It's as it is because the system imo is broke.

There's no concept of players turning down extensions as far as I can see, so you don't get players running down contracts to test the market.

So the only players available are :-

a) P/K of which there's a glut.
b) Players GMs actively choose to not renew - poor ones not renewed due to quality and good quality players due to age/cost.
c) Undrafted players who are generally poor - after all, not drafted.

So to my uneducated eye, you either build the draft route which can take the long term and can give you early round busts or have to overpay the FA route. I'd suggest the number of bidders for those players drives the price up which will put teams into cap ****. Those people are bidding on players with an increased chance of retirement for the most part.

TL;DR version. FA lacks quanitity of quality players hence driving up salaries/bonuses.

This is not entirely true - but I'm still trying to find the balance.

Each player will renegotiate for a deal that is acceptable relative to how their skills line up with other players in the league and their contracts. Players don't turn down contracts, but they might be asking you for more than you can realistically give them. If you have a plethora of 80's and 90's on your roster, as they renegotiate you should begin to have to let some of them go, because you can't spare the cap space. This is why players test the market in real life - because they see someone else who they think they are as good as but is making more money than they are.

Unfortunately, tweaks in this area take several seasons to see the full effect of, because current contracts have to expire to see the full impact of them. Early on in development, it was too strong - you couldn't keep any good players. Since the game officially launched, it has been too lax. It has been pumped back up a little since the first of this year. Huge overpaying contracts by teams _will_ impact this, just as it does in real life. In other words, I don't have a salary that a QB should request, he actually is looking at all the other quarterbacks in the league and making his request based on their salaries, it is completely market driven.

I also have on the docket to introduce an opinion that a player has of a GM - and if he feels that he should be on the field and is not, or isn't high enough on the depth chart for his liking, he will not renegotiate. But that's a little bit down the road.

Oh, and on the punters and kickers, one of the 0.3 updates is a reduction in their generation. Again, it will take time to see if there is still a plethora of them after the ones that are there have retired.

The docket sounds more like what I was driving at.

Money isn't always the sole issue - players want championships, players may not gel well in that locker room, may not get on with the coaching staff etc. So in some cases even if you offered squillions players may well not want to renew under any circumstance.

I guess the model I'd be looking for would be something like the Football Manager series games. Granted that's been ongoing development wise for a long time but personality types can affect things in a big way.

It just seems to me that right now FA is broken in that you either have to overpay for players with good stats who are over 10 years experience or use it for bottom end 50-60 quality players for roster depth. Hopefully over time it'll balance out a lot better.

I'm still tweaking the player generation algorithm, too, to get a few more high quality players in the draft.

I think the chemistry issue is huge and have had that on the list from day 1, but haven't actually done any development yet. It will come, I appreciate your patience and suggestions!

The only problem with players looking around at others salaries is when free agents get massively overpaid eg the CB on another thread. If all CB's around the same level decide they want 40m it will ruin the economy in the game.

There's also the supply/demand issue though. If you're looking at FA for a skill position, ie CB in what is a passing game by and large then your choices are restricted. You're either looking in the 50s ( which can be done in the draft anyway ) or looking at the quality players who are generally older. As people look to retain good players, their salary goes up. When they do get released, it's often due to the salary they are on. Add in the demand for that player, that's why you see crazy bids for a CB like that imo.

That's the problem. There aren't the amount of good FAs that could lower the market price; people thus pay over the odds. People then have cap problems, the cycle continues.

The SF team I have here in MFN-1 has an aging DL. As much as I'd love to replace fully in FA it's just not possible to do that kind of rebuild. So it'll be the case of spending seasons drafting, trying to maybe pick up additional depth etc. IMO, chasing a team of 70+ can get you success, cause cap trouble and you've then got problems when you need to rebuild. Chasing a team of 60+ is probably more achievable without necessarily getting the result.

The original contract offer was for 5 years for a total of about 30 Million. I was waiting till he got signed before releasing what he originally requesting. Based on the winning deal, I'd say he ended up making quite a bit more than I would have been willing to pay. I'm going to be curious how many seasons New England gets out of him before he retires.

Wow NE, $108 million in contracts on 3 players! I guess it's all or nothing this season.

Out of ... Total Cap: $186,159,387

I'm interested to see how how cash the draft picks will need, currently Need For Draft Picks: $14,635,266.
On the plus side NE has no dead cap next year