Regarding ray's comment about the player salary structure. How do you lock down a high rated (80+) player to a 6 year deal for lower than the minimum bonus? You can go with a lower value on the yearly salary, but to do that you have to still hit the minimum bonus asked for. Is there any way of lowering both the salary and bonus demand? I dont think there is, at least I havnt been able to. If there is a way, I would really like to know, lol. So the choice is to either pay the higher salary against the cap or take the full hit in the bonus which will affect your dead cap if you decide to trade or cut the player before the contract term is up. If there is a way to tie up a long-term starter, other than a "gem" FA out of the pool that is not bid on by others, for "pennies", I have not seen it. Our current FA pool has been decimated, which is pretty typical for a league just finishing its first season combined with having a majority of experienced owners. There just is not much, if anything, there atm. Unless one or more of the teams failed to re-sign a good starter, there will not be anything in the early FA period. So, it will be all on the draft to significantly improve your roster.
Thanks again to all who are posting their thoughts and opinions on this subject, now is the time for everyone to do so, and it may end up that we collectively decide not to take players away from the LC, CC, and bye teams or all Div winners with more than 12 wins, for example. Anyway, if have a strong opinion one way or the other, or an idea/suggestion, please feel absolutely free to "post up".
An alternate idea of the top teams losing draft picks has been brought up by raidergreg in another thread, so lets get this idea into this thread. One comment I would have on that is that you probably would not get an 80+ default rated player picking at the 1.28 thru 1.32 spots. Not that default values count the most, but they are a general indicator, and if the key attributes go along with the default rating or better, then it is a solid value. So, there's a lot of merit to the draft pick idea, and there could also be a trade structure set up to inact it.
And, if we do go with a player cut requirement, I would suggest something like it should be based on 1. default value, 2. stats, 3. position importance, and 4. trade value. Assign a value to each and select the highest total. That way its as objective as we can structure it.
Last edited at 10/31/2017 3:50 pm