Sensabaugh is a great pickup there in the 7th.

+1

Okay, next up is free agency. To learn about our free agency system, read below. I've also added the rules to the opening post.

Note that we are still in beta testing, so things could change if we find problems in the system.

How Free Agency Works:

Free Agency will begin before the 2012 season after the rookie draft.

Our process is as follows for the 2012 season. In 2013 and beyond there will be minor changes as noted later.

1. We will unveil the list of available free agents so you can check out the talent pool.

2. If you look in "Standings", you will see that you have a salary account value of $1,300. You will use this to sign your veterans to contracts, sign your rookies to contracts, and (in a competitive bidding process) sign free agents to contracts.

The cost of a contract is as follows for players already on your roster (both veterans and rookies).

$0 - 1 season contract
$10 - 2 season contract
$22 - 3 season contract
$37 - 4 season contract
$55 - 5 season contract
$76 - 6 season contract
$100 - 7 season contract

You will sign your existing players to contracts using an interface that we will unveil shortly. If your 53-man roster is set you can spend your $1,300 on your current roster. However, it may be worthwhile to hold some money back so you can compete for free agents.

3. The free agency period begins.

Bidding for free agents will be open and competitive. As players come available, teams will be allowed to sign them if they are the high bidder. The contract length is automatically calculated by rounding down the bid to the chart below.

Contract Length (Seasons) Salary Points Bid
1 0 to 9
2 10 to 21
3 22 to 36
4 37 to 54
5 55 to 75
6 76 to 99
7 100 or more

For example, if you submit the winning bid for a player at a price of 25 salary points, that player becomes yours under a 3-year contract. If you submit a bid for 35 points and win, it’s also a 3-year contract. If you submit a bid for 38 points, it’s a 4-year contract. If you submit a bid for 120 points, it’s a 7-year contract.

For the 2012 free agency period, we will enforce the 53-man rule. You will need to cut down to 53 players before the free agency period starts, and if you sign a player to go above 53, you will need to cut a player to stay within the roster limit. NOTE: DON'T CUT YET UNLESS YOU WANT TO. WE'RE STILL FINALIZING THE SYSTEM AND WANT TO BE SURE THAT THIS RULE WORKS IN 2012.

4. Ending Bidding and Ending Free Agency.

Bids on an individual player will begin once the first player places a bid. For the 2012 season that bid must be $1 or more. Bidding ends when the existing high bid had not been raised for 72 hours. At that point, the high-bid team is awarded the player under the contract terms described in Step 3.

The free agency period in 2012 will end once there have been no bids on any players for 72 hours.

5. Unused Salary Points

If you do not use all of your salary points in a given year, they will roll over from year to year. This is experimental and we'll have to see how it works. If it doesn't work, they'll expire each year, or maybe a portion of the points can roll over. Right now, assume they all roll over.

6. Salary Points and Roster Management

In the Sandbox system, salary points and the salary cap are used only for acquiring players. You will never have to track the number of salary points “on your roster” and you will never have to cut a player for salary cap reasons.

Additionally, you are not obligated to keep a player for the full length of his contract. You can cut him or trade him at any time. However, recognize that it’s a waste of salary points to cut or trade a player before the end of his contract. But it doesn't hamstring you going forward - it's just past money that you wasted.

7. Free Agency and Contract Length - Retaining Your Current Players

When a player reaches the end of their contract, they go back into the free agency pool and teams will bid for their services. You are eligible to bid on them to get them back, just like you can bid on any free agents.

There is one exception to the rule of free agents going into the free agency pool, as follows:

• At the end of the bidding process, you have the opportunity to re-sign your own players by outbidding the high bidder. Your bid must be the minimum points to increase their contract period by a year over the high bid. (Example: your player goes to free agency, and another team bids 50 points for him, which equates to a 4-year contract. You can keep the player by paying 55 points for him, which is the minimum amount for a 5-year contract.) If the high bidder offered a contract of 100 points or more (7-years), you can keep the player by bidding 10% more points than the high bid.

8. Free Agency and Trades

If you trade for a player, their contract length is a consideration. Trading for a player with 6 years left on his contract will give you his services for that amount of time (unless you cut him or trade him, or he retires). Trading for a player with 1 year left on his contract means that he’ll go back into the free agency pool at the end of the season. (Of course, you can still retain him via Step 7.)

