2 year deals...

[TimG]

I got a question. Do all teams(GM's) see the same contract request per player? Like I see a request for a 1 year contract and another GM see's a 3 year contract because the player would, lets say, have a high "wants winner" .

[George W Bush]

Dude you only offered a 9M bonus on a 5 year deal? No wonder he turned it down.

[George W Bush]

I got a question. Do all teams(GM's) see the same contract request per player? Like I see a request for a 1 year contract and another GM see's a 3 year contract because the player would, lets say, have a high "wants winner" .

No. Same, same.

[tarcone]

I offered a 13+ million dollar bonus on a 5 year to Herndon.

[JesterBlaze]

When I clicked "offer contract" to Herndon, he wanted a 5 year deal. So I bid the max on a 5 year deal thinking, mabe incorrectly, that was the contract that he desired.

I think it's one deal that they'll sign for. Naturally you don't see offering them more money as something that should decrease your chances so why would offering more or less years in the direction they'd like be something that should?

Every negotiation starts with an opening offer. If the counter-offer is even better then you take it.


And as has been said bonus is king. I can't see how offering a huge bonus (and taking the risk involved) can be looked at as manipulating a system any more than trading back in the draft because you still think player X will be there and at that point for a lesser contract. You're taking the risk to reap the potential reward.

I think any potential problem here is that the cap is rising too fast each season so we're not pressed to cut as many good players and the bonus money available to risk on FA's is not as tough to come by as it should be. The only reason I say that is that this whole concept of 2 year bonus heavy deals being controversial only points to a devaluation of having the cap space to do so. A high bonus offer shouldn't be something many teams can do in a given off-season.

[roadrash]

I offered a 13+ million dollar bonus on a 5 year to Herndon.

And he took the 9 mil bonus on a two year deal. . .

[dberner30]

Jave ...

I am sympathetic with your opinion.

I got outbid on Herndon too. I checked the winning bid and adjusted my bid for Silas accordingly to reflect alot of guaranteed money.

However, the difference in the two situations is that Silas only asked for two years ... and fortunately, I put the highest "two year bid" on the board ... whether it was mostly guaranteed or not is not relative since the high bid could only have been beat by more money on the table.

I've have seen the debate that dB is referring too. I have no problem supporting a rule that the league would want to adopt. But as for Silas, I think I got him fair and square with his specific circumstances. You probably are reacting to losing out on the tackles with similar bids.

you missed the most important part of my comment...SILAS SUCKS..you overpaid for that clown...

[Jave]

http://fof.sportplanet.gamespy.com/f...e+bonus+salary

This hits on some of the points I am making. But don't get me wrong. I could care less about being outbid on the player, I just feel like it's against the spirit of the game to offer huge bonus, little salary contracts in order to "steal" the player by making it look like a great contract. My feeling was it was a game mechanic that caused the player to sign a contract that was 16 million below the highest offer.

But don't misunderstand me, I am not being a poor sport. If thats the standard then cool, I will just adjust my offers in the future.

[Cringer]

9 million bonus, and a chance to get another 9 million bonus in two more years, maybe at least 1-2 million bonus after that, thats a good chunk of money a player could get that is guaranteed over 2-3 contracts over the course of 5 years. That doesn''t include base salary which based off his current deal we will say is an average of 1.5 million.

Over five years, 7.5 mil base + 20 mil in bonuses equals 27.5 million over 5 years.

Only Jave's contract was worth more over 5 years, and only 9 million was in bonus. A career ending injury in year 1-2 is about the same to him, maybe a gamble turning down the Tulsa offer. A career ending injury anytime after year 2 is more money in his pocket.

It's all rough guesses with how crap will go, but probably the way it will go, if not better for the player then I actually said. I think it is smart business by the player.

[Cringer]

http://fof.sportplanet.gamespy.com/f...e+bonus+salary

This hits on some of the points I am making. But don't get me wrong. I could care less about being outbid on the player, I just feel like it's against the spirit of the game to offer huge bonus, little salary contracts in order to "steal" the player by making it look like a great contract. My feeling was it was a game mechanic that caused the player to sign a contract that was 16 million below the highest offer.

