FFMD

[CWood21]

4 minutes ago, ny92jefferis said:

If you have any questions about it, I'm in the workbook as well and have the chat feature open.

LIS, I'm pretty well versed working with Excel.  It's the casual poster who I think is going to have issues comprehending it.  Post that original google doc explaining how to work the google excel.

[ny92mike]

1 minute ago, CWood21 said:

LIS, I'm pretty well versed working with Excel.  It's the casual poster who I think is going to have issues comprehending it.  Post that original google doc explaining how to work the google excel.

Are you referring to this?  If not I'm not sure what post you are referring to.

http://www.footballsfuture.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=584570

 

Odds are the casual poster, being someone that isn't assigned either the GM or AGM role would likely not even need to see the workbook.  Since the GM and AGM are the only ones permitted to submit transactions, these docs wouldn't limit the discussion within the war room.  

[MKnight82]

11 minutes ago, CWood21 said:

LIS, I'm pretty well versed working with Excel.  It's the casual poster who I think is going to have issues comprehending it.  Post that original google doc explaining how to work the google excel.

I will add that the new forum will make discussing the google docs easier as snapshot of the sheet can now be embedded in the text.  Like this:

Year	Status	Team	4-DIGIT ID	CONCATENATE	Name	Pos.	Exp.	Grade	Vet. Min.	Base Salary	Prorated Bonus	Roster Bonus	Workout Bonus	Cap Number
2017	UFA	WAS	0702	0702 - DeSean Jackson - WR	DeSean Jackson	WR	8	80%	$ 900,000	$ 4,000,000	$ 3,500,000			$ 7,500,000
2018	UFA	WAS	0702	0702 - DeSean Jackson - WR	DeSean Jackson	WR	9	80%	$ 915,000	$ 5,000,000	$ 3,500,000			$ 8,500,000
2019	UFA	WAS	0702	0702 - DeSean Jackson - WR	DeSean Jackson	WR	10	80%	$ 1,030,000	$ 7,000,000	$ 3,500,000			$ 10,500,000
2020
2021
2022
2023
									PASS	$16,000,000	$ 10,500,000	$0	$0	$26,500,000
													APY	$ 8,833,333

[CWood21]

Maybe I'm missing it, but how do you differentiate between contract offers with minimal difference.  IF the Browns offered a 5 year, $60M ($20M guaranteed) deal to a player and the Patriots offered a 5 year, $58M ($20M) deal.  Your excel would automatically mean the Browns would win the bid, right?

[ny92mike]

14 minutes ago, CWood21 said:

Maybe I'm missing it, but how do you differentiate between contract offers with minimal difference.  IF the Browns offered a 5 year, $60M ($20M guaranteed) deal to a player and the Patriots offered a 5 year, $58M ($20M) deal.  Your excel would automatically mean the Browns would win the bid, right?

In this example; all things being equal aside from the 2 million dollar difference in pay, yes it would award the Browns the player simply because they offered more money.  Why shouldn't the Browns be awarded the player?  Opening the door to awarding a player based on opinion the NE is a better team is only going to lead to rightful complaining based on an unfair process.  

 

Edit:  There are some adjustments to the pay should a team be resigning vs a team looking to acquire a player.  There are also adjustments to the pay if a team is offering the player what he is asking for in terms of number of years and guaranteed monies".  We removed the bias opinion aspect of determining where a player goes simply because its unfair and creates senseless arguments.  

Edited October 20, 2017 by ny92jefferis

[EaglesPeteC]

The best part about the docs is it does all the math for you. It elimates the need for the "capoligist" which nobody wants to do because math is the worst

 

Edited October 21, 2017 by EaglesPeteC

[ny92mike]

22 hours ago, CWood21 said:

No, I asked you what exactly about TCMD was the solution to FFMD's issues, and you put out a general statement.  Nothing there that says what the problems were and how they were fixed by your mock.  That's what I'm asking you to expand on.

Before I start discussing the issues with FFMD let me first say that in its early years, the level of commitment from everyone to continue to make improvements was awesome.  Ideas to improve upon realism was running high and the comments below are in no way a discredit to the amount of work that they put in.

