[Preds]

Originally posted by Nittany Dodgers
Thanks for the constructive criticism guys. As I said, the figures I used were real rough, and will need a little tweaking to get them just right. Looking at the few players I analyzed, I think it's in the right ball park. My comments on a few issues brought up here:

As to the issue of there being no risk with this system, I think MIke answered that with the fact that cutting a player from the DS carries no cap hit penalty. While I don't agree with it, I see some people's point that you can make a bad first round pick and cut them free for nothing. One idea I have on this is that we could guarantee a portion of first round pick's contracts. If a first round pick, even if places on the DS is cut, he carries an active roster salary cap hit. His cap hit would work the same as the active roster cap hit (however we decide to tweak that). This will make first round picks more vital, so people just can't draft whatever RB there is in the 1st, slap a five year contract on him, and cut him if he doesn't pan out.

This raises another issue that if we did institute this rookie structure, we'd have to do away with DS players salaries not increasing while on the DS. If this was the rookie strucutre, they would have to increase when they hit bonuses.

Also, as I've proposed it, a rookie that regresses would still get a 10% raise. All rookies outside of the top 20 in their position get a 10% raise, so no one would drop down after a big promotion.

To the Freedom, I would think that unless we got unanimous concent, we'd have to wait until 2005. People traded away draft picks based on their perceived 2004 value, so it would be unfair to them to change it on them now.

As far as reinstituting a DS cap, I'm not sure I'm in favor of that. As the DS as it is now is only for drafted rookies, you would only be penalizing teams for drafting well. If you drafted a bunch of studs that broke out, your hand would be forced to trade, activate, or cut players from the DS. I think if a team has managed their roster so well that they have talent enough on the active roster that they don't yet want to activate certain players, we shouldn't penalizing them for drafting so well they can't fit all their rookies under a cap. I also think it would be hard to find a fair cap number anyways, as rookie contract will start so small, and increase significantly only on production, that the odds are most teams won't have big contracts on their DS.

Pretty much Ditto on enerything Dodgers said with one exception... I think this could be implemented THIS year.

Why?... because only 7 picks have traded hands in the 2004 draft thus far, and of those 7 only 2 are significant picks. In fact, 5 of the 7 picks that have traded hands are at 2.9 or lower (relatively insignificant picks), while only 2 are relatively high picks (1.8 and 2.1) and even those two aren't THAT high. If the teams that traded these 2 picks consented (the Undead and the Mutts) I don't see why this couldn't be implemented this year.

Further, NONE of the picks that have been traded were traded with their exact position known. The Mutts traded their 2nd rounder this year to move up in the 2nd last year, and the Undead traded their 1st last year for Collins early in the 2003 off-season in an attempt to find a bargain QB to take them all the way. Neither the Mutts nor the Undead knew what position they were giving up, only the round. To me that makes it easier to move to Brian's proposal THIS YEAR.