Just putting my 2 cents in, but free agency is getting insane in MFN1....this is the extreme example...http://mfn1.myfootballnow.com/player/8024...75mil for 5 years for a high 70s rated player (no offense to Jax, he is a classy owner, just a general example). Then others have contracts for 5 years 30mil for a 50% probability to retire player. Honestly don't know the best solution, but it's a bit out of control. I also worry about those trying to buy one championship then ditching their teams, leaving that team almost unusable for for several seasons due to retirements and cap hits. I am open to ideas here to help make this better. If an owner is not willing to put up 8-10mil per season for 80+ free agents, then good luck. Just an idea, but perhaps a lock on re-negotiating free agent contracts for 2-3 seasons so people don't go for 10+mil per season and just renegotiate the following year??

Then we have coaches contracts. Position coaches going for 3-6mil per season??? That's craziness right there. That's more than a lot of my player contracts. Top 5 average salaries are all over 6mil, and Head Coaches are the lowest in that group. The top position coaches are averaging 7+mil. I think we need to do a salary deflation across the board with coach salaries.

The reason for the coach salaries is people trying to lock in those top position coaches so they don't get poached. Your head coaches you don't have to pay as much to keep because they can't get poached.

That's interesting, I wonder if your offer for all other coaches should be capped at your head coach's salary, and position coaches should be capped at your lowest coordinator salary?

I agree with you Tecra,it looks like some owners will be gone in a season and left teams in such a mess for future seasons ie big 5 year contracts for FA`s with 50% chance to retire.

But on the other hand everyone wants to compete,build a better team and everyone has so much Salary Cap available it`s crazy. The Bills seem to be the Pats of a couple of seasons ago,but if you`ve got cap room,why not?

It`s difficult when everyone can and does give their star players ridiculous contracts (I`m not signaling you out Tecra,everyone does it),but the ex MIA QB (Day),who`s one of the leagues best, signed a 6 year deal for ONLY $16.4 million last season.

Everyone is doing it and has pot loads of cash to sign average FA`s.

As for the answer,I don`t know.

Maybe reduce the Salary Cap to 75% of what it is now over the next 5 years (minus 5% each season).

Well, salary cap does seem to be getting a bit tighter. I just re-signed my #1 receiver and he wouldn't sign for less than a 12mil bonus, so that was a 36mil contract with a 33% bonus. If FA and re-signs stay this high, cap room will become an issue well before a cap reduction would be.

Keep in mind that salaries are based on ratings, not performance. QB Day is only playing as well as he does because of the system I have him in and play to his strengths within my team strategy, he is typically is not in the top 10 for yards (21st)/att (13th)/comp (8th)/rating (12th) in 2023. He is still only a 79/82 QB from a salary viewpoint. There are also 15 other QBs in MFN1 that are rated higher than him currently, so he gets paid as a middle of the road QB, regardless of performance. Hey, Trent Dilfer won a SB as a VERY average QB....no one would have paid him top 10 QB money :)

First off, thanks, I appreciate it........

Secondly....... I got tired of the insane amount of money being paid for free agents myself. After studying it for a bit, I decided that the reason is because everyone has so much left over. I was way under the cap, and several other teams are too. I figured that money not spent by the end of the season is money wasted, so, I would start blowing it to compete for players I wanted. I am also hoping that this will have the side effect of forcing the free agent market to correct itself. Right now, players don't ask much to re-sign. Why? Because, owners like me, who assumed it's good to stay way under the cap, are more in number than the owners blowing huge wads of money on free agents that don't deserve the contracts they are being signed to.

So, in essence, right now our dollars aren't worth much. The free market system knows this, but the free agents and us penny pinching owners are just now catching on to it. My recommendation to other penny pinching owners like myself, is to start spending that "under the cap" money. If you don't, players will never adjust what they require to resign, and the owners blowing you out when you try to sign a free agent will continue to do so, because you are holding the cost to resign those players down for them.

Under the cap money doesn't go in your pocket, or roll over to the next season at the end of a season. It vanishes! It is gone. You lost it. You should view it as an expense to the success of your team.

That's my take on the situation........ I look forward to hearing further input......

To piggy back on RLWJR's comment, the players make their requests based on the market conditions for players at the same position and with similar ratings. So, as teams offer more for their free agents, the minimum to retain those players will rise. Tecra mentioned that he's already seeing the effect of this, and it should continue to become more pronounced as the salaries continue to inflate, and likely what will happen is that the market will swing too far in that direction forcing prices back down. I'm actually very interested to watch it.

Actually, I think we're already seeing an over correction, or what that swing will look like, in what's happening with the coaches salaries.

After writing that response yesterday, I thought some more about the situation, and had a question JDB........ Why is it that the players take so long to adjust their salary requirements? For example, if Manning was making 20M a year, and a different team signed a mid tier QB for 25M a year, he would demand 25M+ immediately upon the expiration of his current contract. He wouldn't sign for just a bump in his salary. He wouldn't wait to see if salaries continue to rise. He would demand more, or he would put his talents out on the market.

I think if the players reacted immediately, the free agent environment would be normalized practically overnight, and we'd have a more realistic simulation of the financial aspect. I also think it would correct some of the issues we see with owners ending up with 3 or more first round picks. It would be hard to continue to trade for 2+ first round picks every season when you have to pay for them AND maintain your resigning players at the current prices. As it is now, I can sign a TE for a 5 year 75M contract, and know with reasonable certainty that I can negotiate that contract in half next season. It's the lag in reaction time of the players that allows this to happen, in my opinion.

Right now the requests are being built based on a linear regression - so the outliers don't have as much strength until there are several pulling the line up. There is also a curve toward the top of the line for players as they approach a 100 rating to take them up above the average.

There are a couple of reasons I haven't added logic to make the top players request for themselves to be the top paid players - first, there is the question of what classifies a player as a top player - should it be the top 32 players in the league at each position always vying for the best contract? The top 20? 10? The linear regression formula does cause the top players to compete for better contracts but you are right in that they don't immediately try to get the best contract in the league. The other reason I'm hesitant is because in the NFL you have a very strong understanding of the impact of your player contracts ... if someone breaks the bank on their QB and every other team is required to match that offer for their QBs, that one player who might have ruined their team for the next 2-3 seasons has by extension ruined every other team for the same time period, unless you happen to have locked up your QB for longer than his QB will hold that insane contract. Expand that to several teams who have locked up different positions at enormous contracts and no one will be able to sign more than a few top-tier players, requiring the rest to go to free agency. The linear regression model prevents that kind of activity from ruining everyone else's team.

One thing to consider is that there's more incentive to use up your cap space in MFN than the NFL. In MFN, if you don't use up your cap space, it's kind of a waste. In the NFL, you get to keep your money. One thing i'll do towards the end of a Free Agency period when I have some extra cap sapce is overspend on a one or two year contract on one player (usually a vet) so that I KNOW i'm going to get him, as opposed to letting that cap space go to waste.

Just wanted to throw that out there as a consideration in your solution.