Associated Fantasy

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AFFL AFFL2022 

AFFL 2022 Contract Rule Revision Guide

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The Contract Rules have been updated and revised for 2022 and have been published at the Contract Rules link. Revisions appear in GREEN TEXT with a run-down and notes for all changes listed below.

  • Under Section 1 “General”
    • The Cap on Total Contract Years available to franchises has been reduced 10% from 30 to 27. This was done to strengthen the draft and free agency
    • Teams now have use of an additional 5 year contract once their existing two 5 year contracts have cycled down to a TOTAL of 5 years remaining or less. This was done to facilitate more long-term management strategies and player retention – basically we want our teams to develop identities based on their rosters.
    • The Definitions section is green only because their previously wasn’t a definitons section, but all the definitions are the same as last year.
  • Under Section 3 “Types Of Contract”
    • The Green 15-20% in the section on prior season calculation we’ll get to in the Calculating Salary section
    • You’ll notice a NOTE on Rookie salaries; this isn’t a change, it just clarifies what was already in place last year.
    • And then a more significant change: RFA’s under Rookie contracts are now shielded from the auction. We did this to enhance the appeal of a Rookie contract (overall, Rookie contracts are designed to be high risk/high reward gambles). This rule is retroactive to rookies signed last season who become RFA’s this spring, BUT teams can opt to have their rookie RFA’s included in the auction this year only
  • Under Section 4 “Calculating Salary”
    • There are 3 significant changes
    • First, the rules around “Corrected Formula” have changed. This is used when calculating base salary for a season where a player played in less than 12 games. Previously this rule had a set of 3 formulas for calculating corrected salary – 1 for players who had played in 9-12 games, 1 for 5-8, and 1 for 1-4. This worked to produce a fair, realistic salary about 60-75% of the time, but the rest of the time it produced salaries that were either unrealistically large or small. This mainly happened when players had only a very few games to plug into the formula. The rule has been revised to include a set of only 2 formulas – 1 for players who have played 9-12 games, and one for those who played 6-8 games. Seasons in which a player played less than 6 games are now ineligible to be used to obtain a Corrected Salary
    • Next, when using Prior Season Salary for setting a Base Salary, a signing bonus is triggered. The rate of that signing bonus has been changed from 10% of the Total Contract Value to a graduated scale of 5% for 5 year contracts, 10% for 4 years, 15% for 3, 20% for 2, and 25% for 1……this was done to incentivize longer contracts
    • And last, just closing a loophole, Base Salary must now meet League Minimum requirements for the season the contract is signed. If calculations produce a Base amount that is less than the League Minimum, that amount must be raised to the minimum
  • Under Section 5 “Structuring Salaries”
    • Expanding on the rule above, when structuring salary across years of a contract, each year must also be at or above the League Minimum for the year the contract is signed
    • Then, expanding on that rule even further, there’s a new rule requiring that the league minimum in each future year is met in each future year of the contract. Any year where the salary isn’t at or above the League Minimum will pay the balance in the form of a bonus (dead money charged in that current season). This one is tricky because we don’t know what future year League Minimum’s are since they are set by formula each year (10% of highest paid player by league formula). Even though they vary from year to year it’s consistently been in the $5-7m range (2022 is $5.8m) so franchises just have keep their annual payments above about $7m to avoid penalties (and penalties are just the difference so they wouldn’t be that high if they don’t)
  • Under Section 6 “Restructuring Contracts”
    • There is a major new rule allowing teams to add or subtract 1 year to/from a contract when restructuring it. Removing a year from the end of the contract can be done by basically restructuring to pay the Total Contract Value a year early. Adding a year can be done as a way of drastically increasing cap space, since adding a year allows teams to move the current year salary to a new year at the end of the existing contract and then just pay the player the League Minimum for the current season. Sounds like a great deal, right? There’s some significant trade offs: 1)Player cannot be shielded from the RFA auction with the franchise tag in his final year; 2) Player cannot be signed to a contract extension after the added year expires; 3) Player can’t be cut in the same year contract is adjusted; and 4) Team must pay the difference between the player’s Base Salary and the league minimum as dead money in the future whenever player separates from the team.
    • The next green section in Restructuring Contracts is just some edits to the Formula for converting Adjustable Rate Contracts to Standard. We haven’t used Adjustable Rate Contracts yet. Last year most contracts were Standard, then there were Free Agent Contracts and a few Rookie contracts. They all work mostly the same, but have different ways of calculating the Base (League Formula, Auction Value, Draft Value). Time to read up on Adjustable Rate Contracts as they will be available for use in 2022 now that we’ve built up enough years of stats; like the other contract types, they work the same, but calculate the Base differently. Like everything else, just another option that will be a good fit for some situations and a bad fit for others.
  • Under Section 7 “Contract Extensions”
    • Contracts being brand new, this spring will be the first time contracts come up for an extension. Previously, all extensions were automatically for 3 years. That’s now changed, giving teams the option to extend for 2, 3, or 4 years.
    • I’ve completely reworked the rules on these. I didn’t put much thought to the original rules, knowing they wouldn’t be needed in the first season. For these revised rules my goal was to set the calculation so that it’s realistic by calculating so that the player has ‘leverage’ to make a high deal, while balancing the player’s potential value in the auction, and also acknowledging the team has some leverage as well by giving them lots of multiple options to find the cheapest one
  • Under Section 8 “Franchise Tags”
    • There’s a new rule allowing teams to take a ‘discount’ on their franchise tagged player…sort of. Teams can now choose to use a franchise tagged player’s prior season value for their current season salary (without a signing bnonus), BUT the catch is, the balance of what they were supposed to make must be paid as a dead money bonus the following spring IF the player is still on the roster. This will be a way teams can generate some extra cap space before the Cut Cap if they need it, or might be beneficial if the team is shopping the player around.
    • Then there are a couple of small rules dealing with franchise tags and contracts
  • Under Section 9 “Contract Free Agency”
    • There’s a lot of green in this section, almost all of it deals with a new thing called a “Contract Free Agent” (CFA)
    • In addition to Restricted Free Agents (RFA’s) and Unrestricted Free Agents (UFA’s), there is now a class called a Contract Free Agent (CFA)
      • Teams can now take any of their players under contract – a player they might be interested in parting ways with, for example – and allow them to hear offers from other teams by entering into the free agent auction
      • Minimum Opening Bid for these players is the league minimum
      • If other teams bid on this player, bidding proceeds until someone wins with the high bid
      • Then, like an RFA, the team that owns the existing contract can either release the player to allow him to accept the high bid, or deny and keep the player as is
      • Unlike an RFA, there is no compensation if the original team releases the player to the high bidding team
      • The original team must pay dead money to cover the balance between what they owe the player in the current year and what the new contract pays them in the current year, and also future season dead money in the amount of the balance of what is committed to the player in the new offer in future years and 50% of what was originally owed to the player in those future years……..obviously, the goal here would be for the team to only release the player for bids that leave them owing little to nothing on the player
  • Under Section 11 “Ending Contract”
    • Two minor changes in this section. The first eliminates an unintended loophole where teams could retain 100% of a contract player’s current season salary by cutting them before cut day. This has been eliminated and it’s now 50% prior to cut day and then 0% for the rest of the current season
    • The second expands the “Retirement Clause” that allows teams to eliminate any current or future dead money if a player retires from the NFL. The rule has been expanded to include any players ejected from the league or “for any reason unavailable in the myfantasyleague.com data base”.

That rounds up all of the 2022 revisions to the Contract Rules. A few of them include some major changes, but no existing contracts are effected. League Rules are being revised now and will begin to be published soon.