[steelheat226]

Quote: Originally Posted by Mattphillies

Hey everyone! Really enjoying the game this year but I’ve found the work they did with contracts, specifically how they laid out cap hits in long term contracts to be quite worrisome. If you use a team like the Eagles, you’re going to enter the offseason with practically no cap space whatsoever unless you start releasing very good players. In some ways this is a good simulation of real life - teams have to make tough financial decisions every year to free up cap space - but I think they went a little overboard with their intent. Too much money was put into the 2nd year cap hits and not enough into the first. The Eagles just aren’t going to be releasing Malcolm Jenkins, Brandon Brooks, Alshon Jeffery etc. They do however masterfully construct and restructure contracts every year so there’s always room in the budget to keep their own priority free agents, extend drafted players, and dip a toe or two into the free agent market. In Madden, there’s just no way to do this, until I found a little trick. If you want to create a little wiggle room for the first two offseasons or so without straight up changing a player’s contract to something else entirely (which feels like cheating to me), simply go into the Edit Contract tab of a player with a big money long term deal and move the current year of the deal to the left or right and then back again. This will redistribute the cap hits throughout the contract to a more evenly balanced backloaded deal, freeing up money on next year’s cap in just about every case. You can do this to as many players with multi-year deals as you want. Money will be pushed into your current year’s cap, but I’ve found you can actually operate the first year OVER the cap if needed and you won’t be prompted to cut anyone. You can free up just a few million if you’d like or for some teams over 20 million. Be advised, just like in real life, you’re pushing some money further down the line so be mindful of who you’re “restructuring” because you could end up taking a bigger bath on a guy you were intending to cut in a year or two. I find this method to be the closest thing to “restructuring” contracts in Madden that we’ll get so I hope this helps someone out there as much as it’s helped me and my Eagles franchise. Thanks and enjoy the game everyone! P.S. Read Geodude’s Franchise Tips every year - that dude is a hall of famer!

Very interesting to know. The Steelers do the exact same thing. So after I slide the years, do I save anything? Or can I just exit?