2019 rule change discussion - including years with bids

[TrueDawg]

I get it but what’s more outrageous if we are trying to stick to being realistic? Not being able to sign a guy for one year OR signing a player to a contract that is 70% of your cap?

I think including years and guaranteed money with the bid and awarding the player to the owner offering the most guaranteed money solves this problem too. Especially if you can choose how much you want to guarantee.

Although I need to think about how that would work... right now if you go bonus, you save 20% against the cap. Using that same logic, if you wanted to guarantee 50% of the contract, you'd save 50% against the cap? I don't want that.

Another thought could be a hybrid where a one year deal cannot be a bonus contract?

Wouldn't we WANT the 1 year contract to be bonus? That at least requires some risk (although I get your point, that it would force the owner to take on the entire contract value against the cap).

[sprtsfrk208]

Agree with this

Yeah, id definitely vote in favor of bidding with years and love the idea of owners choosing what percentage guarantees.

[Dre]

I like the idea of including years and owners choosing the percentage guaranteed, it would be nice to eliminate those ridiculous one year contracts. However I'm also worried that we're over complicating things to address a very small number of cases and when I think about all the bidding that we do during UFAs, adding this further level of detail will make things even more time consuming.

I'm on the fence but leaning more towards no and just leaving it alone.

[Xulu Bak]

Although I need to think about how that would work... right now if you go bonus, you save 20% against the cap. Using that same logic, if you wanted to guarantee 50% of the contract, you'd save 50% against the cap? I don't want that.

Eliminate the "cap savings" of bonus contracts. The base salary is primarily cap consideration, guaranteed money primarily determines whicjh team wins a bid.

Might need to think abouttotal cap space and/or calculation of TT/FT this year though, as eliminating that "savings" on new contracts would be a fairly significant change with unintended consequences for individual owners.

[TrueDawg]

Eliminate the "cap savings" of bonus contracts. The base salary is primarily cap consideration, guaranteed money primarily determines whicjh team wins a bid.

Might need to think abouttotal cap space and/or calculation of TT/FT this year though, as eliminating that "savings" on new contracts would be a fairly significant change with unintended consequences for individual owners.

Yeah... eliminating the cap savings was my first thought and its the most logical solution. I mean we already have 100% guaranteed contracts with no cap savings for 1st round rookies.

Doing this would simplify some things but would also have a short-term impact. Mostly I think teams that have less cap space might have trouble signing available players this year... although this should also drive bids down a little, since you would know you're not gonna save 20% (you can't bid 50k on a player expecting him to only count 40k against your cap).

But the tag numbers are always calculated using TOTAL contract value ("base" salary + bonus)... it is not calculated using the "base" salary only (the 80% that counts against the cap on bonus contracts).

[TrueDawg]

Maybe the best way to handle this would be that all bonus contracts would continue to carry the 20% cap savings this year regardless of how much you've decided to guarantee (unless you're only guaranteeing 10%... then the cap savings would be 10% instead of 20%).

Then next year, all bonus contracts carry a 10% cap savings... then the following year the cap savings is completely gone.

So it's gradual and you have time to plan for it.

[TrueDawg]

Or maybe we just leave the bonus structure the way it is now (including the cap savings) and just start with including years and contract type (straight or 20% bonus) with the bid. And the winning bid is based off guaranteed money. We can see how that goes and potentially add the variable guaranteed percentage later.

Part of the reason for doing this is to get rid of the massive 1-year deals (which I think are harmful to the league and are completely unrealistic... no player would actually sign that contract)... and I think this will accomplish it.

[Craig0331]

Just anticipating a potential issue since this looks like it’s going to pass. Currently, when we bid on a FA each bid has to be a specific amount higher than the bid before it (based off how much the bid before it is). Are we going to do the same thing but just use the guaranteed money? The guarantee has to be 100, 500, 1000, or 2000 higher than the bid before depending on the level you’re at?

[citsalp1]

I think it's going to do more harm than good, your gonna have owners that sign a bunch of bonus contracts, a couple of bad ones...They realize can't do anything with there team...Then just walk away

[ssmith313105]

I think it's going to do more harm than good, your gonna have owners that sign a bunch of bonus contracts, a couple of bad ones...They realize can't do anything with there team...Then just walk away

What’s to stop someone from bidding 90k on a player now then quitting 2 weeks into the season? We can’t worry about the possibility of one owner rage quitting cause they gave out a bunch of bad contracts. Seems like we have a good group of owners so I doubt it’ll be an issue.

[TrueDawg]

I think it's going to do more harm than good, your gonna have owners that sign a bunch of bonus contracts, a couple of bad ones...They realize can't do anything with there team...Then just walk away

So be it... guaranteed money is where it's at in the NFL. We all know it. We see it every year. Wanna see the lengths to which players go to secure guaranteed money? Look no further than LeVeon Bell.

So I don't feel bad about changing our system to emulate that... and as a byproduct, eliminate the ridiculous 1-year contracts we've been seeing (which I think are harmful to the league in general).

NFL teams get stuck in bad contracts all the time... like Houston's Brock Osweiler contract. And the contract the Vikings gave Cousins. And wait til the Jags find out Foles sucks.