of cap room), one signed 0 free agents despite having $7.9 million in cap room available going into training camp (with only a mid second round pick holding out) and only 27 players on the roster. This team also had a positive cash flow of $6.5 million last season. So the question is, why did not they not pursue even a single FA (no turned down offers)?

Did they sign any big-bonus babies in renegotation? The only one I saw that fit that profile last season gave a ton of bonus money to a star QB. Moving on to next season...

[amdaily]

Of the two teams that signed the most FA (Baltimore and Carolina with 21), Baltimore lost $65 million and $53 million the previous seasons. Carolina lost $18 million and $17 million the the previous seasons. Of Baltimore's FA's, 8 are making over $1 million and 10 of Carolina's. I'm not seeing much of a correlation between balance sheet and free agent activity.

[amdaily]

Originally Posted by SkyDog

Did they sign any big-bonus babies in renegotation? The only one I saw that fit that profile last season gave a ton of bonus money to a star QB. Moving on to next season...

They did 2 renegioations upon going into the free agency period.

1- $24.9 signing bonus over 3 years. Contract total of $31 million
2- $16.0 signing bonus over 5 years. Contract total of $29 million

Could teams that do big renegioations be the teams that are not signing free agents (in anticipation of next year's balance sheet)?

[amdaily]

Originally Posted by amdaily

They did 2 renegioations upon going into the free agency period.

1- $24.9 signing bonus over 3 years. Contract total of $31 million
2- $16.0 signing bonus over 5 years. Contract total of $29 million

Could teams that do big renegioations be the teams that are not signing free agents (in anticipation of next year's balance sheet)?

Dola,

Scratch that idea. Miami (who has lost money in the past two season's, albeit a small amount), signed the following renegioations:

1- $20.0 signing bonus over 6 years. Contract total of $57 million
2- $21.9 signing bonus over 3 years. Contract total of $28 million
3- $19.8 signing bonus over 3 years. Contract total of $27 million

Yet was active in free agency signing 10 free agents (a number that was the average for the league this particular season).

[QuikSand]

Originally Posted by SkyDog

nearly half of the players tracked on the spreadsheet above have been centers.

Originally Posted by Lucky Jim

the majority of these "great" players left in free agency are not at premium positions. Centers or Guards for the most part...

I know it's a side issue... but about centers. Every version of FOF has had too many good centers to go around.

Can the explanation be as simple as this: the game generates the same number of players at tackle, guard, and center - notwithstanding the fact that only one center starts per team?

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by QuikSand

I know it's a side issue... but about centers. Every version of FOF has had too many good centers to go around.

Can the explanation be as simple as this: the game generates the same number of players at tackle, guard, and center - notwithstanding the fact that only one center starts per team?

That would be a logical explanation--and I agree that there are too many good centers.

[amdaily]

Breakdown of 50+ rated players left after the 8 step process:

QB: 5
TE: 2
FL: 1
C: 3
RG: 1
LG: 3
LT: 1
K: 1
LCB: 2
RCB: 1

To remove injured players.

[amdaily]

Dola,

I've been turning inflation and and off in this career (now in 2024) testing different theories and such. Right now it is off. So based on my numbers vs. SkyDog's overall numbers, inflation is another large factor in how many quality FA's are left.

This begs the question, what is the optimal inflation number? I personally hate inflation as it takes all aspect of reality out of the game after the first decade. But the way contracts are handled in FOF (as opposed to OOTP) inflation appears nessecary. What would be the lowest it could be set out without harming the AI's competitveness?

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by amdaily

Dola,

I've been turning inflation and and off in this career (now in 2024) testing different theories and such. Right now it is off. So based on my numbers vs. SkyDog's overall numbers, inflation is another large factor in how many quality FA's are left.

This begs the question, what is the optimal inflation number? I personally hate inflation as it takes all aspect of reality out of the game after the first decade. But the way contracts are handled in FOF (as opposed to OOTP) inflation appears nessecary. What would be the lowest it could be set out without harming the AI's competitveness?

I've always operated under the assumption that the default setting of 2.8-->8.0 is the way the game was designed to operate.

[amdaily]

Should we be tracking 40-49 rated players? I don't know about you, but I have a ton. Most of them can be picked up for less than $1 million and the younger players in this ratings range often have a nice upside. These are the players the AI should throwing money at late in free agency to fill out a roster, but they aren't.

[QuikSand]

Originally Posted by amdaily

I personally hate inflation as it takes all aspect of reality out of the game after the first decade. But the way contracts are handled in FOF (as opposed to OOTP) inflation appears nessecary. What would be the lowest it could be set out without harming the AI's competitveness?

I don't think there is any evidence that setting inflation to zero has any meaningfully harmful effects. If you're all that bent out of shape about adjusting for inflation, don't use it in your game.

[amdaily]

I think it does harm the game in relation to this free agent problem. I was getting 20 50+ rated players per season left at the end of the 8 step FA process with no inflation, while SkyDog is getting an average of 5 or thereabouts with inflation. I've turned it on in this league and will report back after 5 seasons.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by amdaily

Should we be tracking 40-49 rated players? I don't know about you, but I have a ton. Most of them can be picked up for less than $1 million and the younger players in this ratings range often have a nice upside. These are the players the AI should throwing money at late in free agency to fill out a roster, but they aren't.

I don't have a problem with these guys sticking around and getting signed to one-year deals during training camp--which is what happens for the vast majority of them. I've only got 3 non-injured position players at or above 40 after training camp--two rated 40, and one rated 42. It appears that the signing issue has largely corrected itself. The totals for the past five seasons (2016-2020) are as follows:

>80: 0
70-79: 0
60-69: 3
50-59: 10

So we're talking a total of 13 quality players left in the pool over a five-year period. That's not bad. If the 5ish teams per year that have cap room and don't sign FA's would sign a couple, I'd imagine that we'd see these guys disappear from the pool almost completely.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by amdaily

I think it does harm the game in relation to this free agent problem. I was getting 20 50+ rated players per season left at the end of the 8 step FA process with no inflation, while SkyDog is getting an average of 5 or thereabouts with inflation. I've turned it on in this league and will report back after 5 seasons.

I would think that it may take a little longer than 5 years to see the results smooth out, but I'm not certain of that.