Cap trouble; and, new Lake County owner pizzaddict!

[Aston]

Loss of draft picks I believe happens at the start of Late FA. So, get in shape by then.

Being over the cap so significantly won't be easy to deal with. A lot of players probably need to be cut. Remember, only the top 51 guys count towards your salary cap. The game will not take this number into account when calculating how much room you have after draft picks (i.e, it assumes all the draft picks' cap costs will be added to your cap number, even if you already have 51 guys).

[Guest]

You know, I was looking through the FOF2k7 Player Guide and it says the top 53 hit your cap.

It doesn't count the extra peeps on your roster during FA and exhibition.

Where'd you get the number 51 from?

[Aston]

It's 51 now -- at least this is what I've been told. And it doesn't count the extra at any time.

[pizzaddict]

Ok, I'll dig into it tonight and get a better feel for what I can do. It did seem like my roster was already full with rookies though. Time to burn it all down and rebuild!

[pizzaddict]

I apparently can't even resign my own guys for the league minimum if I'm over the cap. Which brings up the question if the game is that strict about letting me be over the cap, why does it let the AI get 50 million over the cap to begin with? Shouldn't it stop it from capping out contracts if it's going to put it over the salary cap?

[Aston]

The AI is imperfect, let's put it that way.

What the AI is probably going to do is keep capping out players. However, I feel at some point you end up in San Fran's boat.

Oddly, some guys who know this game very well feel the AI is quite competitive, at least compared to human players sometimes. My guess here is that some of these teams carried over talent level and contracts from the last version of the game, that the AI isn't able to deal with in a healthy way.

In your case, they would have probably just capped everybody out again. You could probably look into that, but eh.

(For example, your WR Upshaw. He'll save $15M vs the cap if you cap him out. However, you have to be good with him costing over $32M both next year, and the year after. Right now he costs about $25M in those years. What's another $7?)

On top of that, DT Stehlik, CB Poly, WR Stegman, TE Gibson, these guys probably have to become cap casualties. The center you could cap out if you want to seriously pay him next year (might be tough), or trade. A DE like Mackinster is untradeable right now because of the cap penalty, but someone you could trade next year.

So, sans the center and those 4 players, maybe plus a capout of the WR, that might land you into manageable territory this year? My apologies, haven't done the exact math here. You'll want to keep an eye on that "Lost Cap, Next Year" no matter what moves you make, though.

This is something like the project the recent Raiders GM took on a couple years ago: a 3-year plan to get cap healthy. The first two seasons, you have to make these cuts and you'll end up with future cap penalty. A tough pill to swallow, but you are cap clear by year 3.

Boston, by the time we finished cutting guys, I think we had almost $40M in cap penalty last season (Year 2 for me with the team). This year, though, we are "cap clear" -- only $2.09M in cap penalty. Now, finally, the burdensome AI contracts are off the books and we have some serious spending power. But it took swallowing some of the bonus pills at once, early on, to get here by Year 3.

[Guest]

The prices for players is completely and totally out of whack. There's no reason we should be spending $30 mil on WRs and $50 on QBs.

Something broke the AI's brain and it began handing out absurd contracts, which have driven our contracts up.

That's my theory.

[Guest]

This all sounds great to me. In the old version you never really had to make tough decisions on players. This kind of roster maneuvering is what GMing is all about.

[Guest]

It's pretty to stay great in fof7 chuck... I think main thing is you have to draft well so you get cheap labor. Aston, what do you think are the main difference between fof7 and fof2007?

[Aston]

The draft is no longer reliable to me.

Being crazy about cap management actually pays off.

[pizzaddict]

The good news is after my last trade is processed I will officially be under the cap including what I'll need to sign my draft picks.

The bad news is I got rid of a lot of talent to get there.

[pizzaddict]

I thought I would be more under the cap then this. I think I was something like 14 mil over the cap, I traded my center who counted something like 26 mil against my cap and now I'm only 120K under the cap? Shouldn't I be like 10-12 under the cap now?

Do I have to pay for a guys bonus even if I trade him?

[Aston]

Yes, the bonus never, ever disappears.

If you cut or release a guy, you owe him all of the bonus he is due this year. That will count as a "cap penalty, this year". Trading/releasing has the same cap effect.

In addition, the sum of ALL remaining bonus in ALL of his future years becomes "cap penalty, next year."

Say you have a guy who has 4 years on his deal and $5M in bonus each year. If you trade him, you will still pay him $5M this year, and $15M next year. Bonus never comes off the books.

[Matt]

I never knew that.

I was wondering why the two guys I picked up had no bonus on their salaries.

[pizzaddict]

Wow I never realized that. Is that how it is in the NFL? If the Dolphins were to trade Suh tomorrow (or wednesday since they haven't officially signed him yet) they would still have to pay the 60mil they are rumored to have guranteed him?