Fantasy Dynasty 101 | PT. 9

We are the first week into March. Fantasy Football is the furthest thing from the mind of most people right now. Not me! I have Restricted Free Agency coming up on April 1st in two Dynasty leagues. This my friends is what we will cover today. It’s one of the main things that really sets a dynasty like we have been outlining apart from your other leagues. The list of links for the sections we have covered is getting long so they will be found at the end of this entry. If your just joining us feel free to go ahead and review the other sections.

What we talk about today will not actually take effect until after you have played your first season so you have plenty of time to get it down.

STEP TWENTY: RESTRICTED FREE AGENCY

In many Dynasty leagues it is worked where once you draft a player you have them until you don’t want them. Or your working with a salary cap. For our league here we are working with contracts (see pt 7). We want our league to be as much like the NFL as it can for something with Fantasy in the title. The way that the contracts work out with the example league is about an average of 2.5 years per player with the number of years each team had to assign players. Now, some owners will lock up studs with more years, some players were just not worth a big contract. What is fun here is the break out years when players are RFA and could be Top 5 at their position.

Once a players contract expires he becomes a Restricted Free Agent. Other teams are going to be able to bid on him in a RFA auction with their balance of league currency (see part 4) they they use for Free Agents.

When setting up your rule book choose a month for RFA. That’s right….a month. The example league starts RFA on April 1 and it goes the entire month. This really breaks up the boredom of the NFL offseason. This is going to give you something football/fantasy football related to do for an entire offseason!

Where are you going to do it? Some league hosts you can do an auction. You only want the players that are RFA in the auction though. This may be the way to go if you can pull it off without messing with rosters. Our example league uses a forum (message board). If you don’t already have a forum that you frequent there are free options out there that you can use just for your league. Excoboard, Power Boards, InvisionFree are some options. If you don’t want something with ads on it you can follow the link on the sidebar there and host your own forum and site for a handful of dollar bills per month, giving you the freedom to do what you wish.

Let’s get to the bidding process…

When RFA opens owners can start bidding. To make a bid the owner starts a post in the designated forum with the players name in the subject. They are to enter the players name, position, current team, their own team name and amount of bid in the post.

Example:

Joe Momma, QB, Round Rock Wramblers

Davenport Plowboys bid 1 T-note (league currency)

Bidding has just opened on Joe Momma. Once a bid is opened they will stay opened on any given player until there has not been a bid for 24 hours. Of course this is customizable to the time limit you wish. Any team except the current team can bid on the player as long as they have enough of the league currency to pay for it if they win. Owners may not raise their own high bids or bid on their own players (currently on their roster).

After 24 hours have passed with no additional bids on a player, the current owner has 24 hours (or however long you determine) to match the bid. If they choose to let the player go they do not have to do anything but it would be common courtesy to say they don’t wish to match so RFA can move on. A suggestion to whoever is running the RFA auction on the forum. When 24 hours have passed with no bids, close or lock the thread until the current owner decides to match the offer or let them go.

Owners may enter and leave the bidding on a player at any time as long as they don’t have the high bid.

We gave an example of one player. What is a blast about this is that there are tons of guys available for bidding. In our IDP Dynasty there are 166 (I many have missed counting a couple) RFA’s available for bidding come April 1st. Of course there are a lot of scrubs but there are some big names that can be changing teams this way.

Since there can be several bids open at once, you don’t want teams over bidding past their budget. There should be a rule and penalty in place for not having bids out there open that are higher than what you have in league currency. It’s simple really. Consider if you won every bid you have out there…do you have enough to cover if you win them all?

After the RFA period, any RFA that was not signed by another team remains on the current roster and can be given a new contract at cutdown time before the season.

One last noteon RFA. I’m seeing this go both ways in different leagues. Some leagues say that once bidding opens on a player the current owner can not move them. In other leagues, owners may trade, sell off, or move a player that is a RFA up until the bidding closes. This is up to you and your league.

PART TWENTY ONE: FRANCHISE TAGS

We might as well go all out on this realistic thing, huh? In our example league owners can place a franchise tag on one RFA. You may determine the cost to do this as you wish. We use 10 T-Notes (league currency) that is non-refundable. Tags are only good for one contract year.

What if an owner still bids on the player? What if they win? Like the NFL you want it to be a little painful.

Set a minimum bid for owners to bid on a tagged player. Ours is 22 T-Notes (league currency). The current owner only has to match half of what the high bid is when it closes. As well, the initial 10 that he laid down to tag the player can go toward matching a bid. For example, If the final bid is 30 t-Notes, the current owner would have to pay 10 t-notes to match and keep his tagged player (the initial 10 and then another 10 that is half of the 20 left over).

If an owner wins a bid on a tagged player and the current owner doesn’t match? Come up with some compensation. You can go like the NFL and say he needs to give up a 1st and 3rd round rookie draft pick. We make it a little more steep and go 1st and 2nd rounder. If they have already traded that away we go to the next years picks. You have some flexibility here.

If this sounds confusing feel free to ask questions in the comment box here. Another alternative is to just say that one tagged player cannot be bid on and then you don’t have to deal with compensation but it does add some excitement as if an owner really wants a tagged player they are going to have to pay a hefty price.

Part 1
Get your owners, Cost/Payout, Where to host your league
Part 2
Appoint a Commish, Communication, Rulebook
Part 3
Rulebook contents
Part 4
Franchise Ownership, Tanking, League Currency
Part 5
Using IDP or Team D/ST, Lineups, Roster Size, Developmental Taxi Squad
Part 6
Filling Rosters, Determining Draft Order, Rookie Draft, Vet Draft
Part 7
Roster Management, Contracts, Injured Reserve
Part 8
Free Agency/Waivers

tag: NFL, Fantasy football, fantasy tips, dynasty, league, start, sports, football jabber

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