Contract Extensions / Renegotiations

[Wascawy Wabbits]

I saw a thread in here from years back about contract extensions and was curious why it was never brought up again?

What if contract extensions worked similar to Tagging players, but in reverse. Contract extensions would happen for players with 2 years remaining on their contracts during the tagging period.

You can choose to extend the contract of a player an additional X number of years at the cost of the draft pick that you'd be tagging them at (but a round lower: Franchise: 1st, Transition: 2nd, Restricted: 3rd).

An example
McCoy currently has 2 years left on his contract, expires after the 2013 season, during this tagging period. I choose to extend him at the 2nd round compensation for a max of 4 additional years, essentially making him have a 5 year deal again. His salary jumps up to $7m and I have to forfeit my upcoming 3rd round pick.

At the same time, someone can choose to steal McCoy away from me at the cost of the TAGGING round pick (Franchise: 1&2, Transition: 1, Restricted: 2) by offering McCoy a better contract. They original owner could then choose to accept one of the offers or keep him for the contract.

The idea behind this would be "Do I want to extend my guy at current market value this year and choose the number of years I want to re-sign them for or wait until next year to tag them for one season"

The same idea would apply about the salary amount. If the salary is lower than the current tag amount, then it'd be the existing salary + 20%

Thoughts?

[Wascawy Wabbits]

At the same time, someone can choose to steal McCoy away from me at the cost of the TAGGING round pick (Franchise: 1&2, Transition: 1, Restricted: 2) by offering McCoy a better contract. They original owner could then choose to match one of the offers or take the draft pick(s).

[bonscott]

Well, that's probably the best idea I've heard so far on contract extensions. I'd only be for it if the salary jumps up. For example I have Jimmy Graham for basically nothing salary wise. If under your proposal I decided with 2 years left I wanted to extend then his salary would jump up to the average top 5 or whatever vs. me keeping him for one more year at his cheap salary. The cost of extension.

Always looking for downsides though. Off the top of my head the downside is potentially less turnover of players BUT that is offset by the increase in salary which can lead to more players being cut to make room and maybe cutting the player himself a couple years down the road anyway since he'd be getting pretty expensive.

[bonesman]

Well, that's probably the best idea I've heard so far on contract extensions. I'd only be for it if the salary jumps up. For example I have Jimmy Graham for basically nothing salary wise. If under your proposal I decided with 2 years left I wanted to extend then his salary would jump up to the average top 5 or whatever vs. me keeping him for one more year at his cheap salary. The cost of extension.

Always looking for downsides though. Off the top of my head the downside is potentially less turnover of players BUT that is offset by the increase in salary which can lead to more players being cut to make room and maybe cutting the player himself a couple years down the road anyway since he'd be getting pretty expensive.

If I'm reading it right I think it would actually be the average of the top 5+ another 20%.


I'm not sure how I feel about the proposal in general, but I think if we did adopt contract extensions of some sort these are some great guidelines to base it on.

[Wascawy Wabbits]

Well, that's probably the best idea I've heard so far on contract extensions. I'd only be for it if the salary jumps up. For example I have Jimmy Graham for basically nothing salary wise. If under your proposal I decided with 2 years left I wanted to extend then his salary would jump up to the average top 5 or whatever vs. me keeping him for one more year at his cheap salary. The cost of extension.

Always looking for downsides though. Off the top of my head the downside is potentially less turnover of players BUT that is offset by the increase in salary which can lead to more players being cut to make room and maybe cutting the player himself a couple years down the road anyway since he'd be getting pretty expensive.

If I'm reading it right I think it would actually be the average of the top 5+ another 20%.


I'm not sure how I feel about the proposal in general, but I think if we did adopt contract extensions of some sort these are some great guidelines to base it on.

No... I'm thinking the current year's tagging salaries. So it'd be the average of the top 5, 10, or 15 salaries at their position. If the current salary is higher than the tagging salary, it'd be a 20% increase of their current salary.. Same as the way we tag expiring contracts.

I think the main difference would be that as an owner of this player, I have a chance to control the years I'd want to extend the player for, but it also means that others will have a chance at him as well. Unlike the expiring contracts, where I have no control over how long I can re-sign a player for and would have to hope that someone comes along and offers a player a contract.

