Hi all,

Any tutorial or advice for a Newbie on how to manage my way through Free Agency without royally F*cking up?

thanks!

Best Advise....don't do it

Seriously, if there is that certain player that you really need, then make an offer you feel is fair. Continuously check and recheck that player in the detail tab of his pop-up window. It will show your offer plus other offers from other teams, unless the player doesn't have his heart set on joining a certain team. You will know if you are in a bidding war

And second, offer the league minimum in salary and max out on bonus. Its all about BONUS!!! This will force others to offer a higher salary as well as a higher bonus....which in turn deducts from that team's cap. What good is it to have a $6 million dollar man surrounded by scrubs. Just look at the Cowboys without Zeke.

Much appreciated!

Booger is very right with all he said. Especially the don't do it! :p

Another thing I do is to make sure and resign all current roster players I know I want to keep first (before offering contracts to free agents). By doing this, you get a better handle on what you have to spend for free agency. If you don't resign current players first, you may find you are up against the salary cap and won't be able to resign those you want to keep.

Just look at my team. In the 3rd season of the league, the season when the FA market will be the best and the biggest EVER. I signed all my possible FA early thru out the season. By doing that I have $66 mil under the cap. All I need for the Draft is $14 mil. That leaves me $51 million, one of the largest bankrolls in the league, to go after FA. And the only ones who have a bigger Bankroll than me have won Divisional Championships. Curse you Pernbronze!!!!!

A bit of advice you missed Booger is be careful the year length with bonuses. Try to keep your high bonus players where when they retire it will be the last year of their contract. When I player retires or is released all the money you still owe them for next season and every season after that is lumped together. That means if you have a player with 10 million bonus per year for 6 years and he retires after his first year he'd still have had 5 years. so you are saddled with a whopping 50 million dollars in money you can't use. Best case scenario you are crippled in FA. Worst case you are over the cap and have to cut players. This can really hurt you if you signed a large amount of players to high bonuses because then your high priced players you cut make dead cap for the next season and the process continues. So only give high bonuses to players you are confident will remain on your team and won't retire or likely be cut (for example don't give a 2 million dollar per year bonus to a player at a position where he is most likely to be cut to make space [This is common for the AI]). While Booger pointed out a way to keep your team salary lower cap penalties can be even more damaging so be careful.

Oh and don't overpay for backups and poor talent players. Let someone else overpay if they want to then you take advantage when the cap bites them in the rear.

Ha ha. I have 29 players under contract and 74 Million. CANNONBALL. Hello FA and a whole new Tampa Bay Bandits team. FA is great as long as you don't go crazy and manage your cap. I cut 22 guys and they were all scrubs. Time to make the donuts.

As you can see there are a lot of strategies involved, you need to follow the one you are most comfortable with. For example Booger knows what he has to work with and will have a much less stressful FA but this also means more of his team is filled and to make any upgrades it will cost him a bit of cap penalty next season. Then there is me and mcarovil which could cause problems because we both used the same strategy and cut all dead weight including passable backups in hopes of upgrades. This is high risk high reward because we have more freedom not worrying as much about which players we can fit in. The downside is now suddenly your middling player is the best player available at his position and you are going to have to overpay to get him back (if he isn't mad at you), and even after overpaying someone may (and usually does) outbid you leaving you worse off than you came in. There are limited players available and everyone is going after them so you have to follow your own style. I'd suggest boogers for now, its safer and easier to learn the market. And Boogers style is a lot better suited to this only 3 weeks of free agency.

Building a championship team is a marathon not (usually) a sprint. Make sure yous set yourself up well for the future.