2023 Offseason Tasks

Hey everyone. I’m putting all of the info you’ll need here in one place so you can easily refer back to it rather than having to scour your email each time you need it. I’ll start by apologizing for the delays this offseason. My summer has been busier than usual and there have been other complications that have caused the site work to take longer. But the 2023 MFL site is up now.

Time

Usually you’ll have this information well before June 1st. I’m finding that I just don’t have as much free time as I used to, which has led me to make an executive decision about cap penalties. It used to be that a cap penalty was a 50% hit applied to the next season. Then, I tried to get fancy and have those cap hits spread out over the length of the remaining contract years. Sure, the spreadsheets can handle most of it, but what I didn’t anticipate was how much extra work it would add to the changeover each year. I have to import the previous spreadsheet and then change the formulas in every cell to prevent double counting. Each year the task becomes more arduous because I’m always adding another sheet to the mix, with formulas referring to other years. It’s tortuous. With that being said, I’m going back to how it used to be. I’ve collapsed all the cap hits over future years so that they’ll hit this year. Most of you will have slightly more to pay than you’re anticipating, but given that we all generally sign contracts for 3 years or less it isn’t too much of a difference. You can see what your cap hit will be on the 2023 MFL Site or the 2023 Salary Cap Spreadsheet (we’re using Total Dead Money as this year’s cap hit.) Please do not complain about this, as I’ve spent hours on the changeover over the past couple of days (sorry family.) I could have put it to a vote, like we do for most stuff, but we’re already 22 days late on the offseason hijinx. Moving forward, cap hits will be less confusing, like they used to be. When you cut players you’re paying the price next season only.

On the note of time, I’m still annoyed that our league software does not allow owners to automatically assign contract years when they pick up players, even with the price increase (more on that in the next section.) So, help a brother out by putting contract years in the comments section when blind bidding, and by sending me an email with contract years right away whenever you do FCFS free agents. Reconciling the salary cap spreadsheet with the MFL site takes a long time, especially when I have to track you down for your contract years. Maybe in twenty years MFL will offer this functionality.

Money

I’m not interested in making this league a “big prize” money league or anything like that. I enjoy that it’s fairly cheap and that we play for a traveling trophy. That being said, everything keeps going up in price. MFL has raised their prices to $99.95 from $89.95. We used to always pay $69.95 because there is an early bird discount of $20. Well, now that becomes $79.95 (I missed the early bird discount of $20 but still got the $10 off discount…I can eat the extra $10 since that’s on me.) I paid $89.95 for the site this year.

The other thing, that I mentioned last year, was the increased cost of the website, since our introductory rate ended after three years. Here is the breakdown of website costs:

Web hosting: $8.99/mo x 12 months = $107.88
Site Privacy / Security: $1.25/mo x 12 months = $15
Domain Name Registration: $19.99/year

Total Website Cost: $142.87
MFL Cost: $79.95
Total Operating Costs: $222.82 / 12 owners = $18.57

Would people be willing to pay a league entry fee of $20 per year? Sadly, that’s double what it used to be, but on the other hand I do think we put the website to good use, with articles and videos (and more importantly for me, a repository for our rulebook among other things.)

If this is an acceptable cost to you, please pay your league dues. If you don’t want to pay that much, let me know.

League Year – July 1st

Let’s set the league year for July 1st. That means I need the following information from you before then:

1. Please consult with the Option-Eligible spreadsheet and let me know if you’d like to pick up the 4th year option on your players or decline it.
2. Let me know if you’d like to apply the franchise tag to any player with an expiring contract (assuming they didn’t get the tag last year.) You can apply one tag on offense and one on defense (or none at all, it’s your day, man.) Don’t know which players have expiring contracts? Look at the 2022 MFL site or the 2022 salary cap page. Franchise tag prices are based on position:
   • QB: $23.65
   • RB: $65.05
   • WR: $64.30
   • TE: $29.23
   • PK: $1.76
   • PN: $1.37
   • DT: $13.24
   • DE: $21.90
   • LB: $22.05
   • CB: $8.59
   • S: $7.92
3. Let me know if you want to CUT any players before the league year starts. That would mean a smaller cap hit (you’d be cutting before his salary increases) and the hit would be applied to the 2023 season, so you wouldn’t be kicking the cost down the road. Let’s say you have a FA running back that costs $50, and on July 1st he’ll cost $55. If you cut him now, you actually clear up $25 of cap space for the upcoming season and you’ve put the cap penalty to bed. If you wait until after July 1st, then the cap hit will be $27.50 in 2024. Please send me the cuts via email. Do not cut them yourself on the MFL site. I have to make sure everything gets put in the right place. After July 1st you can drop players yourself to your heart’s content.
4. Recall that you can restructure players with high salaries that did not perform well last year, provided some conditions are met. Please refer to the rulebook to brush up on how it works. You can also watch this video Adam and I made a couple years back that explains it. You can refer to the 2022 Top Salaries spreadsheet for the Top-5 and Top-10 salaries at each position. Email the player names you’d like me to restructure. This has to happen before July 1st.

Looking Past July 1st

There’s no immediate concern here, but do take some time to check out the 2023 Holdouts. You can sit tight and see if they make it through training camp unscathed before you do anything. You can also restructure your holdout players, even after July 1st. Just hit up the rulebook for a reminder about how it works.

The auction will begin on July 1st. I think we’re all pretty familiar with how it works, right? You can check out the full free agent listing to see who’s available, though it may change as people option players or apply franchise tags.

The rookie draft will be an email draft again and I have it set for August 1st.

The calendar is a little borked on the MFL site right now, but after the rookie draft we’ll have a few rounds of blind bidding for remaining players as we head into the regular season.

There are some other things I still need to get to, like making all the banners and updating the database. Those things have been made more difficult as well, thanks to Pixlr now wanting money. So all graphic work is slowed as I look for something else.

In Conclusion

I very much enjoy playing in this league with all of you. Hopefully I’m able to make some more time for it moving forward. Hit me up with those emails before July 1st and let me know how you’d like to build your franchise!

© 2023, Josh Hammond. All rights reserved.