Going back and looking at ffmd's early years, the real issues started when the 'talent agency" was introduced.  It was created to do several things, fix the issue with the top free agents starting bid being zero, de-clutter the number of posts generated in the bidding wars of the open market and to create a player "agent" that would act in the player's best interest so that money alone would not be the only driving factor when it came to awarding, cool concept but it simply doesn't work in this framework.  Instead, it created more problems as the agents were routinely missing deadlines which affected the ability for the GM's to properly game plan.   The idea was that the agents would weed out all but the top three contracts, removing the offers that were too low as well as too high and ask the GM questions pertaining to the scheme fit, team goals, and anything else they thought relevant to making the final decision.

Unfortunately, they didn't realize the amount of time and organization required to manage this task which lead to GM's submitting contracts and questions via PM that went unopened and ultimately the agent leaned heavy on picking the highest offers.  To combat the time required the "pitch" was created which is an awesome concept as I love to read and write but this didn't really change the almighty buck being the major factor for determining the winner.  All this really did was create more work for an overworked staff.  The more complex it became the more agents and time were needed to manage it.

We've seen the market inflated with the Tracy Porters and Manningham deals, which the 'talent agency' was said to have fixed.

http://www.footballsfuture.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=290645&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=1200

Teams are expected to maintain their salary cap which is fine if you're dealing with one year contracts and excluding the top 51 rule.  Nonetheless, as FFMD developed and refined its salary cap to include multi-year deals and the top 51 rule so too was the GM expected to maintain their salary cap.  This lead to not only the GM's tasked with another choir of policing the other team's salary cap to insure things were on the level.  The level of work increased for the agent as well as they were now spending more time in having to calculate the best deal with multi-year contracts.  Players were awarded to teams in some cases where the math was wrong. 

In 2010, the integrity of the FFMD: Trade Council was fingered involving a rejected trade between the Bills and Eagles to which the decision decline it took 5 days.  This debate went on for several pages, with an Eagles fan calling out the trade council demanding an explanation.  The Eagles fans were so turned off by this that there were even talks of boycotting FFMD.  This didn't help things as the "agents" were now looked at in some cases as "playing favorites".

http://www.footballsfuture.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=372813&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=825

My point is that whether it was intentional or not by the council it was a legitimate complaint.  You talked about people complaining just to be complaining but these examples and many others simply isn't the case.  When you've got GM's putting in countless hours of their time to participate you can't shrug them off as if their concerns aren't valid.  Without the GM you don't have a mock draft 

So from my assessment, ffmd cracked when human intervention was introduced in the form of the "agent".  The concept of the "talent agency" had merit but the system was flawed from the get go and because a better solution wasn't accepted or thought of at the time, it has remained the underlying issue with FFMD. 

The FFMD17 Feedback & Suggestions thread for the most part explains how these issues are resolved but if you'd like to hear more on it I'd be happy to discuss it in greater detail.  

http://www.footballsfuture.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=585114

 

As for your question about participation, I really believe that at this point in time, it would take a few years to regain the trust back but removing the "agent" is a move in the right direction.

Edited October 21, 2017 by ny92jefferis
grammer

[CWood21]

I appreciate you expanding on your thoughts.  Makes it easier to discuss it.

I think you're misunderstanding what the Talent Agency did.  It was essentially what you originally said it was designed for.  It was meant to keep contracts from going crazy, and a way to centralize single offers.  I honestly don't remember a single scenario where the agents took a deal for less money, unless we're talking about a situation where a player was re-signing with their original team OR the team that proposed a larger contract had a very unhealthy contract.  And in the case of the latter, I believe there were times where we asked the GM to restructure their contract for consideration.  If a player is going to receive 50% of their contracts in Year 5 and Year 6, that's not a healthy contract and one that player won't receive money they originally agreed to.  That's where we introduced that 15% rule, I believe back in 2014.  Since we're essentially playing with monopoly money, we can't let teams just backload contracts to hell and back.

