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Originally Posted by Popes
Here's an illustration of my contention.
Let's say I'm tendering a WR who has a clear $700 value, making him a 3rd level tender. Let's also assume there's a few bidders interested in the player.
If I tender him at the 3rd level, the opening bid has to be at least $600. If this were UFA, we'd expect him to be bid up to around $700. But since this is RFA, we all know we need to pay a premium to pry him away from the team that has the right to match. Here, that might take the bidding up to maybe $800-$900. His "RFA market value" is $700 + some premium to discourage matching.
If I tender him at the 4th round level in order to acquire a 4th round pick, people can look at my team and see that I've undertendered him with the intention to decline. So the opening bid is $300. Our competive bidders bring him up to the market value and he sells for around $700. His market value is now more UFA-style, whereas he would have sold for maybe $100-$200 more if I had tendered him at the appropriate level.
My point is that people will get a 4th round pick one way or another if they need one, so why force them to under-tender guys to do it?
I do agree that seeing that there will be no match might encourage other bidders to enter the fray and that might make it a wash (the extra bidder compensating for the lack of a match threat). Or it might not. And when it doesn't, the lack of a match threat will drive down the price. That is, the lack of a match threat will be present in every one of these situations. The extra bidder only shows up sometimes to compensate for it.
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I've already voted yes, but I'll explain why I don't like this example with another reason. Primarily, 3rd-4th round tender guys are not bid up in the same way that say, 1st round tender RB are. Generally, you know a guy with a 1st round tender RB is looking at him as a key piece of his franchise, so if you want him, you have to bid high to pry him away. A 3rd-4th round tender WR is not exactly the same situation. Here you have guys that for some particular reason the owner like, but it's not like he's a franchise maker. Maybe the tendering team thinks he'll outplay his projections. Maybe it's a WR moving to a new team and the owner wants to take a cheap shot on him. Maybe he's a homer and he wants the chance to match the highest bid. But, generally, it's not a player the tendering team is going to go to the mat for. It's just not apples to apples.