[Preds]

I think your idea has a lot of merit Joe, I have a couple suggested modifications, but as a whole I like it.

Perhaps, when a player is assigned contract years, we could call 10% of the total contract value a "signing bonus", and then like the NFL, divide up the signing bonus by number of years, and have any unused years accelerated in with the normal cap penalty (whether soft cap or hard) when a player is released.

Using your example, a 4 year 1000cb contract would equal a total contract of 4641 cbs, with 10% being the "signing bonus" (465 cbs or 116.25/year). If the player was cut year 2, 1 year would have already been used up, leaving 3 cap years left for the signing bonus, so therefore an additional cap hit of 349 would be assessed on top of the standard 20% cap hit (whether a hard cap or soft cap release) for a total of 569cbs as a cap hit if released in year 2.

I don't think it'd be too hard for me to add a column called remaining signing bonus onto the roster app (which would reduce each year), and the formulas themeselves shouldn't be too hard.

I'd further suggest that the signing bonus cap hit follow the same rules as the 20% standard hit, that being 100% of the total (signing Bonus plus 20% cap hit) counts against the current years cap in the hard cap period, and 50% counts against the current year and the subsequent year during the soft cap period.

With a signing bonus structure, I also think we could eliminate the restriction on cap years per player (keep the team cap), since long term deals would hold significant risk (even at cheap contracts). A 10 year 100cb contract would have a signing bonus of 161cbs in year 1, which is not huge but still 60% more than the initial contract year, not to mention tieing up a ton of years.

I would further suggest we grandfather existing contracts, and only apply this to new contracts.

What do you think? I think we're saying the same thing (although mine is a tad pricier), I'm just trying to create a simplistic way to track it.