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Just to illustrate the point, the current NFL salary cap is $255.4 million in 2024 - a record high. There are lots of established leagues with salary caps over $600 million, and some of the MFN # leagues are over $1 billion. You can just make up a crazy number and never lose any talented players, and if an inattentive owner doesn't re-sign a star player other owners make $300+ million contract offers, more than entire payrolls of real life teams.

I doubt there's a way to retroactively fix the ballooning salary caps, but if it was financially impossible to re-sign every single one of your best players it would reward the best talent evaluators who could find the "diamonds in the rough" on the cheap. Maybe it could stop AI teams from making so many of the team crippling offers to 34 year old players that discourage human owners from taking over a team with no salary cap space too.

Those leagues are also 30+ seasons in. Real NFL will likely have similar cap levels at that point though probably slightly higher contract demands. However making it overly hard to retain your drafted players would greatly diminish the fun factor of the game.

Real NFL salary cap was introduced in 1994. It is now 2024. It HAS been around 30 years. MFN and NFL are not aligned and use completely different logic when increasing. This is another area where a league admin could balance the league a bit by controlling the % of annual increase or freeze. Dang, a freeze on future increases would help. Unfortunately I do not believe the players demands are in sync with team cap (or similar contracts signed by similar players).

This goes into making each league dynamic contracts dependent on what owners trends are. I.e. 35% owners in a league sign high speed low talent players, similar players of that archetype should demand more money year over year currently that same player would sign for next to nothing unless you are competing with other owners. Also, make base salary weigh more players only sign based on bonus, that’s far from reality in any real sport. AAV is more prevalent for most signings and is a combination of base plus bonus.

One more player. Make players have contract preferences outside of bonus - years and AAV just as easier starters. Someone earlier has mentioned player personalities, if we get there then I think location and playbook should factor in at minimum.

It would be easier to make the salary cap more challening/actually matter by stopping players from getting paid peanuts and going from basing their contracts only on total bonus to instead of a yearly bonus minimum. We all know how to resign our players for cheap and that's why the salary cap is a joke and your most expensive players are your un-extended rookies or the few FAs that you got for a lot of money

Could passing accuracy be revised to have accuracy for short/medium/long as independent skills?

Could this be a way to address broken plays? Giving each range its own variations of rolls based on pass type. Long pass specifically but also thinking all the mass of useless unused plays.

This is coming from a Roster only guy because my busy schedule does not permit me to have time to gameplan and create rules and try to compete with established managers who have figured it out.


I'll copy in a previous post I made about a feature of a baseball sim I use to manage.

One of the features I so desperately wish was here is they allow for you to group players in whatever you choose (or none) for contract negotiations.

Basically it goes through negotiation with players and if you "sign" one thats in a group, you no longer try to sign any other people in the same group.

Its system allows you to group any player into in, no matter of position or contract offered.

How its beneficial is... for example... you needed to sign a player and you only have $15M available. It allows you to make offers to several players and group them together. So if by random chance you actually sign too many and end up over your budget.

Or say you needed to sign one LB. You could make offers to several and then put them in the same group. At most it would only sign one player therefore having better control of how you run your team.

This is the hint from that sign in the contract offer summary.
Use the groups drop-down to optionally group free agent offers together. As soon as one player from a group signs, all other offers in the group will be set as inactive. To re-activate an inactive or rejected offer, click 'Edit' and submit it again.

They have up to 10 groups or you can not use the feature at all.

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I think the draft classes pool of talent is almost always exceptionally too low overall.
In theory anyone drafted in the first 3 rounds should be able to make a roster. It makes no sense to see some years that have only a handful of 80+ players and by the 3rd round, most of them are so low they'd never make a roster (except to those with speed, and only speed).

There seems to be significantly more bust than boom players. It would be interesting to learn what the actual goal of the Volatility rating is and even when players bust they should still improve based on having good position coaches instead of just heading to a bottom number before age decline kicks in.

In addition, the draft players should have less potential positions they can play and carry reasonable minimum values based on their listed initial position.

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It would also be nice for RO teams to have some gm features that are in the regular version. I think they would make those leagues more interesting. Even if its just the misc gameplan, offensive playbook and defensive playbook tabs. No scouting, no game planning, no rule creation. That would allow more strategy to matchup the coach you have and the roster you've signed to pick plays that make sense. For example if you dont carry a FB, then logically you wouldn't want I Formation plays. Or if you wanted to run a 4-3 defense, you'd try to carry more DTs on your roster.