As far as the pitch goes, it really wasn't asked to do much honestly.  The general rule of thumb we told GMs were that it needed to be long enough to pertain to what they wanted to get across, but not so long that it kept people from reading.  98% of the offers were looked at the contracts alone.  The only time the pitch came into play was if the contracts were nearly identical, which ironically didn't happen very often.  Most were a paragraph or less.

As for the trade council, it was revamped several years ago.  The only thing the trade council did was make sure that the trade wasn't wildly off in terms of value (if the Pats traded Tom Brady to the Cardinals for a 7th round pick) or didn't work in terms of the salary cap.  The Trade Council wasn't there to determine whether or not a trade was fair or not.  It was meant so that teams didn't abuse the system, or ruin the interactive mock for others.  Nothing more, nothing less.  Since I've been involved in FFMD from the operations side, I think we only nixed one deal (the RG3 trade) and that was because the team acquiring RG3 (or the Redskins, I can't remember) would have gone way above the salary cap.

[ny92mike]

5 minutes ago, CWood21 said:

I appreciate you expanding on your thoughts.  Makes it easier to discuss it.

I think you're misunderstanding what the Talent Agency did.  It was essentially what you originally said it was designed for.  It was meant to keep contracts from going crazy, and a way to centralize single offers.  I honestly don't remember a single scenario where the agents took a deal for less money, unless we're talking about a situation where a player was re-signing with their original team OR the team that proposed a larger contract had a very unhealthy contract.  And in the case of the latter, I believe there were times where we asked the GM to restructure their contract for consideration.  If a player is going to receive 50% of their contracts in Year 5 and Year 6, that's not a healthy contract and one that player won't receive money they originally agreed to.  That's where we introduced that 15% rule, I believe back in 2014.  Since we're essentially playing with monopoly money, we can't let teams just backload contracts to hell and back.

As far as the pitch goes, it really wasn't asked to do much honestly.  The general rule of thumb we told GMs were that it needed to be long enough to pertain to what they wanted to get across, but not so long that it kept people from reading.  98% of the offers were looked at the contracts alone.  The only time the pitch came into play was if the contracts were nearly identical, which ironically didn't happen very often.  Most were a paragraph or less.

As for the trade council, it was revamped several years ago.  The only thing the trade council did was make sure that the trade wasn't wildly off in terms of value (if the Pats traded Tom Brady to the Cardinals for a 7th round pick) or didn't work in terms of the salary cap.  The Trade Council wasn't there to determine whether or not a trade was fair or not.  It was meant so that teams didn't abuse the system, or ruin the interactive mock for others.  Nothing more, nothing less.  Since I've been involved in FFMD from the operations side, I think we only nixed one deal (the RG3 trade) and that was because the team acquiring RG3 (or the Redskins, I can't remember) would have gone way above the salary cap.

Right, most of the time the highest offer was accepted, however its design was intended to weed out gross spending and even put more weight on power rankings, scheme fit and other opinionated topics however, that proved more difficult and while the pitch was a requirement, wasn't really looked at.  What ffmd did was put more work on the GM when it wasn't needed when all you was really looking at was the contract structure.  

I did read that the trade council was revamped I believe in 2013.

I still stand by my assessment that the issue with ffmd is the talent agency and the agents opinions being the driving force for much of the "complaining". 

It's not just with the agents but its also within the structure of the free agency.  It just isn't a smooth process, you've got 32 teams for much of the mock draft signing maybe one to two free agents aside from of a couple of their own players and even then the price is driven up on them.  Allowing too many players to get resigned takes away from your talent within the TA.  It's why there were so many complaints pertaining to the resigning phase where teams put bids on the players and the agent refused only to get signed a lesser deal in the TA.  

Again, the purpose of the talent agency was to prevent insane bidding but looking at some of the structured contracts from a few years back even with the workaround of the 15% rule, teams just offered more guaranteed money.  Its been 8 years or so since the first free agency w/ talent agency kicked off and teams are still finding loopholes.  When I go back and look at the early years of ffmd, those guys were all about making improvements, looking for ways to enhance it, I just don't see that being the case over the past 3 years.  I just feel like you guys have given up or feel that this is as good as it's going to get with the amount of time you're willing to invest.  

