Resigning your players, Need a Strategy

[Wheeler Dealer]

Maybe this will just all work out, but it's confusing right now.

I'm approaching my 6th game having already had my bye week. Players are coming to me asking to renegotiate. So far it's been the bottom of the depth chart, I would prefer to start at the top and work down but I don't seem to be able to initiate negotiations.

I have huge cap space for 2008 ($15M) so I would think that any deal that doesn't involve a bonus is OK. Player will be happy, I'll have the choice later of cutting him w/o impacting 2009 cap space. Is that right?

I read ebongreen's article about what's required to sign stars and starters and I think I can deal with that when the time comes.

I just don't want to sign a bunch of backups first if there is some cap problem down the road. If there's not a cap issue, my backups are a bit more valuable to me if they never test free agency (play knowledge). I'm guessing that if I just refuse to deal with these guys now, they won't come back until they are on the FA market and have forgotten my plays. So I would like to give contracts for say, 10% more than the going rate, but be able to get out with no cap hit if they don't make the team.

I think real teams use roster bonuses to deal with that problem.

Some of these demands are just silly! For example, I have a 73 OVL OLB that I signed during preseason for $600K. I did think he was better for my money than the other $600K OLBs. He's asking $7M over 3 years and I'm not even allowed to offer him less than about $5.5 for 3 years. I think his appropriate price for my team is about $2.2M for 3 years.

So, what are the pitfalls here? Do I have to guess correctly now who can make the 2009 team or start training backups again every year from scratch?

[loloben]

First of all, some players who you don't want to cut will be cheaper with more money coming from bounses and not salary. Always check POT with any backup. A 80 ovr wr with 93 pot maybe be asking for 6 million for his first big contract. Come up with a strategy on whether you want to acquire players through free agency or the draft after s few dynasties.

[cutter73]

First, you are correct that if you don't give a player a signing bonus, it won't hurt your cap when you release that player. Keep an eye on incentives though. If the player doesn;t meet the qualifications for those, you don't pay them, but if you cut a player who still has potential incentives coming to him in his contract for future years, you still take that hit when you cut the player I believe.

As far as signing players:

Most players will keep coming back several times over the course of the season. If you want to do star contracts first, just keep passing on backup players until your stars get taken care of when they come up,then catch the backups after they come back. keep in mind though, that some players are more likely to only ask for a contract a couple times. Most keep coming back over and over until you sign them, but a few won't. It just depends on the player. In fact, most of the time, it's never really the backups who stop coming back for contracts during the season in from my experience, so you're pretty safe passing on them until towards the end of the season if you want to.

if you don;t have it, make sure you download the patch. I just say this because it seems like you think you're getting ridiculous salary demands and there was a bug at first that caused players to ask for outrageous contracts.

If you do have the patch, well, some players simply have personality traits that make them greedy. Also, check your team philosophy for contracts if you haven;t already. If it's set to Overpay or something similar, you're offering bigger contracts simply because that's what you have set as a baseline for your franchise. Turn it down if you need to. Check your GM's skills too. Some skills impact how well your GM can pull of contract negotiations.