League Forums

Here are some details about each of the league stages, and what you need to do to prepare for them:

* Early Free Agency / Late Free Agency: During these stages, you can bid on any player that is not currently under contract with another team. During Early Free Agency, you can place contract offers on coaches from other teams if you are giving them a promotion (i.e. a position coach to a coordinator, or a coordinator to head coach).

* Draft: This stage is between Early and Late Free Agency. Each draft selection will be executed at a predetermined time, and you build your queue to decide which player(s) you want to select.

* Training Camp: After Late Free Agency is Training Camp. During this stage, your players will learn the playbook and increase in their conditioning and attributes. Your coaches' attributes influence what skills improve for the players on your team. During the season there is improvement on a smaller scale from week to week, but the bulk of your player development will come during training camp. All you are responsible for here is to make sure your players are in the positions you want them to play during the season. This is also your last chance to sign a player before camp hits.

* Midweek Stages: During the season, sims alternate between Midweek and Game stages. Midweek stages are your opportunity to make any roster adjustments you might need to make between games, such as filling an injured player's spot with an available free agent. You can also prepare for your game stage during the Midweek Stage if you don't need to do any roster adjustments, which should be the case most of the time.

* Game Stages: You will want to make sure you have your depth chart and game plan set. How much you change your game plan from week to week is up to you; there are a few items to note on game planning, which I will post under a separate thread.

* End of Season: This is your last chance to sign players to a contract extension if they are in the last year of their contract. Note that during the season, players will not sign for less than they are asking. Players' contract requests are based on the salaries of similar players in the league, and it is very easy to over-extend your pocketbook to the point where you may have to cut players and fill them with minimum salary players, so be sure to offer large contracts only to your key players.

Feel free to post any questions about the stages here.

So end of season stage is after the Bowl game or can we resign players on our roster during the playoffs? I believe I answered my own question here as I don't see a way to sign players on my roster right now.

Brings a question to mind though, how much does your money go up year to year?

You can't resign players in the same year that you originally signed them to your team. Since all the leagues are currently in the initial season right now, all the players are in their initial contract year. Starting with year #2 you will see the "contract" button on the player cards for players who are currently on your team.

The salary cap increases at a fixed rate of 5% per year. When you sign a player to a multi-year contract, their base salary increases at the same rate. The bonus is distributed equally over the life of the contract; so, the later years of a player's contract will use a lower percentage of the cap space. If you cut a player who signed with a bonus, the bonus for the current year is applied to the current year's salary cap as dead cap space, and the bonus for any remaining years are summed up and applied to the next year as dead cap space.

Coaches are much more flexible, you can sign coaches at any time without any fiscal penalty. You cannot fire a coach directly, but hiring another coach in the same position will fire the existing coach. Your playbook is determined by your head coach, though, so if you replace your head coach mid-season your players may not have any familiarity with the new playbook.

great info JDB, thanks