 

Let me ask you, what do you think is wrong with FFMD?

 

    

 

[CWood21]

29 minutes ago, ny92jefferis said:

Right, most of the time the highest offer was accepted, however its design was intended to weed out gross spending and even put more weight on power rankings, scheme fit and other opinionated topics however, that proved more difficult and while the pitch was a requirement, wasn't really looked at.  What ffmd did was put more work on the GM when it wasn't needed when all you was really looking at was the contract structure.

First off, as someone who received those offers I can tell you that there were several offers that didn't include a pitch.  It was something that posters asked for in previous FFMDs, and we allowed it because that's what they wanted.  Not that it was required by any means.  If adding an a paragraph of text really prevents them from making an offer, they're probably not going to be active in FFMD to begin with.  At the end of the day, those that want to be active are going to be active and those that aren't won't be.  I mean, I remember Matts had one of the most active FFMD for a team I've ever seen because of how much he invested in it.  And I'm not talking about the actual mock itself, he made it fun and interactive for everyone involved.

31 minutes ago, ny92jefferis said:

I still stand by my assessment that the issue with ffmd is the talent agency and the agents opinions being the driving force for much of the "complaining". 

Again, you're going to get complaints regardless.  LIS, if you've got two offers that are very similar the one who isn't awarded the player is going to feel shafted and likely going to complain.  That's not going to be fixed by any automated system IMO.  You're arguing that the agents intentionally chose "lesser" offers, which is the farthest thing from the case.  The only thing that the Google Doc does it make the offers public, which is something that the Agents are more than capable of doing.

35 minutes ago, ny92jefferis said:

It's not just with the agents but its also within the structure of the free agency.  It just isn't a smooth process, you've got 32 teams for much of the mock draft signing maybe one to two free agents aside from of a couple of their own players and even then the price is driven up on them.  Allowing too many players to get resigned takes away from your talent within the TA.  It's why there were so many complaints pertaining to the resigning phase where teams put bids on the players and the agent refused only to get signed a lesser deal in the TA.  

And that's where I've tried to discuss with you would be a way to streamline the Shark Tank portion of FA.  Nobody wants to dig through a dozen page of random bids, if there was some way of automating this portion it'd have a very practical sense to it.  In fact, I believe I asked you if there was a way to do that, and you pretty much told me I either needed to take the entire thing as is or not at all IIRC.

Then there was the train of complaints about how teams weren't given a chance to re-sign their own FA prior to them hitting FA, which is when we added the ability to re-sign one FA (with multiple opportunities to fix their offer if it wasn't up to par) and we also allowed the ability to franchise tag and extension in order to retain up to two FA.  Personally, I thought that was a happy medium between not letting teams retain their own FA prior to free agency but also not dilute FA too much.  Would you disagree?  I don't recall that many players signing for significantly less than they got in the Talent Agency.  In fact, I'm pretty sure any halfway respectable offers were accepted.  Again, the only contracts that we declined were either structured incredibly poorly (i.e. backloaded significantly) or severely underpaid them compared to what their market value was.  Do you have any real examples of what you're claiming?

40 minutes ago, ny92jefferis said:

Again, the purpose of the talent agency was to prevent insane bidding but looking at some of the structured contracts from a few years back even with the workaround of the 15% rule, teams just offered more guaranteed money.  Its been 8 years or so since the first free agency w/ talent agency kicked off and teams are still finding loopholes.  When I go back and look at the early years of ffmd, those guys were all about making improvements, looking for ways to enhance it, I just don't see that being the case over the past 3 years.  I just feel like you guys have given up or feel that this is as good as it's going to get with the amount of time you're willing to invest. 

I'm not sure what the workaround to the 15% rule was, that was the rule put into place so that teams wouldn't backload their contracts like crazy.  When you're playing with Monopoly money, GMs really have no incentive to value future cap space which is where the birth of that 15% concept came into play.  When the Agents were looking at contracts, the overall amount of money and structure of contracts were the two main factors that they looked.  The lack of "improvements" that you claim aren't being made isn't the case, that's where that 15% rule (and a few other rules ) came into place.  And the general feedback was that it's became unnecessarily complicated.

