GML recruiting...

[Ozias]

Hey guys, the GML is looking for a few good owners.

The GML is a General Manager League, where you do NOT create a game plan. It's also a reduced CAP league, where all teams lose 30% of the cap every year, so there a plenty of great players that make it to Free Agency, and managing the cap makes it so you can't build a dominant roster and keep it.

The league is in it's third season and we do 5 sims a week(Mon-Fri), since you only have to make a change if a player on your roster gets seriously hurt, you don't have to export every day.

You can find the league here

http://www.fof-gml.com/forum/forum.php

Currently we have Detroit, Kansas City, and St. Louis available. If you want one of these three teams, just go to the forum and let them know which team you'd like.

San Fran & Indy might be as well...haven't heard from those guys in a little while, so if one of those two teams interest you, you can ask at the website and the commish can let you know.

Hope to see some of you guys join in!!

[Guest]

Sounds interesting.

Edit: And in with Detroit.

[Ozias]

Nice to see you pick a team.

JulioRiddols(Yuma) and Prinzar(New Orleans) have a team there as well.

Julio runs Cincy while Prinzar runs the Jets.

I've got the Bucc's.

Maybe we can get Nutah there as well.

[Guest]

Let's not and say we did. :P

[prinzar]

Yeh I'm embarrassed to say I'm GM of the Jets. Totally in cap hell so you guys can enjoy beating me there and here ;)

[Ozias]

Well I was in cap hell last year, that's why we were 1-15.

So it's something you're going to go thru until the league develops a little and you know what to pay for guys.

Plus you have to really think in both short term and long term.

You can get away with contracts that might be something like this...

300k bonus
800k year 1
5 mil year 2
10 mil year 3

Then you can either cut the guy the following year or renegotiate his contract. By cutting him, you take a 100k cap hit, which you should be able to absorb with no trouble, and you'd free up 5 mil that year.

I did that this past FA to get some real good players that I'll keep for a year, then either renegotiate or cut.

[Guest]

I only had 13 signed players heading into training camp. Wow.

[Aston]

You can get away with contracts that might be something like this...

300k bonus
800k year 1
5 mil year 2
10 mil year 3

What's the point of a contract like that, though? Free agents only really pay attention to bonus & year 1. So you saddle yourself for future years without doing anything really to help you sign the guy (except maybe to scare off other bidders).

[Ozias]

Other guys may be doing the same kind of bidding.

So you can bring him in for low money the first year, and then in year two you try to renegotiate with him to bring his cap hit down, if he doesn't want to renegotiate at a reasonable deal you can cut him and only take a 100k cap hit in each of the next 2 years.

Since it's a cap crunch league, you can redo any contract at any time, no limits on them, except what FOF will allow.

There was a QB I wanted in FA, and he wouldn't sign for low money, so I had to offer 770k yr1, 5mil yr2, and 10mil yr3 and a 1.98mil bonus, for a total of 17.77 mil for 3 years. Since it's a Cap Crunch I needed to keep year 1 as low as possible for him to fit under the cap, and by doing the contract in this manner, it allowed me to have a very affordable contract for his first year. In year 2, I'll ask him to redo his deal, if he won't accept, I can cut/trade him and only be out the 660k for each of the next 2 years.

You can't approach this like our league(OSFL) and just give out a 16mil per year for 3-4 year deals, unless you only want to sign a couple of key players, but the rest of your roster may not be very good.

The cap is only 134mil, and you've lost 30% of that right from the start, so you've got 94mil to spend, minus any other cap hits you may have from previous cuts/trades. I lost 52(30% + the cuts I had to make) due to cap issues last year and had to cut some big contracts from the initials start of the league(we're just starting the 3rd season). Then I signed rookies to fill out the team, and could still only sign 46 players.

The QB's on my roster were garbage, and the guy above wouldn't accept any deal until I made it much larger by back loading the contract. With only around 15-20mil to actually spend on FA's and Draft picks, and my draft picks cost just over 10mil, so with only having 10mil to spend in FA, and wanting to fill out the roster I offered a lot of minimum deals to FA's and a lot of them signed for that, but the QB wouldn't.

Take Indy for example, they have 30k cap room, that's not a typo, 30,000, with 19 players under contract. They can cut/trade one of thier players and free up 8.22mil or another player that would free up 7.58mil, and they can fill out their roster with rookies, or 2nd and 3rd year players. Rookies are going to cost 320k, so they can sign 25 rookies at that price, and then have 43 players on the roster, so they will have to cut anther player to be able to sign 4 more to get to 46 players. 19-1(player cut)+25(rookies signed)-1(another player cut)+4(more rookies)=46 players.

The guy making all that dough, a 4yr 87/87 SLB who was part of the initial draft and had a 43.14mil 5yr deal(original), yr2 resign for 37.87 4yr deal. 8.22, 10.27 and 12.8 for the next 3 years with a bonus of 6.7 per year(yes a 20.1 mil bonus total). He can renegotiate and/or cap out the player once again to free up some more cap space, but for now, all teams have these kinds of salaries with some of the top talent in the league.

Wow...all that to answer the reason why you do a contract like that. Didn't mean for it to be so long.

[kosar19]

It's a fun league and cap crunch makes it interesting along with no game planning. I own Houston and we're on the ten year rebuild plan.

[Guest]

I am interested in joining. What is the actual gameplan that everyone uses? Are their screenshots or is there a place to download it somewhere? I assume that you would want to build your roster that would work well with the standard gameplan used by everyone.

[prinzar]

The game options are set to reset the gameplan every week. So it is the AI gameplanning for your roster.

Offensively it does a pretty good job, but defensively it sucks.

[Guest]

Thanks for the info. I might give it a shot when I am not so busy.

[Guest]

Its one of the most fun leagues out there. There are no dominant teams.

[Guest]

While there are now some more dominant teams (see: Atlanta, Ben, dammit) the league is still really great for honing your drafting skills with quick seasons.

We're ending our 2020 season, come sign up at one of the open teams: http://www.fof-gml.com/ownerlist.php

With the changes in FOF7 to roster management, this league takes up an incredibly small amount of time for me.