2018 General Managers Discussion Thread

The kissing ass time of this exercise, thanks for all that sacrificed their life in this endeavor.

 

Don't forget our main non-sponsor

 

We need to find a way to wrap this up after the draft so that we can take a look at what everyone has done and discuss what we like and what we don't.

I'd also like to discuss any possible changes that we could make for next season.

 

For potential changes, I'll throw in that I liked last year's approach to restructuring better than this year's. Under this year's rules it wasn't possible to restructure a guy entering his final contract year. But if you're trying to be truly realistic, those are the guys you'd be most likely to extend/restructure.

If you want to keep this year's approach, so be it. The free agency frenzy that it created was, to say the least, interesting. But maybe add last year's approach back in on top of it as a method for extending guys with only 1 or 2 years left on their current deals.

 

I am in next year Tim. I know I squaked a bit during FA. However I love this

 

Go Celts!

 

You know me Tim, I'll always be in for an exercise like this one. Tweaks, like restructuring aren't as important to me as long as we have a clear process.


Oh yeah...Go Cavs!!!!

 

I think once is enough for me.

 

How about I keep you at the top of the list for openings and if you still don't want to participate next year then no big deal.

Sound good?

 

@beachbum

I went back through this section real quick the other day and came across some things that we had discussed.

Did you happen to come up with any solid ideas?

 

I think we might be able to work out some kind of combination for the two, but I'd like to get input from everyone on it and possibly get some more suggestions.

 

It was my first go around, and though I had serious reservations about getting that in depth into a team I'm not necessarily a fan of, I found that I really enjoyed the challenge...Learned a few things about the business side of football, and I think I've got a better understanding of salary caps and why teams do what they do. There were a couple things I would have done differently, but for the most part, I was happy with the way my plan worked out for the Chargers. Had to make some unexpected adjustments on the fly during the draft after getting the steal of the draft in round one , but that was fun....Anyway,I don't have any suggestions for improving the exercise. Just wanted to let ya know that I thought it was great, and I look forward to next season... My main problems stem from my own lack of knowledge on computers and spreadsheets etc..Just the technical stuff.. But I'm learning, and I improved quite a bit as the exercise unfolded...

 

I'm flattered but, there's only one team I would be interested in representing and its a lock that that team won't be available.

 

For inputs sake, I agree with Beach that the restructuring didn’t feel quite realistic to me this year. For that reason, I preferred the 2017 version. I believe it’s “part of” the reason that bids got so carried away. Even teams in cap hell to start could easily reach $25M in cap space with our fast and loose restructure system of this year.
I would vote to limit it to as little as 1 per team, for maximum cap savings. And maybe one more for a guy in the final year, as an extension

 

I think we should experiment with some kind of hybrid system but we need to decide on what we think is a good one and not just waste a year winging it.

 

I have some thoughts on the conversation but first I liked to define the difference between a restructure and an extension (adding years to the contract). I realize some in here no the difference but not everyone does:

Restructure - In the overwhelming majority of cases restructures are done for the purpose of cap relief and only cap relief. They don't involve any increase or decrease in pay and they don't add or subtract years to the existing contract. For the players this is a no-brainer because not only do they get the majority of their salary up front but it increases their dead money in future years of the contract. This works in the players favor because lessens the savings a team may see in future years if they are trying to determine if a player is playing at a level comensurate to his salary. Example:

Brandon Williams signed 5 year, 52M contract in 2017. His deal was structured to pay him 24.5M in the first two years and if he was on the roster on the 5th day of the 2019 season another 3M of is 9.25M base salary became guaranteed. The original structure of his deal made the first two years guaranteed but the roster bonus in the 3rd year was written in for a very specific reason. If the Ravens were unhappy with his play after two years and wanted to move on they would save 1.75M against the salary cap by releasing him. They would save 9.25M in real cash. If they were unhappy with him going into his 4th year, they would save 6.75M against the cap and 9.25M in real cash (his base salary).

Fortunately for Brandon the Ravens have been in very poor cap health and even though he had just signed his deal in March of 2017 they went back to him in August and restructed 2.725M of his base salary into a signing bonus. In March they went to Brandon again and restructured another 7.5M in base salary. In agreeing to do this Brandon made exactly the same amount of money and he didn't alter the length of his contract in anyway but what he did do is gain an extraordinary amount of leverage. Now if the Ravens want to release Brandon prior to his 3rd season the dead money charge is 14.76M (5.5M more than the 9.25M he is due). If they want to release him prior to his 4th season the dead money charge is 9.84M (600k more than the 9.25M he is due). So for all intents in purposes by agreeing to a couple re-structures Brandon added 18.5M in guaranteed money to his original deal.

This is why as it relates to our excercise restructures are no-brainers and as long as the math is right it's not unreasonable to allow them. It doesn't require a negotiation of any kind between player and general manager, it doesn't alter the total contract amount or length and the player can only benefit from agreeing to it.

Extensions - I will try to keep this much shorter. While they can be used to reduce a player's cap hit it's often not the main reason for the extension. In the example above (1 year left on deal) it requires a player to give up their opportunity at free agency (by adding more years). This is a very big deal to NFL players and although some prefer the security of an extension over free agency as it pertains to our exercise it is impossible for us to determine what's in the mind of our contracted players. Extensions also require negotiation, there can by any number of mitigating factors that we are not privy to and predicting contract length and value is always a crap shoot. Just look at the free agency results in our thread vs. the real thing.

For the reasons above I don't believe any transaction that adds years to a players contract should be a part of our exercise. It requires too many assumptions.

 

The thing that didn't really make it a big deal was that the player wasn't becoming a FA in the exercise anyways, in a 1-year exercise. It needs to be tweaked but it wasn't an issue of resigning vs hitting the market for everyone else.

 

But at the same time, it does teams no good to mortgage the future in restructures. And since there are no consequences for us simulation GMs I can’t help but feel like it’s a process that gets abused in the interest of cap space a.k.a. inflating our AAV signings in this exercise. Also, there are many factors (aside from money) that can help decide where a free agent signs. None of which are accounted for here.

I think an extension for any player with a single year remaining on his contract is, at the very least, as realistic as our restructuring or moreso free agency formula. Especially QBs. Teams rarely let their franchise guy flirt with free agency. It’s common practice to have these in place before the last season of their contract. And where required teams buy some cap room with these via signing bonus. We could hypothetically place more strain on the mods and have them decide beforehand which players are or aren’t eligible for an “extension”.

Whichever way we go on the “extension” issue, I still vote for a stricter cap on restructures. It hurts the realism (beyond lack of future consequence) in this exercise. IMO, of course

 

No but it's a manipulation of cap dollars where a GM is speaking for both the team and the player and that goes against our goal of keeping it as realistic as possible. And then THOSE cap dollars effect our exercise. It's a have-your-cake and eat-it-too scenario where the GM wants the player on the roster but doesn't want to pay them in their expensive years - those at the end of a contract. Real GMs face the same scenario and they don't get to assign a new deal.

 

That's a fair concern that has been echoed here for the last two years. Can we point to an example of that happening? I can't recall seeing a restructure or series of restructures that seemed disingenuous. Maybe I missed it.