Salary Cap Leagues-Yay or Nay?

[dm1129]

I have been involved in this hobby for about 15 years, yet never participated in a salary cap league. I would be very interested in hearing from owners who have taken part in salary cap leagues, the pros and cons. The good, the bad, and the ugly.

[Goirish374]

happy to oblige.

i love salary cap and contract formats. the primary reason is that the share of your available resources that a given player commands introduces a "fourth axis of value" to fantasy football.

Axis I: points scored. easy. in a redraft league with no positional requirements, this would be the only way to value players.
Axis II: positional distribution. you get Axes I and II every year in redraft: a player at position A might be more valuable than a player at position B who scores more points because you have to start players from positions A and B and may have other options at those positions.
Axis III: career production. this is the axis that dynasty adds. a young player can be more valuable than a higher scoring player because he can potentially score for longer, score more later, or hold asset value over time due to those potentials.
Axis IV: resource share. (i don't have a snazzy name for this). a given player can be more or less valuable than in other formats (even after accounting for scoring, position and age) based on whether or not the take up a disproportionately large or small share of the resources you have available to build a team.

this does a lot neat things. it creates new, interesting and unique situations and decisions in each league, almost each time you have to assess a deal. it provides a new path to rebuilding as cap space becomes a resource rebuilding teams can leverage to their benefit. teams are generally down and out for less time because the horizon for roster turnover shrinks dramatically based on the duration of contracts across your team.

there are two primary cons:
-its more complex. you have to pay more attention to numbers.
-because contracts can expire, everyone on your team is technically going to fall off of it at some point. this in and of itself has pros, but strictly speaking salary cap and contract leagues are more like super snazzy keeper leagues than pure dynasty leagues.

[berserkers]

I've been playing fantasy football for 20 years. Most of those years were redrafts which I sadly, no longer play. I'm only in a few dynasty IDP leagues now, but my favorite is a 16 team GM contract league. It's great! If I has the chance to join another , I would. It seemed like a lot to deal with at first since it was also an auction league, but it's the most fun I've ever had, starting 22 players each week. Lots of fun and not as challenging as I thought. I highly recommend it!

[Dookmarriot]

I'm a huge fan of the format. My non-cap leagues are a breeze by comparison. It makes for more nuanced and difficult roster construction. Cap space is of equal value to a contributing player. In a straight league you'd never likely trade AJG for, say, Edelman, but if AJG took up a quarter of your cap and Edelman one tenth you might consider it.

[skip]

I'm the lone vote so far for "never again". While I appreciate some of what the concept tries to do, I found that salaries and cap limits severely hamper trading to a point where the last league I was in trades only occurred around the draft involving picks for players. Trades pretty much never happened involving players for players.

[Dookmarriot]

Interesting. In my cap league, there's a ton of trading activity - a lot of it driven by cap situations.

[outrage]

Like you, I was a long time dynasty player but never played in a salary cap league. That was until I started up my own a few years. I didn't have much knowledge of how a salary cap league worked normally, but I wanted to create one how I thought it should be set up. I'm so glad I did because it quickly became my favorite league and still is.

Things like salaries and contracts just add more layers, and requires more strategic thinking and moves. I'm a very analytical person, so it's no surprise it would be up my alley. I definitely recommend trying one out though, just be aware that they generally require more time and energy.

[dm1129]

I amended the orignal poll to include 'w/contracts'. To be honest, I don't know if there are salary cap leagues without contracts, but if there are, I could see how that possibly may hamper trading. Ironically, I am considering creating a salary league w/contracts specifically because I think activity would be encouraged. If the league has a max of four or five year contracts, every year at least 20% of the player pool would be available for auction in addition to trading activity spurred by cap considerations. Any thoughts?

[Shcritters]

I am only in one dynasty league and it is a salary/contract league. I can't speak from experience on how I feel about non-salary/contract leagues because I've never been in one but I honestly feel like I would be bored because of the added layers of complexity it a salary/contract league adds.

The goal of our league is to try to set it up as much like being an NFL GM as possible. There is a salary cap that goes up every year by the same percentage as the NFL's, rookie salaries are assigned by round they are drafted, players can become a hold-out if they aren't payed enough (except for rookies who can't hold out until after year 3, similar to the NFL), and you can franchise and transition tag players. Contracts in our league go up 20% each year so you can't have all of the star players indefinitely. All of these things make it so that you can rebuild in a couple of years if you have to. It also builds a nice balance between developing young players and dipping into free agency (the annual free-agent auction) to get the final piece for your team to put you over the top.