It's a risk that everyone can take with their players... Do you think that the extension salary will be cheaper this year or the expiring contract salary next year. Do you want to get one more year out of that player at a super cheap contract or would you prefer to try and lock them up for an additional 4 seasons? Definitely could add another wrinkle in how we manage our teams.

Player salaries could increase a year sooner. I would think that we'd have roughly the same amount of FA turnover as before.

[Wascawy Wabbits]

I'm not sure how we'd want it to work with our current allocation of Tags though... Would the Extension tags be separate of the Expiration tags? Or would they be shared? That way I can't say I'm going to extend Player A for 4 at the Restricted level for more years and I'm going to tag Player B who's contract is expiring at the Restricted level as well.

Regardless, it would increase the salaries of the players.

[Wascawy Wabbits]

Just had another idea for this:
When renegotiating, the original owner can choose "Hometown Discount" where the renegotiated salary would be 25% LESS than the tagging salary... BUT the team doing the renegotiation would have to forfeit compensatory picks. If someone chooses to offer my player a contract, they would have to pay the original tagged salary and I would no longer get a home town discount.

[Wascawy Wabbits]

To build on the last post about the hometown discount idea..
Picks that get forfeited could either just be bypassed in the draft or go up in a yearly lottery and make it weighted based on standings so based on the final standings is the number of "balls" that you'll get in the lottery to win a free pick that was forfeited.

Could use http://www.draftpicklottery.com/ to figure out who'd win the picks that were forfeited

[Poker in the Rear]

Honestly, I don't think I like the idea...Turnover is slow and steady the way it is and I think in the end this just ties up people even longer. Normally, I would be all for it but this league wasn't set up that way. I feel like if you start taking additional steps like this you have to push the start date off several years or entertain the idea of a redraft.

[Wascawy Wabbits]

Honestly, I don't think I like the idea...Turnover is slow and steady the way it is and I think in the end this just ties up people even longer. Normally, I would be all for it but this league wasn't set up that way. I feel like if you start taking additional steps like this you have to push the start date off several years or entertain the idea of a redraft.

Do you mean that you think we'd need to do a new auction and re-do teams if we were to implement a rule like this? I'm not really sure why the start date would have to be pushed back at all since it could occur during the same time we do our current tagging?

I'd just love the chance to retain players I really like on my team, instead of relying on someone else to put in an offer on him, and to give him the number of years based on my terms. To not have to incur a 20% increase every season to retain that player, but to instead take an increase in salary because of the extension and the standard 10% increases moving forward.

The teams that would OBVIOUSLY benefit the most from this would be the teams holding the premier TEs with (soon to be) 2 years remaining on their deals. The tagged price for a TE is PEANUTS compared to the tagged price of the rest of the players, but who's to say that when the tagging period comes around that someone won't go ahead and offer Gronk or Graham a contract like what Treasure Coast did for Rodgers?

You're not only trying to lock a player up on your terms, but you'd also putting the player at risk by doing it as well.

There could even be a "First Year" rule giving teams a chance to re-sign players with expiring deals in 2013 if they choose, but every year after a player will need to have 2 years remaining on their contract to re-sign.

[Poker in the Rear]

When, I say push it back i mean it shouldn't be implemented for years down the road or players under contract currently don't apply. Otherwise it becomes something that goes through because guys love who they have on their roster now and so we create additional avenues for people to hang onto them.

I think its a neat concept I just think its a big move and something that is better suited for initial league establishment. That way everyone had equal footing to land certain guys in the beginning knowing this was part of the setup.

[bonscott]

I've had more time to think about it (and a few beers last night).

I agree with Poker that if this is something that would be implemented it should be out a ways, say 2015. This pushes it out beyond some of the current hot guys like Graham (who I own by the way) as mentioned and allows teams to start building toward it as a goal.

Second, I would make it a replacement for the Franchise tag. In other words each year you could tag one player per tag (Franchise, Trans, RFA) with an option to extend a player instead of using a Franchise tag. This way you could at most extend one player a season and if you also have a player you want to Franchise you have to choose. This keeps the players rotating back to the draft as well at the current rate.

