* THIS RULE HAS PASSED *
Hello esteemed league mates. It’s been a while since we chatted. So. How are you? How’s your day? That’s nice.
It’s nice to catch up, but I must say, I do have an ulterior motive for this conversation: we need to address the salary cap.
Much like the chaos that existed at the dawn of the universe, the creation of the Immersion saw ideas crashing together – some with a beautiful order about them, and others that were more random in nature. One such idea was the progression of the salary cap.
When we were deciding how player contracts would work, we wanted to make it hard for a player to just be kept by one team forever. Then Adam came up with the brilliant idea of the player salary progression: salaries would increase 10% from year 1 to year 2, 15% from year 2 to year 3, 20% from year 3 to year 4, and so on. After a while, those salaries become untenable, so you have to part ways. The result is that most guys are signed to 3 or 4 year deals, and that allows for a pretty vibrant free agent market. All good things.
However, with the escalating salaries, we thought it might be prudent to allow for the salary cap to increase each year. We decided that the cap number would go up by 10% each year. It turns out that this is a huge jump. We went from a $300 cap in 2010 to a $330 cap in 2011. We are scheduled to have a $363 cap this season. The cap number for 2021 is nearly $856. If we were to continue in this fashion, our player salaries would eventually approach their actual salaries. It just seems a bit too complicated (it should be noted, too, that the minimum salary increases by 10% each year.)
So I think it’s time for some reforms. It would be nice if we had one solid cap number we could count on, year after year. I believe it would also reign in spending on players and make it more difficult to sign guys to long term deals, which would insure that we had a decent free agent market each year.
My proposal is two-fold:
- Set the salary cap at $350. That number is between last year’s cap number of $330 and the scheduled cap number of $363. Make $350 the cap number for this year and every year to come.
- Set the league minimum salary at $1, and that minimum salary can stay in place forever (it wouldn’t have to increase each year because the cap increases.) This would mean that FAs picked up in-season could be had for $1, and that we could keep the same slotted salary schedule for the draft in place year after year (and 7th round picks would cost $1.)
Every team is currently under the $350 cap, and some teams still have yet to cut players. The team that is the closest to the cap is the Silvertips, so they would probably feel the pinch a bit more than everyone else, but again, they are still under the cap.
Please feel free to add comments or ask questions. We can have a discussion before we put it to a vote. Or, if you feel comfortable making a decision now, then go ahead and cast a ballot.
Do you support the move to adjust the promotion/relegation system so that we get rid of cap inequities and create divisions based on All-Play record?
- Yes (100%, 7 Votes)
- No (0%, 0 Votes)
Total Voters: 7
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Going along with the idea that some owners (Weldin in particular) have been planning their rosters with the increasing cap in mind, I suggest that we have an “amnesty clause” built into any rule change.
Basically, each team would get to dump 1 offensive and 1 defensive player without taking a cap hit prior to the start of the new league year.
Staying with the Silvertips example, they have Javid Best for 4 more years and Beason at 3 more years with current salaries of $16.50. Though perhaps affordable under an expanding-cap model, those salaries may become untenable under a hard cap in a couple of years.
The “amnesty clause” would essentially allow Weldin to more comfortably switch to the new system without being penalized for taking full advantage of the old system.
Oh yes, I knew I was forgetting something! Thanks!
I’m still trying to figure out how I feel about this one. I like the idea but it needs to be executed right. One thought I had was in addition to your amnesty clause was the ability for anyone to, if they choose, knock any and all contracts down to a max of, say, 4 years. Or maybe 5 years. That way people like Knight, who just signed Stafford and will presumably pay him his holdout cost, doesn’t get stuck with an $80+ salary on a $350 budget down the road.
I understand your point, but I don’t know about making a rule to benefit exactly one owner. It’s not that I care that much about it either way, but when you sign someone for 10 years then that is always a risk. It was evident that Stafford was going to hold out when Adam made the trade for him.
I get what you’re saying, but in Stafford’s final year, you’re cutting our salaries by $350 (from $700 to $350) and his salary alone is $323. I bet there’s a couple other players who have contracts that are long, but manageable under the old structure.
Look, I understand if you sign a guy for 10 years after this change has been made, and thus, if he holds out, you’re effectively cutting him. But this Stafford thing doesnt feel right. Put yourself in Knights shoes just for a sec. Or pretend that Rogers has 6 years left on his contract instead of 1. I guess I might feel differently if he was the original owner, but he just gave you a round 1 for him and his options seem limited to dropping him and hoping he can resign him, or being happy with him for half a year each season.
