Actual NFL Salary/Contract League? (1 Viewer)

[mjr]

I'm looking for some input/ideas on a developing a different kind of league.

Rather than a regular dynasty league where player salaries/contracts are determined through auctions, I've been working on developing bylaws for a possible cap/contract fantasy league for next season (possibly put into play this season just to hammer it out) that goes by the actual salary contracts that NFL players are playing under for their respective teams (which would be the team's "cap hit" figure that includes base, bonus and misc. money as reported by one particular info site, such as Spotrac.com).

The league Cap limit would be 50% of the actual NFL Cap limit every year @ most likely a 26 man roster. So with the NFL cap for 2013 at $123 Mill, each GM would have a $60.15 mill soft cap limit this season. If it's $130 Mil in 2014, each GM would have a $65 mil cap and so on.


Example: Dez is under a 5 year contract with Dallas through 2014 and is slated to make $2.9 Mill this year and $3.14 Mill next year. These would be the contract terms for the GM who owns him in the league (pretty cheap) so long as that contract is valid. Whenever Dez renegotiates his contract (any time in any way), the owning GM can either accept the new terms reported or release him to FA. So if Dez re-negs for $40 mill over 4 years @ 10 mil/yr, the GM can either accept the $10 mil hit against his cap each of the next 4 years to retain him (a 16+% hit against a $60 Mil cap) or he can release him to FA.

What I Expect To See & Problems I Might Run Into:

I think this set up will create a more dynamic league with more activity. It'll be more difficult for teams to lock up surprise studs at league minimum salaries and remain stacked year in and year out, while the bottom teams won't necessarily require years and years of moves just to become competitive.

I can also see this adding a new level of GM "skill" because it might lead to GMs starting lower grade players people normally wouldn't start. A guy like Peyton, for example, is making on average $20 mil a year for the next few years (that would be nearly 1/3rd of a GMs total $60 mil salary cap). If you go after him, you still have to roster 25 more guys with only about $40 mil. cap left. So the more high profile guys you try to roster, the more likely you'll have to go with more scrubs somewhere else to fill out your roster. This can create one team with 2 super-studs and a bunch of nobodies while another team might have a bunch of average guys and be just as competitive. This sort of thing can make your #3, 4, 5 or 6 selections at each position more than just bye week/injury insurances depending on your strategy. I really like that idea.

I see some problems, though.

The big one is data entry. Keeping track of salaries and salary changes and keeping them up to date on the site is going to need constant monitoring. High profile players are easy enough to keep track of, but keeping tabs on every contract re-negotiation for even the players that are only on a GMs roster will be tough enough (at least 260 guys for a 10 team league), let alone all of the players in the league.

Anyway... what do you guys think of such a league? Interesting? Too much? Problems you can see coming into play here?

Thanks

 

[Junior McSpiffy]

Sounds like a fun idea to watch from the outside, but I would have precisely zero desire to take part in it.

BTW, would it be IDP or team defense?

 

[GregR]

I imagine keeping up with the data would be frustrating as you mention. If you used a site like MFL you could probably dump players from Spotract and import that year's cap hit in MFL easily enough. Future years might be more difficult, I know you can load salaries from a list but not sure about additional contract terms.

The other question I'd have is... what mechanism are you using for acquiring players? Is it a draft? Queued and FCFS waivers? Or would it be an auction where the money spent has no bearing to contract money?

I guess for me personally, I would rather just create a league with rules where players have salaries set by fantasy owners that mimic the parts you'd like to see. You can duplicate much of the NFL's structure. Rookie contracts costing less, key vet free agents likely to be overpaid because people have more money in free agency than quality of players available. Contract extensions, cap hits, franchise tags, even renegotiations.

My contract dynasty league has most of these, though we don't deal with cap hits and don't have renegotiations short of cutting the player and then bidding on him again. We have all the rest though. If someone wanted to base it as heavily on the NFL as you, I'd change some of the aspects we use (cost of extensions mainly), but otherwise I think it probably accomplishes a lot of what you're saying you want to see.

 

[Wade]

I took a look at this same idea during the offseason, and didn't like what I found. The problem wasn't the amount of data entry. It was how much fantasy value diverged from NFL value. A lot of good fantasy players are very cheap and a lot of fantasy nobodies are very expensive. Take a look at Haloti Ngata's cap value this year, and compare that to someone like Torrey Smith.

My conclusion was that fantasy and reality are too far apart to make this work.

 

[s75h]

I think Fantrax does what you are looking for. This is taken from their FAQ (See #3):

"There are a few ways you can generate/create player salaries for your league:

1) Auto Salary Generator Based on League Settings: This function generates player salaries using a complex algorithm developed by a few of our experts which takes into account your league's roster settings, scoring system and salary cap, as well as a combination of the players' projected stats and current season stats (the balance between these two depends on how far into the season the salaries are generated).

2) Auto Salary Generator Based on Real Player Salaries: This function sets player salaries to what their real-life salaries are for the current or upcoming season (if the season hasn't begun yet). Players who we do not have salary data for will acquire the Default Free Agent Salary set by you.

3) Auto Salary Generator Based on Real Player Cap-Hits: This function sets player salaries to what their real-life salary cap hits are for the current or upcoming season (if the season hasn't begun yet). Players who we do not have salary data for will acquire the Default Free Agent Salary set by you.

4) Manually Edit Salaries (Private Leagues Only): You can manually edit any player's salary in your league, whether or not either of the above 2 functions are used.

* Player salaries can be automatically generated on an ongoing basis (e.g. once a Period).

** Players on fantasy teams can have different salaries for different periods, however players in the available player pool only have 1 salary (i.e. they can not change from one period to another)."