SimNFL Trade Rule Change and $0 Contract Correction

[Piercewise1]

Hello SimNFL users,

In our ongoing efforts to balance the pro football sim, we (site admins and NFL staff) have identified an issue with the revised rules around Bonus money in trades. Therefore, we have decided to revert to the “accelerated cap” methodology in the future, with some additional restrictions. Please read on for details.

Note: all references below to past actions are brought up to reflect the impact of those actions on game balance. They are not intended as a judgment of those owners or their decisions. All actions were made in good faith and in accordance with the rules of the time.

What was the (original) issue?
After a massive trade in the initial off-season involving multiple veterans and high picks, we were concerned about the effect on game balance of traded veterans playing on very cheap contracts for several seasons (because most of their contract was Bonus money that became Dead Cap on the trading team). We attempted to mitigate that by ruling that only Y1 Bonus money would become Dead Cap, and future year Bonus would travel with the player to the new team.

What happened next?
The new rule was so trade-friendly that it encouraged owners to make massive contracts to keep veteran players, while allowing owners an ‘escape clause’ in the form of a possible future trade. In short, there was little reason to consider the long-term implications of a contract because it was (relatively) easy to dump it if you got into cap trouble.

In addition, due to the ability to retain salary in trades, we’ve seen players end up on a team that owes them $0. Apart from just being unrealistic and unfair, this has caused problems on the interface especially related to calculating a team’s total roster cost.  

What’s wrong with trades?
Nothing, we love trades! They’re a huge part of the pro sim and should remain an important tool for team-building. But so is contract management, and we believe that that part of the sim is being under-valued due to the rule change.  

What’s the new rule?
The new rule is the old rule. Starting next season (2025), if you trade a player away you take ALL the Bonus in their current contract as a Dead Cap hit in the current year, the same as if you cut them. If you can’t afford that, you can’t trade the player away.

However, in an attempt to mitigate tanking and other activities that could be considered unfair or not in the spirit of the sim, we are instituting some limitations:

In 2024 (with the current rules that only count current year Bonus), no single trade can generate a Dead Cap hit of more than $8M. You cannot make multiple smaller trades with the same team solely to circumvent this rule.

In 2025 and beyond (with the accelerated Bonus rule), no single trade can generate a Dead Cap hit of more than $20M. Again, you cannot make multiple smaller trades with the same team solely to circumvent this rule.

What are we trying to accomplish with these changes?
Effectively, very large contracts should make it difficult (or downright impossible) to trade away a player until they spend some amount of time with the current team. Additionally, a single trade should not place multiple veterans on a team long-term at below-market Values. The idea is to force users to be more deliberate before handing out big contracts, since there will be larger repercussions for trying to move on from that player before the contract is up.

What's being done about $0 contracts?
Any player currently at $0 cost will have $500K of Salary added to their current contract, and the team who traded them away will have $500K removed from their Dead Cap. We simply cannot have players playing for free, so we are retroactively changing the conditions of those trades to have the new team retain a minimum amount of Salary. See the link for a list of affected players:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1vCz9Sivcna9NzxzJNO_HBuO2DPfxHpmJFBjNtQbprTk/edit?usp=sharing

In order to remove the possibility of a player having a $0 contract on their new team going forward, the Salary Percentage box will be disabled for any player that has only 1 year remaining on their current contract. We also (previously) required all contracts to include at least $500K of Salary.

Can the new rule be abused at all?
No system is perfect, so there’s still a possibility that a team continually trades away future picks for current stars, with their old teams paying out a bunch of Bonus money and the new team getting them for cheap (or just re-trading them without having any Dead Cap at all). The $20M limit is intended to limit the viability of that strategy, but we are hopeful that the sim will naturally balance itself out in two ways:

• Trades involve multiple parties. If teams don’t want to trade their veterans away and take Dead Cap hits, they don’t have to
• Now that we are two years into the sim and fully staffed with human owners, it’s less likely that teams will have huge amounts of cap space left over with which to absorb massive Dead Cap hits

Why make this decision now?
We’ve announced the rule as soon as we could come to a consensus on the need for a change, the appropriate course of action, and the right restrictions to set. Since so much has already happened in 2024, we are not going to implement the full change until next season (though we are instituting the Dead Cap limitations immediately). We understand people might have made different decisions this off-season if this had been decided sooner; the reality is that the rules remain in flux because we are learning as we go. With this announcement we are still trying to give users the maximum amount of time to respond to these changes.

I have very strong feelings about this change, the state of the sim, the decisions made here and elsewhere…
You are welcome to post your ideas in the NFL feedback thread if you are civil and constructive. In other words, clearly state the issues you see and propose specific improvements. While we appreciate the passion of our user base, this is a game and it’s meant to be fun. Yes we’re trying to make the best sim possible, but we’re doing that because we want it to be fun. We’re trying to foster a friendly and encouraging environment in pursuit of that fun. If you just want to complain about how much you don’t like the sim, please leave it offline.

I have a specific question about this rule change and its implementation.
Go ahead and post it here and we’ll do our best to answer it.

Thank you all for playing with us. Best of luck in 2024!

[kwheele]

For those of us that arent cap-o-logists here is a simple way to understand the salary cap

https://www.the33rdteam.com/explaining-nfl-salary-cap/