So I guess what I’m suggesting is another amnesty clause for restructuring 1 players contract length down to 4-5 years. Or, an addendum to Adam’s clause that you can either drop 1 offensive and defensive player free of charge as he suggested, or you can, say, keep the player and cut his contract length in half.
Yeah, I could get behind that concept as part of the amnesty package. You can either cut a guy or shave down his deal to 4 years. That works for me.
I think that this is a good idea. I would go so far as to say that you could change the length of one player’s contract to whatever you want. I mean, we’re pulling a pretty sizable rug out from under owners in terms of reduced cap space following the 2012 season.
Yes, we could give the players the following options:
1. Terminate a contract with no penalty OR
2. Change the length of a contract.
Sounds good to me – 1 each offensive and defensive player.
I think the cap being locked at $350 (or another number) is a good one, especially as it will keep things like the rookie pay scale etc. constant from year to year which should aid in long term planning.
Without seriously running any numbers, my first thought is that the rookie contract scale needs to come down a bit if anyone is going be able to afford to sign unproven players from the first few rounds.
Another area that I see a bit of a problem (or not a problem depending upon your perspective) is that with so many players holding out each year, fewer owners will be able to meet the demands and stay under the cap, resulting in a number of good players not playing for the first half of the season. This is a heavy penalty to pay for getting a deal on a good player. Perhaps it is a different discussion, but it would help with fitting under a unchanging cap if players couldn’t hold out until playing half their contract or 2 seasons or something like that.
I’m not quite sure that I agree with this assessment. We have 30-man rosters, so if we paid every player the same amount, they would get $11.67. Paying $14 for the first pick overall doesn’t seem exorbitant to me. I think Cam Newton is the counterexample to your point…he is grossly underpaid as a first round draft pick.
Even if we include the 5 practice squad players, the average salary would be $10/player. So a rookie range of $14 to $1 seems okay to me.
I’m not sure that holdouts would be more of an issue than they are now. Most teams were able to accomodate their holdouts under the confines of the $330 cap. In the end, there were only 2 or 3 holdouts that didn’t get paid.
I think that if we know there’s going to be a hard cap of $350 annually, then owners will be more careful, and we won’t see $65 contracts anymore.
I agree with Tom on the rookie contracts. You can make the argument that Newton is underpaid, but to me, 2nd-4th round picks are worthless because the salaries are too high. Given the high number of unsigned rookies from last year, I think others agree. I don’t have a number in mind, but until we start approaching $3 for a rookie, I have other places to spend money under a hard cap. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could have afforded to keep Patrick Peterson under his RFA contract instead of having to cut him?
Perhaps. I kind of think that this is a separate issue from the salary cap issue, since the rookie wage scale was set up to align with the $330 cap and we will be using a $350 cap.
Also, I would attribute the amount of unsigned draft picks to the owners being bad at drafting the first time around. Now I feel like I know what positions to target in rounds 2-4.
HOWEVAH…
I could be comfortable with something like this:
Round 1
Picks 1-4 : $10.00
Picks 5-8 : $9.50
Picks 9-12 : $9.00
Round 2
Picks 1-4: $8.00
Picks 5-8: $7.50
Picks 9-12: $7.00
Round 3
Picks 1-4: $6.00
Picks 5-8: $5.50
Picks 9-12: $5.00
Round 4
Picks 1-12: $4.00
Round 5
Picks 1-12: $3.00
Round 6
Picks 1-12: $2.00
Round 7
Picks 1-12: $1.00
My issue with Rookie Salaries is in part due to the fact that for several positions a high draft pick becomes one of the top 5 highest paid players at his position (and in some cases the top money winner).
For QB and RB a $14 top rookie is a bargain worth hanging onto, but most of the other positions its hard to justify for a guy with no NFL experience.
Yeah, I think it would be foolish to draft anything but a QB, WR, or RB in the first couple of rounds (though you could make the case for a DE.)
But what do you think about the scaled down version?
I agree Tom. And again, I’m just throwing this out for discussion, but what if QBs, WRs, and RBs were on a different rookie scale than the rest? For example only, let’s say they continue to use the rookie payment format from last year, but all others use the one Josh proposed above? So drafting a QB with pick #1 costs more than a LB with pick #1?
Or do we think that over time, all positions will be paid equal amounts?
I think the issue here is more that the middle rounds are “dead rounds” because you’d never pay that much money for a defensive player. So after giving it some thought, a framework could be something like this:
Round 1
Picks 1-4: $15
Picks 5-8: $13
Picks 9-12: $11
Round 2
Picks 1-4: $10
Picks 5-8: $8
Picks 9-12: $6
Round 3
Picks 1-12: $5
Round 4
Picks 1-12: $4
Round 5
Picks 1-12: $3
Round 6
Picks 1-12: $2
Round 7
Picks 1-12: $1
Maybe something like that. With this formula you could start drafting defensive players by the end of round 2. You could definitely justify getting them in round 3 and beyond.
