The League

I'll tell you, this time of year makes me wish for larger rosters to be able to develop more young guys. LOL

Is there a downside to having no roster limit at any time, even in season and let the salary cap/contract cap take care of things in terms of limiting roster size?

And if we ever want to really increase the number of longer term players teams can develop then the contract cap can be expanded, like 80 to 90 for example would allow 2 more long term "project" players at 5 yrs each.

Just wanting to spark discussion here.

I have no issue at all removing the 80 contract year limit. I think there are enough risks with signing all your players for longer term deals anyway. With our current rules its basically only an issue in the off season anyway. I also think it would make it more like the NFL if we got rid of the contract cap but I like the cutdown date as it forces you into some tough decisions.

In my opinion we need to have 2 of the 3 to keep the league balanced, salary cap, contract cap, or roster cap. If there were no limits on rosters guys could drop their team down to 14-16 players and throw contracts out of whack. We could have some teams treating this as a redraft league overpaying for every Free Agent while others are developing players. I like the balance that having a minimum and a maximum roster limit creates.

braven112 wrote:I have no issue at all removing the 80 contract year limit. I think there are enough risks with signing all your players for longer term deals anyway. With our current rules its basically only an issue in the off season anyway. I also think it would make it more like the NFL if we got rid of the contract cap but I like the cutdown date as it forces you into some tough decisions.

In my opinion we need to have 2 of the 3 to keep the league balanced, salary cap, contract cap, or roster cap. If there were no limits on rosters guys could drop their team down to 14-16 players and throw contracts out of whack. We could have some teams treating this as a redraft league overpaying for every Free Agent while others are developing players. I like the balance that having a minimum and a maximum roster limit creates.

Couldn't agree more with your assessments Brandon....In my opinion the two critical ones are the salary cap, and the roster cap. Like you said, if you sign everyone to a 5 year deal, you are taking a risk given there is cap penalties for releasing players and you have to follow the roster limits. It also puts a little extra pressure on each individual owner to manage their roster appropriately to avoid monstrous future cap penalties.

So I for one would support lifting the contract cap while keeping the other elements in place

braven112 wrote:I have no issue at all removing the 80 contract year limit. I think there are enough risks with signing all your players for longer term deals anyway. With our current rules its basically only an issue in the off season anyway. I also think it would make it more like the NFL if we got rid of the contract cap but I like the cutdown date as it forces you into some tough decisions.

In my opinion we need to have 2 of the 3 to keep the league balanced, salary cap, contract cap, or roster cap. If there were no limits on rosters guys could drop their team down to 14-16 players and throw contracts out of whack. We could have some teams treating this as a redraft league overpaying for every Free Agent while others are developing players. I like the balance that having a minimum and a maximum roster limit creates.

Yeah I definitely agree about keeping a salary cap and roster cap without a doubt. I wouldn't mind seeing the contract cap lifted.... I love having the salary and roster cap, its a MUST IMO.

I can get behind removing the contract cap. I would assume there would still be a *per player* cap though, like the 5 years max?

As for rosters, I personally wouldn't advocate for removing the minimum roster limit, leave it in place as is. I was more looking for more roster space.

bonscott wrote:I can get behind removing the contract cap. I would assume there would still be a *per player* cap though, like the 5 years max?

I agree...we would need to keep the 5 year max in place imo. Otherwise you would see rookies tied up for a lot longer period on a regular basis which I don't think would be good for the league.

The more I think about it, I do like the idea of expanding the rosters too.

So maybe we could go to a setup of no contract cap and then expand the rosters by another 3-4 spots. We would then have 25-26 spots to go along with 4-5 taxi squad positions.

I wouldn't mind seeing an additional TS spot. I dunno about adding more active roster spots though. There's already 400 players that get rostered in our league, adding an extra 5 spots means we're pushing close 500...

If you add more active roster spots, it means that we'd probably have to think about increasing the cap.

I have no issues with removing the contract cap, but I like the 22 & 3 that is currently set up. Looking at the FA list, there's really not a whole lot out there.

If anything, I think it'd be kinda nice to see the TS allow for players to be on there for 2 seasons, and if they come off the TS they can't go back.

Wascawy Wabbits wrote: If anything, I think it'd be kinda nice to see the TS allow for players to be on there for 2 seasons, and if they come off the TS they can't go back.

This is something we kinda wanted to do when we started the league but it would all be manual tracking and manual work for the commish to do either of those because MFL doesn't have any automated way to handle either. I think the only reason we are doing cap hits in future years is because I raised my hand to track it manually.

bonscott wrote:

Wascawy Wabbits wrote: If anything, I think it'd be kinda nice to see the TS allow for players to be on there for 2 seasons, and if they come off the TS they can't go back.

This is something we kinda wanted to do when we started the league but it would all be manual tracking and manual work for the commish to do either of those because MFL doesn't have any automated way to handle either. I think the only reason we are doing cap hits in future years is because I raised my hand to track it manually.

Very true, I LOVE that we have future cap hits and it is very much an important part of the league, but we all owe a big thanks to Amish for that. I don't think we should add any additional manual tracking. I do think there could be some nice tweaks to the TS rules but I don't think its worth the extra tracking that would be required. As is, I kind of like the fact that 2nd year guys have to compete for a roster spot. For example, I have Tandon Doss, he's not really ready to be on the active roster yet but I have to make the tough decision whether to cut him or keep him. It certainly puts some pressure on those type of guys.

I like the 3 person TS and 22 man active roster max quite a bit and even if we wanted more rounds of the draft I would still prefer we stay at 3 on the TS. A lot of our 1st round picks will be on our active roster anyway.

I can definitely see where we don't want to add anymore manual parts....Keeping up with the current cap penalties is plenty.

So kinda looks like a consensus is no to expanding rosters or taxi squad but all for eliminating the overall contract cap. I'll start a new thread to discuss the contract cap so we can refine it.