9. Future Years

In future years, the process will be identical to that shown above, with the following exceptions.

a. Because you will have a lot of veteran players under contract, you won't need $1,300. You'll get a new annual allotment of signing dollars. We're still working on the exact amount, but it looks like it'll be between $500 and $600.

b. In the 2012 season, we will introduce all free agents at once to catch up. In the 2013 season and beyond, the free agency period will occur during the actual NFL season. We will sprinkle the free agents in one division at a time over the course of the season. (The divisions may be randomly selected or we may release a calendar. It doesn't matter that much.) This system should be interesting because some free agents will come available early in the season when you don't know their performance for the year - greater risk, greater reward - while other free agents will come available later in the season when you know what their performance will be, but so does everyone else.

c. In the 2013 season and beyond, you will be able to retain more than 53 players through the rookie draft and the main free agency period. You will then have a cutdown period to get to 53 and we will have a final free agency period where you can sign any players who have been cut. In that final period you will have to enforce a 53-man roster, so if you sign a player you have to cut one.

10. When you think about the schedule in 2013 and beyond, it will go like this:

a. Sandbox season goes from February through April.
b. Rookie draft in May. No 53-man limit.
c. Free agency from (likely) September through December, with free agents sprinkled in throughout that period.
d. January. Roster cuts to 53.
e. Late January. Final free agency period to flesh out rosters and sign players cut in Step d.
f. New Sandbox season begins.

As an FYI, you’re our beta testers so you get the Cadillac version, but we will likely offer some leagues with a simple “draft ‘em and keep ‘em” setup for those who don’t get into the roster management.

I'm going to take down the site to load the free agent system up now. Shouldn't take too long.

I'm going to leave the bidding system inactive until <s>Thursday night</s> Sunday, June 9 to allow everyone to do the following:

1. Become familiar with the list of free agents.
2. Cut your rosters to 53. You won't get your bid buttons active unless you are below at or below the 53 man roster.
3. <s>Begin planning</s> Plan how you will invest your salary points between players now on your roster and in free agency.
4. Sign all the players that you are keeping to contracts.

From a mechanics point of view, there are two screens you will want to work with: manage roster (which you've seen before, but it now has new functionality) and the free-agent bid board, located under the draft tab.

In general, I've included all players that saw significant playing time in 2011 or 2012. If an older player missed 2012, I may have not included him on the assumption that he is retired. If you want anyone to be listed that I've missed, shoot me a PM. I need to add some punters and kickers.

Note: on the Manage Roster page you can juggle the various contracts up and down and watch the effect on your bankroll. They do not become final until you hit the button sign all contracts. That will finalize any contracts where it has a finite duration, rather than "no contract" indicated. So if you want, you can sign contracts in batches-- just make sure the players you aren't ready to sign say "no contract". To release a player, you must hit the release button for that player.

<s>You do NOT have to finalize all your contracts of the players on your roster by Thursday. You will need to before the beginning of the simulation season, or at a point that we believe will help game play during this beta test.</s>

In general it will behoove you to avoid signing players to contracts and then releasing them later to make room for a free agents.

Once I cut six retired players, I'm at 41. Is there a plan to allow teams to get up to 53 before the bidding starts?

You'll use free agency to get to 53. Depending on how we allocate our resources, we can attract free agents to different degrees. However, my suspicion is that we'll have relatively few big bidding wars on strong free agents and a lot of $1 to $5 bids to fill out our rosters. I doubt that very many teams are close to having a 53-man roster that's got the depth they want.

We're not going to have a waiver wire system, at least not in the traditional sense. Once you get your 53, they're your team for the season. If you get decimated by injuries, you can juggle positions or you'll be assigned a "street free agent" who will fill the position but frankly isn't very good. As in, worse than Matt Cassel. (This is the same system we had last year.)

And we're off!

Since contract length now affects trade value, I am going to turn off trades for a few days until I can can get the contract length to display in the traded window.

Note changes. Beta and everything.

Looks like you haven't re-evaluated positions yet, is that correct? Any idea when that will happen?

It will be a couple weeks at least. Those only show up in the lineups section of the game, which you should continue to ignore for the time being. Consider the positions listed here as their generic position, with their true positions coming in a few weeks. You should be able to adequately plan based on the positions now listed on the main roster page.

There are several players who have been retired for a long time in the FA pool. Examples:

http://www.pro-football-reference.co...T/ThomDa21.htm

http://www.pro-football-reference.co...J/JohnD.20.htm

Question: Let's say I bid 50 points on a player, and lose the bidding process. Do I still get that 50 points to use on another FA?

You don't appear to have UDFA's from last year or this year in the pool just yet.

There were a couple of depth additions from this years draft that I thought about grabbing as well as a couple of UDFA's that contributed last year that I can't find in there.

Sure. You only spend salary points on winning bids. Although those points will be tied up as long as you are high bidder on that particular player.