But none of this ultimately matters unless we adopt the $350 salary cap. I feel like we have to come to a decision on that, and then we can hammer out the rookie wage scale.
I’ve always thought the problem was that we do the free agency before the draft. Therefore, anyone that you could get who might actually be worth $10 in the 2nd round or whatever is already gone. What if we limited offseason free agency somehow? Either each team can only nominate 3 total players, or collectively, as a league, we can only nominate 30 players (numbers are purely random)? This will add a bit more strategy (maybe?) as to one’s approach to both rounds of free agency (the big money round and regular) and make at least the top of the draft more interesting as you may want to wait on someone until the draft so you can lock them up without holdout, but risk losing them to someone who drafts ahead of you.
Just a thought.
And it would, of course, collectively bump the rest of the players down in the draft, maybe making them more affordable.
Well, the NFL has free agency and then the draft. I think the idea would be to simply shorten the draft to fewer rounds so that it is more of a “rookie draft” than a place where you pick up free agents on the cheap.
You’re just mad because YOU didn’t draft Jairus Byrd in the 7th round. Shortening the draft is just a way to reward dumbasses who don’t know how to draft.
Ha!
PS: If you don’t want your 7th round picks, I’ll take them.
As for holdouts…1) I think holdouts will become more reasonable once owners are forced to stop paying $65 for RBs and $50 for QBs. The market should correct itself under a hard cap. 2) It’s more paperwork, but I’m all for a guy having to finish in the top 10 twice to hold out. OR (getting crazy here) we could put in a rule where you could renegotiate a holdout’s contract by paying less (say avg. top 15 instead of avg. top 10) in exchange for adding years to the length of the contract.
I think keeping holdouts as is will force owners to mind their salaries. Also, if we are able to terminate or change contracts as part of the amnesty package, then that should go a long way towards bringing salaries down pretty quickly.
I’m really nervous about adding paperwork…if we keep holdouts the way it is, then I will just have to make that list once, right before week one. Then I don’t have to deal with it until the end of the season.
Spoiler alert…I’m hoping to change the taxi squad rules as well, because that was a nightmare to keep up with. So I want to streamline things before they get out of hand.
I like what you’re trying to accomplish Adam, but I agree with Josh in that its just too complicated to do what you’re alluding to. This league is already pretty complicated as it is. I think Tom proposed the most elegant solution of simply making it so players cannot hold out until their 2nd season. And I dont know if this is good or bad but that will probably increase the signing of 2 year contracts, will will probably allow for greater player turnover in the league, make free agency more valuable, etc.
Agreed – less paperwork is better.
I haven’t looked at the lengths of the contracts for the ridiculously high priced guys, but it will take a while to “eliminate” the high price tags if any holdout offers are met as this will be another really high salary. QB and RB of course have this problem the most, and as I always pick terribly in these positions it probably shouldn’t bother me much.
Less paperwork is good and if everyone is fine with keeping the system, then I’ll go along with it.
Well, if teams are able to change the number of years of those guys as part of an amnesty package, then that could help speed the process along. Also, some guys like Cassel are out of contract, and Aaron Rodgers is on his last season (though I could franchise tag him, which wouldn’t bring prices down.)
The only high priced holdout that I can really see being met is Matthew Stafford, but his contract years can be reduced from 8 to whatever.
And, with amnesty, everyone could just cut their contract nightmare players with no penalty. For example, the holdout cost for LBs will go WAY down when I drop Patrick Willis.
But to assuage your fears, I would also be comfortable with resetting the holdout prices to what they would be this year (presuming they would be less.)
No need for resetting. It might not make much difference, I was just looking at things that could become problematic with shifting to a hard cap.
I thought salaries would start to be corrected during the drafts after the first season and then the expansion draft happened, which actually drove things higher. A few stable seasons should level things out; and so might the various amnesty rules.
By the way, I do truly appreciate the comments and the conversation. It occurs to me that I sort of disagreed with both commenters…but I’m not trying to be ornery or shut anything down. I think it’s a big rule change, and you guys are right to explore all possible consequences, intended or otherwise (I’m the master at not seeing the unintended consequences, hence the need for the rule change in the first place.)
No you don’t. You HATE the comments and conversation and are a big jerk.
It’s not true! I think having the conversation led us to a nice idea – Enright’s amnesty option is a good one, and offers ownership another way to get contracts under control.
I feel like the owners are winning a lot in this deal, which is why I don’t see any reason to dramatically change the holdout rules.