Salary cap and your rookies

[bonscott]

I see a few teams are already up against the salary cap. Remember that you have to have enough cap space to draft your rookies before they go on your practice squad. So if your rookie will cost you 4 million full salary you have to have that much free space to draft your rookie. At least that is how I remember it from last year.

[Achon44]

I see a few teams are already up against the salary cap. Remember that you have to have enough cap space to draft your rookies before they go on your practice squad. So if your rookie will cost you 4 million full salary you have to have that much free space to draft your rookie. At least that is how I remember it from last year.

I remember exactly the opposite.

[bonscott]

Here is the thread where we talked about it last year: http://forum.dynastytheleague.com/viewt ... p?f=4&t=95

Basically you have to have enough salary cap to draft your rookies, period. Commish (or the league) needs to police it however. So those without enough cap space will need to clear it by the rookie draft.

Unless I'm just not reading it right.

[Achon44]

From the thread...

We were already going to do the rookie draft thing because the rules state that you can draft rookies directly to the practice squad

[bonscott]

From the thread...

We were already going to do the rookie draft thing because the rules state that you can draft rookies directly to the practice squad

You're getting confused. That's what it *used* to say and since MFL can't technically do that it was scrapped. And that statement above was a different discussion related to the hard roster limit we had last year so the commish had to temporarily raise the roster limit during the draft. That's not an issue this year with no roster limit. Last year every team had to have enough cap space to draft the rookies and the commish needed to make sure of that fact before the draft happened. I guess we'll let him weigh in on it.

[braven112]

Unless I'm misrembering You have to have enough salary cap room to sign your rookies before the draft. So if his salary is going to be 5 million you need 5 million or more in cap space. As soon as you draft him you can place him on the practice squad if you want. That will give you an extra 2.5 million to sign the rest of your draft picks.

If you have 4 million in cap space and your rookie is going to cost 5 million you need to clear 1 million before the draft otherwise you receive a 2.5 million cap penalty and the player becomes a FA.

To throw another scenario out there, lets say you have 7 million in cap space and two first round picks. You can draft the first player at 5 million then before you draft your second player you put him on the practice squad giving you an a total of 4.5 million to use for your second player.

So...
Before the draft begins you have to have enough cap room to sign all your 1st and 2nd round rookies.
All players are added to your team at the salary level explained in the constitution.
But players can be added to the practice squad during the draft but only after they have been drafted.

Most likely if you can sign your first overall pick at his full salary you should be able to make the rest of your salary cap work.

The other thing to remember now that we have different rookie salaries for each position you can always draft a kicker if you don't have enough room to sign a RB or WR.

[Achon44]

To throw another scenario out there, lets say you have 7 million in cap space and two first round picks. You can draft the first player at 5 million then before you draft your second player you put him on the practice squad giving you an a total of 4.5 million to use for your second player.

This is what I was thinking about and after taking another quick glance at everyone's rosters I don't see any reason for any alarm.

[braven112]

The other thing to remember now that we have different rookie salaries for each position you can always draft a kicker if you don't have enough room to sign a RB or WR.

I was just thinking this one over and with the change in the rookie salary structure you really only need $650,000 in cap space (225k plus 425k) even if you own the first overall pick in the first and second round pick. That just means you are drafting a kicker #1 overall at 550k placing him on the practice squad then drafting a 425k player.

So we'll almost never run into a situation where a person can't draft, but it could happen where a team is severely limited.

[bonscott]

The other thing to remember now that we have different rookie salaries for each position you can always draft a kicker if you don't have enough room to sign a RB or WR.

I was just thinking this one over and with the change in the rookie salary structure you really only need $650,000 in cap space (225k plus 425k) even if you own the first overall pick in the first and second round pick. That just means you are drafting a kicker #1 overall at 550k placing him on the practice squad then drafting a 425k player.

So we'll almost never run into a situation where a person can't draft, but it could happen where a team is severely limited.

Well, the thing is that technically on the MFL web site all rookies will have the minimum salary, 425K. So say someone only has 2 million in free cap space and their 1st rounder will be 4 million, MFL will not prevent them from being drafted. Thus why I was just reminding everyone that they need enough cap space and that the "league police" need to make sure people have the cap space before the draft since it's not automatically enforced.

[Achon44]

the "league police"

[bonscott]

FYI that I took a look at everyone's cap and rookie scale and looks like everyone will be able to sign their first rounder. A couple teams are really close to the edge but should be able to do it. We'll just need to keep the salaries up to date as the first round near's it's end.