But don't misunderstand me, I am not being a poor sport. If thats the standard then cool, I will just adjust my offers in the future.

That is the minimum salary bug, that was taken care of. That is different then what you are talking about. If you see a guy sign a contract with min-sal all the way across the board when he was asking for 3-5 million a year and he gets the same bonus he was asking for, then yes, that is a problem.

[JesterBlaze]

I just feel like it's against the spirit of the game to offer huge bonus, little salary contracts in order to "steal" the player by making it look like a great contract. My feeling was it was a game mechanic that caused the player to sign a contract that was 16 million below the highest offer.

You're right in that it's against the spirit of the game to bait a player with false promises. That's why the guaranteed signing bonus came into play. The bonus IS the thing that makes it exactly what the contract is. It's the salary money (aka monopoly money) that makes the contracts look better than they are and it's the salary in which you're offer was $16M higher.

In a market like we've got - a very easy financial market with the salary cap increases we see and the general lack of holdouts in FOF - every GM has got to understand that an offer with X% in bonus money, while competitive in a tight market like the NFL, needs to be much higher than X% in a market like the IFL.

I think it's a great thing if teams are starting to pony up the big 2 year deals. In the past I've felt that some of the IFL teams were just sitting there in the off-season and not applying pressure with their major spending advantage.

[Jave]

You're right in that it's against the spirit of the game to bait a player with false promises. That's why the guaranteed signing bonus came into play. The bonus IS the thing that makes it exactly what the contract is. It's the salary money (aka monopoly money) that makes the contracts look better than they are and it's the salary in which you're offer was $16M higher.

In a market like we've got - a very easy financial market with the salary cap increases we see and the general lack of holdouts in FOF - every GM has got to understand that an offer with X% in bonus money, while competitive in a tight market like the NFL, needs to be much higher than X% in a market like the IFL.

I think it's a great thing if teams are starting to pony up the big 2 year deals. In the past I've felt that some of the IFL teams were just sitting there in the off-season and not applying pressure with their major spending advantage.

I think alot here have focused on weather or not the contract I offered, was better or worse then the contract Rook offered. The whole reason I titled this thread "2 year deals", is because we are fooling the player into thinking it's a better deal. The fact is, the player, who is a free agent, turns down a huge long term deal to sign the short term, high bonus contract. What happens is, after the first year, the game realizes that the player is only rated 60, or whatever he is rated, so when the GM goes to resign him, he only wants 1.7 or 2.3 million a year. So he signs a 3 or 4 year deal for around 12 million and has just lost about 10-15 million dollars by turning down the free agent contract that was worth 4 times that.

We the players know this, so by even offering such a contract, thats what I mean by not in the spirit of the game. It's basically an exploit because no human in their right mind would resign his 2 year deal to a longer deal, thus losing out on the millions of dollars he just turned down in free agency the prior year.

The point is NOT what was the better free agent contract for him, watch next year when these free agent players resign all their deals to long term contracts for next to nothing. Thats what I am referring to.

[Jave]

What would a potential rule look like and what would it be trying to accomplish? What kind of 2-year deals would be considered acceptable (or wouldn't there be such a thing)?

There are many additional rules, some of them highly technical. An example is the so-called "Deion Sanders rule" that was enacted after Dallas owner Jerry Jones gave Sanders a (then-)astronomical $13 million signing bonus, combined with base salaries of the then-minimum salary of $178,000 for the first three years. The new rule states that the first three years of any player's salary must equal the prorated amount of the signing bonus. The intent is to restrict circumvention of the salary cap.

The NFL saw this could be a problem so they instituted the "Deion Sanders" rule.

[sovstar]

You're way off on the goal of that rule. It was enacted so teams wouldn't backload long-term deals.

[sovstar]

That is the minimum salary bug, that was taken care of. That is different then what you are talking about. If you see a guy sign a contract with min-sal all the way across the board when he was asking for 3-5 million a year and he gets the same bonus he was asking for, then yes, that is a problem.

The minsal bug was a bad deal because it was related to extensions. What a guy is getting on the free market is an entirely different story.