Third, it needs to be a bit "painful" to do the extension, thus using the Franchise tag "slot" to do it. I'd say mandatory Top 5 avg salary at the position or 20% increase, whichever is greater. This would mimic what happens in the NFL a lot, extensions like this are usually for big bucks. Also mimics what Franchising a player every year does but perhaps at a small discount because instead of a guarantee 20% increase every year Franchising a guy, you do that huge salary jump a year early and then it's 10% from there. Probably over the life of the contract it about evens out because the jump is a year earlier then if you waited and franchised the guy.

If you choose to extend a player then you should lose a 1st rounder in the upcoming draft.

If another team outbids you and you don't retain the player, then you receive compensation of a 1st and 2nd just like tagging a franchise player.

In this way it allows this extension but makes it a tough decision to do so and fits within the framework of the current rules.

It's an interesting concept and like I said earlier, probably the best proposal for it I've seen so far, but I do agree it's something that shouldn't be started until at least 2015 so that teams can prepare for it in the way they trade or draft.

[bonesman]

To build on the last post about the hometown discount idea..
Picks that get forfeited could either just be bypassed in the draft or go up in a yearly lottery and make it weighted based on standings so based on the final standings is the number of "balls" that you'll get in the lottery to win a free pick that was forfeited.

Could use http://www.draftpicklottery.com/ to figure out who'd win the picks that were forfeited

Getting a little convoluted here, IMO. The appeal of the original idea is that it's simple and mirrors the system in place we're all somewhat familiar with.

[Achon44]

I like things the way they are. Seems to work very well.

[Wascawy Wabbits]

Bumping this thread...

What about this as an idea.

If a player gets tagged and goes thru the tagging period without an offer from another team, why can't the original owner choose to offer that player a contract at the sacrifice of their draft picks?

[Achon44]

My thought on this is if we really want to go into this type of direction then why not just eliminate contract years. Salaries continue to increase 10% every year, so at some point you will need to cut or trade to stay under the cap.

[bonscott]

My thought on this is if we really want to go into this type of direction then why not just eliminate contract years. Salaries continue to increase 10% every year, so at some point you will need to cut or trade to stay under the cap.

I do like the idea of no contract years as it would emulate more of a true dynasty, however I did just get into a league that is a true dynasty so my "push" for this isn't as great.

However, I do think we would still need to "renegotiate" a contract at some point. I mean if there were no contract years at all then I could basically keep Graham forever super cheap. Now I'm not saying I would be against that but it would be a HUGE change to the league.

Now, to jump off your idea we could do something like this:
No real contract year limit but after say 4 or 5 years on a rookie contract if you decide to keep the player they get "tagged" and their salary will jump to the average top 5/10/15 or 20% or whatever. Then it will continue from there.
In this way you can get a rookie cheap but after 5 years (or 4 or whatever) their contract gets renegotiated to reflect more what their are really worth. We could even still do the tagging in some way to allow bidding on these players.

Could also do something similar again at year 7 or 8 kept with the average top 5 or 20% to again force a "renegotiation" of the contract and ability to switch teams.

This all would emulate the NFL in a slightly different way.

On the technical MFL side it wouldn't take anything more to track. We can use the same contract column and give all drafted rookies and auction players a contract of 1. Increase this by 1 each year. Once it reaches 4 or 5 then if you keep the player their contract is renegotiated and can be bid on. Keep adding 1 to the year and again when it reaches say 7 do it again.

This does change the league even more then removing the contract cap did. BUT at least on the surface I don't see too much change because we have the salary cap which limits us and the roster limits which will still promote turnover of players. If we want to guarantee a bit more turnover we could even say after year 5 the mandatory salary increase is 20% instead of 10%.

Just tossing out ideas.

[braven112]

I'm with Bring the Pain, I like it better the way it is. I just don't see it as any better than letting a player hit the open market and then you can sign him again for his market value. The auction is a lot of fun, I don't want to take players off the market.

We also have the tags to use as contract extensions so its not like you can't do it already. For example, I would never consider renegotiating Gronk's contract. I'll take advantage of the contract that is already signed and he and I will talk once his contract is up and I'll tag him one or two times. 5-7 years is more than enough time to hold onto a player rights before he hits free agency.

[Wascawy Wabbits]

Thought I'd give this a bump since we're talking about changes with the tagging