[CWood21]

43 minutes ago, ny92jefferis said:

Let me ask you, what do you think is wrong with FFMD?

I don't think there's any one answer to this.  I think the overall interest has declined in recent years.  I think mods should be doing a more active job in participating in their own team war rooms.  I think we've introduced too many complicated rules in order to fix previous year's loopholes.  LIS, I don't think there's any one solution to remedy the situation.

[ny92mike]

6 minutes ago, CWood21 said:

First off, as someone who received those offers I can tell you that there were several offers that didn't include a pitch.  It was something that posters asked for in previous FFMDs, and we allowed it because that's what they wanted.  Not that it was required by any means.  If adding an a paragraph of text really prevents them from making an offer, they're probably not going to be active in FFMD to begin with.  At the end of the day, those that want to be active are going to be active and those that aren't won't be.  I mean, I remember Matts had one of the most active FFMD for a team I've ever seen because of how much he invested in it.  And I'm not talking about the actual mock itself, he made it fun and interactive for everyone involved.

Again, you're going to get complaints regardless.  LIS, if you've got two offers that are very similar the one who isn't awarded the player is going to feel shafted and likely going to complain.  That's not going to be fixed by any automated system IMO.  You're arguing that the agents intentionally chose "lesser" offers, which is the farthest thing from the case.  The only thing that the Google Doc does it make the offers public, which is something that the Agents are more than capable of doing.

And that's where I've tried to discuss with you would be a way to streamline the Shark Tank portion of FA.  Nobody wants to dig through a dozen page of random bids, if there was some way of automating this portion it'd have a very practical sense to it.  In fact, I believe I asked you if there was a way to do that, and you pretty much told me I either needed to take the entire thing as is or not at all IIRC.

Then there was the train of complaints about how teams weren't given a chance to re-sign their own FA prior to them hitting FA, which is when we added the ability to re-sign one FA (with multiple opportunities to fix their offer if it wasn't up to par) and we also allowed the ability to franchise tag and extension in order to retain up to two FA.  Personally, I thought that was a happy medium between not letting teams retain their own FA prior to free agency but also not dilute FA too much.  Would you disagree?  I don't recall that many players signing for significantly less than they got in the Talent Agency.  In fact, I'm pretty sure any halfway respectable offers were accepted.  Again, the only contracts that we declined were either structured incredibly poorly (i.e. backloaded significantly) or severely underpaid them compared to what their market value was.  Do you have any real examples of what you're claiming?

I'm not sure what the workaround to the 15% rule was, that was the rule put into place so that teams wouldn't backload their contracts like crazy.  When you're playing with Monopoly money, GMs really have no incentive to value future cap space which is where the birth of that 15% concept came into play.  When the Agents were looking at contracts, the overall amount of money and structure of contracts were the two main factors that they looked.  The lack of "improvements" that you claim aren't being made isn't the case, that's where that 15% rule (and a few other rules ) came into place.  And the general feedback was that it's became unnecessarily complicated.

To prevent myself from being banned I'll just leave you with these parting words.

Good luck.    

[CWood21]

4 minutes ago, ny92jefferis said:

To prevent myself from being banned I'll just leave you with these parting words.

Good luck.    

You wanted an honest discussion, and you've gotten it.

[ny92mike]

22 minutes ago, CWood21 said:

You wanted an honest discussion, and you've gotten it.

No sir.  It was never a discussion with you.

Wish there was someone that was actually vested in FFMD that we could speak to about this.  Last mock you ran you bailed.

[CWood21]

Just now, ny92jefferis said:

No sir.  It was never a discussion with you.

Wish there was someone that was actually vested in FFMD that we could speak to about this.  Last mock you ran you bailed.

Then don't ping me.  You keep pinging me, and I'm the one whose taken the time to respond to you.  You wanted a discussion, I made my point, and as soon as I disagreed with your stance, you decided to take your ball and go home.  If you didn't want someone to disagree, you shouldn't have pinged me.