Handed out my first $120m, $90m guaranteed contract. Feels like really football bidding now in FA. :)

It took about two seasons to start seeing good FAs, but the system might normalize within two or three more seasons . I see some team still have large amounts of cap. As they have less to work with . ....more and more FAS will be not as competitively garnered . Opening doors for more dramatic departures from a stars who were originally drafted you that team. ......like a guy in his 4th season getting traded be cause his drafting team just doesn't have the cash for the resign.

In comes franchise tag and out goes those garbage trades of top ten picks for aging veterans . At least the team could have a star in their prime and the other a top ten pick. When this happens is when the cap system is normalized.

Right now it is way better . But needless to say I cannot wait for the longer term repercussions . It feels way more balanced. In terms of a players worth . Alot of younger guys need to hit the FA market like last/this season . I will be watching this for at least two or three more seasons

So the salary demands don't matter and won't affect FA like you think.

Here's why.

1) The amount that your own players ask for is still dramatically less than having to compete for players in the open market. I spent $200m on contracts for two players in FA this year. Why? Because I have already locked down all of the players that would have become FAs in the next three seasons that I wanted to keep to relatively cheap long term deals. This means that next season, I'll still have ~$100m in cap room.

As long as I can continue to lock down the star players I draft for rookie contract level deals, I should always have 50-100m in cap that I can spend on FAs as long as I set the contracts up right.

2) The only players worth spending >20m per year on are DBs, and the only reason why is because DBs are so hamstrung by the game right now.

Here are the things that go against DBs:

*M2M coverage doesn't deter QBs from throwing to WRs.
*Courage > Punish = many, many catch overs.
*Zone coverage is still awful.
*DB's brains fall out when a WR is free running.
*High ball carry WRs outrun faster DBs consistently. (And dive tackle isn't going to solve this.)

With all the negatives to DBs, you absolutely must have the best DBs you can, especially on the corner. You can get away with high tackle, high punish safeties if you're going to play a lot of single high or Cover 2, but that's a more nuanced argument that I'm not taking the time to get into here.

You absolutely should NOT spend more than say 12-15m on a LB ever. And that LB better be a WLB, and that WLB better have 100 in every attribute. Most of the time, you can get by just fine with second tier LBs if you know how to game plan them.

Same thing with DL. You could spend 20-25m on that 100 DE, but why should you? It's not 0.4.0 anymore. OL actually block.

Offensive side of the ball is also pretty wacky in terms of salaries. I would maybe spend 20m on a WR and maybe 12-15m on a QB. But I rarely, if ever, spend more than 10m on any other position.