Salary cap problems in year 4

[football5680]

Never give players any signing bonus to keep out of situations like this. It is unrealistic but it will keep you safe. I like to do it regardless because I like the option to cut any player at any time without worrying about the cap penalty

[JayTee86]

Obviously cheating, but if you have a guy with a giant bonus, restructure his contract for that year with no signing bonus(for any amount of years etc. through position swap or what have you) and after that season you can trade/cut him without taking a hit for his previous bonus against your next year's salary cap.

I also noticed that in '12, if players have regressed enough because of age and they have a big contract, when you go to restructure their deals you can get them for much cheaper.

[TheJustPull]

Well I have resigned myself to start the chise over, but I think I'm turning the cap off in the next one. I am playing a few seasons of NCAA 12 before I do it though to get some better draft classes.
I think I may use the Browns since they are my team and probably would be a challange to build up just like in real life. I am going to at least play the 1 season of NCAA 12 (the current one) and I used Stanford so I can make Luck better. Probably sim a few seasons after the first season and then start the franchise again.

[Manning2Harrison]

For future reference, be careful about adding money to contracts when a first offer isn't accepted. Most of the time a player will eventually sign if you keep making the same offer, and other times all it takes is adding or subtracting a year. Once I discovered that players will sign when made the same offer multiple times, I've rarely had to add money to sign players.

[TheJustPull]

That was part of my problem. I'd add money or add it in the bonus and I think in the end thats what did me in. I am probably still going to turn it off so I can keep my franchise going.

[hawksruleva]

It's worth noting that a lot of older NFL players end up having to re-work their deals for less money. The Steelers asked several players to re-work deals this year, so they could sign some of their FAs. In Seattle, Marcus Trufant was cut and then re-signed to a more manageable contract.

[Ueauvan]

if there is no guaranteed money on the contract (ie bonus) trade the player if you get a nibble, or release. either way there would be no cap penalty.

easiest is to try trade for a pick and a fb or te that is 35 ovr. that way it covers a team that has a full roster and fbs/tes are deemed the most useless according to cpu gms.

it does annoy me that future years penalties are not visible prior to the year

if you have someone with 2-3 years left, when you resign to 1-2 the total bonus is still used (you can do the new deal with 0 bonus) and the total of the 2-3 is spread over 1-2. ie i pay more now and theres no year 3. when you are dealing with 28 year olds and you resign towards end of season, that current season is one of the new contract and therefore in real terms the player gets a new salary for that year, therefore you get back pay ie a new non bonus bonus. restructured deals are a fact of life, manning was dumped before a 28m roster bonus. the salary cap in madden is wrong, i cant attach performance bonuses etc.
the remaining bonus is still recognised in year 2 as a penalty so there would be a cap penalty if your released or traded. 20M over 2 years or 20M over 3? take the first and get a simple 2m+ deal from someone else for year 3 if you are traded/released.

[Shane6387]

Probably cheating, but I always sign draft picks and free agents to no signing bonus, so that when I need to trade or cut them, I don't take any cap penalty. On one franchise, at the end of the year I switch to the team the finished last to try and retool them. Sometimes they have some terrible contracts, so I need to cut a lot of players and use a bunch of UDFA. It is pretty fun though. Some of those guys have unrealistic stats. Yesterday I found a couple of LBers who were both under 60 OVR but had 90 speed and 80+ Hit power. I have also seen low rated UDFA WR's with 97+ speed.