I also think the size of a player should matter. I've seen some 5'11" players turned into offensive linemen and there's no logical reason that a 6'4" lineman shouldn't be a better blocker than the smaller one with the same attributes. It would also prevent playing smaller players out of position because they're hoping that speed will win. No more CBs playing DE because they'd get crushed (and should likely have a higher injury risk when doing so).

Finally, as most may agree, the passing game needs worked on. The deep game is not there at all and my real issue is the TD/Int numbers. Into season 27, there has been 7304 TDs and 9610 Ints during the regular season games. I just can't wrap my head around why there's sooooo many picks. Getting this addressed should also help with scoring which I would think is about 10 total points per game too low. Yards per pass attempt is 5.38 and that seems low to me but i'm not sure.
Update: This current season through 12 weeks in NCAA RO, there has been 70 more interceptions than touchdown passes, so its still performing much worse than the early years.

With "player happiness" we know a mad player will not resign for a while, but shouldn't a happy player consider that happiness when reviewing multiple contract offers and be more likely to return to somewhere they were happy to be? Even if it is for a slight hometown discount.


Just my 2 cents. Hope it helps.

I Like that idea. I'd also like to add that the boom or bust should be tied into player performance as well. I see players get cut because they bust during training camp only to be picked up by other teams and perform great but they continue to bust.

Can we make having a great offensive line matter.

Start with using player density (weight/height) as bench markers for fatigue rates, speed, and strength.

Much of this thread speaks to the need for player attributes to be reassessed, e.g., less weight given to "Max Speed". Personally, I would like to see the player attributes of "Intelligence" and "Discipline" be given far more weight in MFN than they are currently given.

A real life example with two current NFL players best illustrates my point.

Trevon Diggs, cornerback out of Alabama playing for the Dallas Cowboys. Consider his performance in the 2021 NFL season. On the surface, using the most readily available stats, it was a fantastic season. 11 interceptions, 21 passes defended, 52 total combined tackles. However, it was evident that Diggs often played out of scheme (lack of discipline) by trying to jump routes and ended up allowing 907 receiving yards in coverage, 8.8 yards per target, 16.8 yards per reception, and a 16% missed tackle rate. In short, he got beat deep plenty. Transferring his performance to MFN, I would rate Diggs' 2021 NFL season as follows:

Max Speed = 80, Acceleration = 85, Intelligence = 70, Discipline = 40, B&R coverage = 60, M2M coverage = 60, Tackle Ability = 40.

Kyle Hamilton, safety out of Notre Dame playing for the Baltimore Ravens. Highly touted, Hamilton disappointed at the 2022 NFL combine by running the slowest 40 yard dash among the group of safeties (tied for slowest, actually). Scouts persisted and said he played faster on film. Well, he didn't play faster on film, it just appeared that he did as he showed excellent anticipatory skills on film along with being the most "intelligent" and most "disciplined" player in the position group. Consider his performance in the 2023 NFL season from the safety position. 4 interceptions, 13 passes defended, 3 QB sacks, 4 QB hits, 81 tackles, 10 tackles for loss, and only a 9% missed tackle rate on his way to a 1st team All - Pro designation. Transferring his performance to MFN, I would rate Hamiltons' 2023 season as follows:

Max Speed = 60, Acceleration = 65, Intelligence = 95, Discipline = 100, B&R coverage = 90, M2M coverage = 90, Tackle Ability = 90.

While this isn't a perfect apples - to - apples comparison because they play different positions, in the current iteration of MFN you would immediately take Diggs over Hamilton because of the speed bias. However, if "Intelligence" and "Discipline" were given the weight that they should be given, one would have to consider Hamilton the better choice.

This is exactly the type of decision I want to face in the MFN draft or in free agency, i.e., do I take the faster more splashy but more risky player because of his lack of intelligence / discipline, or do I take the super solid mistake free player who may occasionally be at a speed disadvantage in coverage.

Let's make "Intelligence" and "Discipline" really matter. It would make assembling your DB group or your LB group in MFN more challenging and more fun.

While I agree with the sentiment, it's already kind of a thing. Though I emphasize blue bar stuff over int and discipline. I frequently have one of the slowest defenses in the leagues I'm in and one of the best though least splashy. It's pretty real life accurate in high ends. It only gets wacky on the mid-low end where a 90 speed player with 10s outplays a 70 speed with 60s.