Free Agency
See all those players in the free agent sheet? Now is the time to attempt to sign them to your team ahead of the preseason. I say attempt because you are in theory competing against the other 31 teams for the services of all available free agents.
Unlike the three offseason events involving signings, the base/desired deal that I will eventually list may not be enough to sign them, and more likely will not if it is one of the premier free agents available. If you do intend to seek out one or more of those players, you will probably want to send out a custom offer in excess of what they want, whether that means years, total money, signing bonus, or what's usually the case, a combination of the three.
You may not offer a contract to a player that goes beyond their age 34 season unless the base deal already extends beyond that.
If a free agent is 31 right now and wants a two-year contract, you may go as far as four years because that would take him through his age-34 season (31, 32, 33, 34). If another free agent is also 31 and wants a five-year contract, you can offer him those five years but no more than that. Any player 28 and under is not affected by this rule as the max contract length, seven years, will take them through their age-34 season or younger.
Not every free agent is up on the sheet. I would estimate that somewhere around 25% of all free agents are there. The free agent sheet just lists the Top 8 and Bottom 2 at each position. If there's a certain kind of player that you are looking for that either isn't or don't know if they are on the sheet, feel free to ask me, and I will get back to you if such a player fits that description.
There will be three periods of free agency, each subsequent period spanning fewer real life days than the previous one. Here are the tentative real life days each period will last:
1st - 7 days
2nd - 4 days
3rd - 1 day
Here are some sample contract offers that I will accept, including to more simple approaches:
4 / $20.00 mil / $6.00 mil
3 years default + $2 mil total salary + $750k signing bonus
2 years default
When you give me an offer, you are offering my consent to offer the player the closest deal that he will consider
, meaning that if you offer 4 / $18.00 mil / $5.00 mil and he will only consider it when it is 4 / $19.00 mil / $5.60 mil, I will offer him the latter. If that does not sit well with you, then you have the simpler options I previously laid out or you can explicitly say not to offer the contract unless he will consider those exact terms.
When you PM me the offers, I want you to include a header that says "[Your Team]'s Offers" so that I don't accidentally open them
. In addition to being the commissioner, I am also in charge of the Pumpkins (and I might take the initiative for another team or two), so there could be some conflict of interest. Thus, the best way around that is for me to not open those PMs until the deadline for the current phase has passed. I have default PM settings, so you can tell if and when I open a PM of yours. Out of fairness, I will publicly reveal my offers once the deadline has passed and before I open up any PMs.
Under no circumstances may you ask me if so and so player will consider a certain deal or anything of that nature
. You may ask me general questions regarding free agency but nothing that goes against the spirit of it or give you a competitive advantage. If you do have a question and use the PM system instead of the topic or Discord, make sure that you are clear that you are asking a question, or I might not open it out of fear the PM will contain contract offers.
There are two types of contract offers that I will immediately discard:
1. Any mentioning of the word maximum pertaining to total salary and/or signing bonus
2. A massive one year contract (possibly two-year contracts depending on the situation)
The first one I have actually received in the past. I threw it out because it is both unfair in the laziest of ways and also impossible as you can go quite high in total salary, and I do not want to spend an hour inputting a single offer
The second one is also unfair to teams with lots of cap space to maintain artificial flexibility for future seasons by using up a lot of cap space this season and then sign that same player next season to an uncontested market or below-market contract in the following offseason in a process they can repeat as many times as they can/want.
Also due to fairness, any cuts you wish to make during free agency must be done well ahead of time to give other users enough of a chance to make a bid on their services:
- 96 hours prior to the end of Period 1
- 48 hours prior to the end of Period 2
- No cuts allowed in Period 3
Most users should have been told when they signed their rookies in the spreadsheet, Discord, or via PM of their cap space and roster holes entering free agency. If I did not, feel free to consult the roster sheet and compare with the roster requirements listed in the first column or ask me what your holes are. Should free agency end with there still being holes on your roster, the AI will fill those holes for you. You do not have to be under the salary cap at the end of free agency. I will give users several days after free agency ends to do so.
One big thing that I want to add is that many positions are very sensitive to starting status relative to their rating. QBs, HBs, FSs, CBs, and several other positions have expectations to start when they are around 82 or above.
If you desire to sign someone at 82+ and are not expecting them to start for you, I highly urge you to offer them a contract no longer than 2 years in length
. It is possible that they might demand a trade after just one season, but attempting to sign them to a 1 or 2 year deal will significantly reduce the financial penalty you would be dealt with if having to move on from them while they are still under contract.
KCF can't actually be a real person but he is - greengravy