If you haven't done one I would strongly suggest doing so. Someone above mentioned the long-term strategy piece... adding contract lengths and salaries adds multiple new layers of thought and strategy that wouldn't be there with a true dynasty league. As mentioned above, things like 'this guy is a stud, but I'm having to pay him well above market prices, so should I trade him or let him walk?' wouldn't be there in a dynasty league. For example, I'm paying Andrew Luck $37. That's above market pricing for a QB in my league, even though it is only 15% of my salary cap. Now I'm entertaining trading him on name value because I'm potentially paying more than VORP that could be had for much cheaper.

Wonderful format... everyone interested in Dynasty Football should try it.

[Cult of Dionysus]

I've only done one salary cap league, which is now in its 4th season. The one comment that I'd make is that when you come into salary cap for the first time, it may take some time to get used to it and to liking it It took me nearly a year before I began to enjoy myself and the league. It takes a different frame of mind, as you have to evaluate everything from the perspective of contract term and price. So if you jump in, don't expect instant enjoyment. It can be an acquired taste.

[ArrylT]

i am with skip. I've tried salary cap leagues in three different fantasy sports and my experience has shown that salaries and cap limits have definitely hampered the trading aspect.

I think that if you get into the right league with the right type of owners, that a salary cap league is probably fun & enjoyable - but for the amount of work & layers involved it just seems to add too many extra steps. Every owner is different and has their own style & way of managing teams - so for some salary cap leagues are great, and for others not so much.

Final thought is this - many of us would agree that a salary cap / contracts league would make it more "realistic" and closer to the NFL. Well how much trading do we actually see in the NFL - and when does most of it occur? Same with the NHL. The trading is now mostly during the period around the rookie draft & free agency, and mostly involves draft picks.

http://nfltraderumors.co/list-completed ... fl-trades/

[ThePeckers]

I found a salary cap replication of the NFL as close as possible and love everything about it. Two divisions of 16 teams all named after NFL teams and aligned in their actual conferences.

I have been playing fantasy football for almost 15 years now and it was my first contract IDP league. It's opened my eyes to all of the possibilities and intricacies involved. I find trading to be that much more enjoyable, have to take into account how much a player is contracted for and how many years are left on their contracts. In our league we have many caveats that allow you to extend and tag the players. Tags include Franchise, Transition and Waiver, there are also holdouts every year.

I highly suggest diving into salary cap leagues and experiencing the new aspects it opens up.

[Defender]

Never played in a contract/SC league, but my concern would be rookie contract length. I worry about stud RBs on long rookie deals. On the other hand, if the rookie contract have a max of 3 years, I would completely devalue TEs in a draft, push down QBs a lot, and WRs would even take a hit. Maybe my fears are unfounded, but this is just something I have oft wondered about.

How do your leagues handle rookie contracts?

[sloth8u]

play in 2 and love them both. going forward, its likely that my only startups will be salary/contract leagues. (other than unique leagues)

the obvious con, is that you have to be tuned in to your salary/contract situation, or you will fail.

the pro is that you cant just draft and sit on your team. eventually owners have to make decisions about guys. players move around quite a bit, and there is certainly strategy involved when building teams.

[bruiser]

happy to oblige.

i love salary cap and contract formats. the primary reason is that the share of your available resources that a given player commands introduces a "fourth axis of value" to fantasy football.

Axis I: points scored. easy. in a redraft league with no positional requirements, this would be the only way to value players.
Axis II: positional distribution. you get Axes I and II every year in redraft: a player at position A might be more valuable than a player at position B who scores more points because you have to start players from positions A and B and may have other options at those positions.
Axis III: career production. this is the axis that dynasty adds. a young player can be more valuable than a higher scoring player because he can potentially score for longer, score more later, or hold asset value over time due to those potentials.
Axis IV: resource share. (i don't have a snazzy name for this). a given player can be more or less valuable than in other formats (even after accounting for scoring, position and age) based on whether or not the take up a disproportionately large or small share of the resources you have available to build a team.

this does a lot neat things. it creates new, interesting and unique situations and decisions in each league, almost each time you have to assess a deal. it provides a new path to rebuilding as cap space becomes a resource rebuilding teams can leverage to their benefit. teams are generally down and out for less time because the horizon for roster turnover shrinks dramatically based on the duration of contracts across your team.

there are two primary cons:
-its more complex. you have to pay more attention to numbers.
-because contracts can expire, everyone on your team is technically going to fall off of it at some point. this in and of itself has pros, but strictly speaking salary cap and contract leagues are more like super snazzy keeper leagues than pure dynasty leagues.

I've been following goirish for the last 3 years here. He's spot on about S/C leagues.