[Herbn]

Quote: Originally Posted by ajra21

First, the best time to sign players is around week 3 to week 6. For some reason, their demands aren't as high. I've noticed you can get around a 20% discount if you time it right. Example: my best CB (29yo) started the season asking for $2.85m per year. I didn't offer him a contract. By week 4, the price had dropped to $2m. I didn't offer him a contract. By week 6, it had gone back up to $2.25m. By the end of the year, he wanted the full $2.85m again. Fifth, this might be the hardest to do at times, try not to have young players start for the whole four years of their rookie contracts. Even if you take a player in the first round, try to keep him as a backup in their first year. A four year starter asks for considerably more than a three year starter after their rookie contract ends. Other keys are not investing all their XP until after you've extended them and certainly not increasing their AWR too high (I try to keep it under 69 until I've extended them) as this keeps their asking price down.

Some really good info here. I follow the same practices across the board, but there were two things you pointed out that I was unaware of:

I'm going to have to test out the week 3-6 contract demand window and see if it's the same for me since I just started a new season and need to re-sign 3 players.

I generally try and hold off on development points when I know I'm going to re-sign a player within a year, but I didn't know awareness and being a four-year starter made a difference for contract demands.