Long Rookie Holdouts

[ebongreen]

I'm not a member of the "minimize bonus at all costs" school. Especially for higher round (1-3) picks, they're gonna Get Paid, and they're gonna stick on my roster for a while. (If you choose players in those rounds that don't make the cut, you have work to do as a GM.)

My attitude is to minimize the overall salary of my draftees excluding bonuses, which makes negotiations generally go pretty quickly. Offer 1, offer 4, offer 7... there's a routine sequence of options all of which have the same base salary with gradually increasing bonuses & incentives. It's a pretty rare day when I don't get all my picks signed by the end of the first week of camp.

Re-signing players to contracts after their rookie deals end... for me, the same idea applies. Yes, it's great if I can get away with incentive-free contracts, but it's overall salary that I look at, and I don't generally resign players I don't plan to keep & have start. (Exceptions: FBx2, TEx2.)