*The State of the Cap Space, -ish

[37thchamber]

Honestly, contracts should recalculate to your new minimum every season, or if you sign "min + 1 mil" then recalculate to new min + 1 mil

Ehhh... you still have problems with this, because when is this calculated? What is the cutoff for claiming TPE etc etc? I feel like a rule like this would still see a lot of shenanigans. Needs to be a simpler definition imo.

I'd suggest saying that each subsequent year of a contract must meet the minimum of the tier above the tier applicable to your first year, and cap contract length at 3 seasons for everyone. For players in the 1k TPE tier, add 1m to subsequent years (an imaginary higher tier). Not sure how this works if you still want to allow frontloading, but I'm sure there's a way.

That would eliminate a lot of the sign for 3 years under the limit for the next tier shenanigans.

If you want to make a concession to GMs in return for agreeing to this, you could also allow restructuring contracts after the first season, with conditions.
For example, only if the base contract value of year one goes up, or the player is inactive.

So, hypotheticals...

Let's say I'm at 400 TPE, and I sign for 3 seasons.
Season 1 has to be $2m minimum; season 2 and 3 have to be $3m at least. I sign a deal at 2/3/3. The lowest I can possibly agree to for a three year deal.
After season 1, my team realises that I'm earning less than expected, but I'm still active. They wouldn't be able to restructure the deal and save money in that case. Which makes sense, I'm already as cheap as I could possibly be.

Let's say the same situation happens but I go inactive this time due to unforeseen RL shit. My team can restructure my deal after year 1 so I'm on inactive minimum, but they also have to take the hit for cutting me in season 3 if they do because inactive deals are only 1 season max. In this case, they would save 4m (-2.5 season 2, -1.5 season 3 because cut costs half the contract?) over two seasons.

Let's say I actually signed at 2/5/5, but again, I'm earning below expectations. I could then agree to restructure that deal into a 3/4 after season 1 to save my team 3m in cap space over 2 seasons.

Probably needs some tweaks tbh, but on a basic level this approach wouldn't lock GMs into anything more than 1m above minimum for 2 seasons, while also preventing cap circumvention shenanigans and preventing super teams. You could even raise the cap a little in this case, since most base contracts will go up, unless teams want to risk players testing free agency every season (lol).

In addition, making ISFL teams pay for DSFL send downs starting a season after their ISFL draft would help. Give them one freebie year, that makes sense. Can't really expect immediate callups in most cases... but after that, you should have had a plan. Even if that plan is to trade the player for other pieces. Even if you say they only have to pay half the actual contract value, that's still (at least) 2m per player (above the TPE threshold anyway). Stashing players in the DSFL would suddenly become much less common. Allowing teams to stash players in the DSFL for multiple seasons exacerbates the issue, and often leads to high earners being stuck in the DSFL for longer than they need to be (most positions are viable at a 250-400 TPE range, just not very good a lot of the time; but isn't that kind of the point for rookies?)

That would also need some tweaks probably but the basic idea is fine, imo