(S23) - PT 5 - A New Leaf

[SwagSloth]

One of the changes I'd like to see is more encouragement of Free Agency. We all enjoy playing with our friends and, as someone who's only played for 2 teams in 23 seasons, I'm as guilty of this as anyone. I've literally never tested Free Agency before this season. But my time as a GM made me realize just how important a healthy Free Agency is to the overall parity of the league. A few ideas were pretty discussed and I think this type of discussion is great. As a GM, I tried to push for teams to open up the window that teams are allowed to talk to Free Agents before the signings open up, but the trouble with this is that the last thing we want to extend the offseason; it's universally considered too long and, while it can't necessarily be shortened as there is much work to be done in that period, it doesn't need to be artifically extended either. My pitch was to force teams to resign their guys before the playoffs begin or allow teams to start reaching out to potential FAs as soon as the last week of regular season ends. Teams can still resign their own guys until the end of the playoffs, but this extends the window of discussion and gives non-playoff teams something to focus on during those few days. Of course, teams that are in the playoffs will be focused on testing, but they can always assign a war room member or two as a representative to reach out to potential FAs while the GMs focus on testing. Many GMs did express discomfort with someone talking to their players during the playoff period (even if they were going to be FAs afterwards) and said that it didn't feel right. I understand that and it's not a perfect solution, but if it were between opening talks early or extending the offseason, I would open talks early. Of course, the third option is not to change the window at all, but I personally view this as worthwhile.

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