just curious if the following has ever worked for anyone...

Become the leader in an FA race and then... after a 2 or 3  cycles, dip lower in hopes that the competition gave up and took their bidding elsewhere.   I tried it once before and got burned.   I was leading the bidding at 13 mil per season and dipped down to 11 mil hoping the competition was gone.   I was wrong and it seemed to light a fire in the bidding which consequently ended up costing me 15 mil per season instead of what seemed like a solid 13.

The logic in trying to dip lower is simply... why would someone getting outbid keep the lower bid in action?   When I have been outbid, I usually withdraw and bid on someone else.  

I leave bids out there if there's no one else I want.   For the exact reason you mention.   Prevent the other guy from dropping his bid.

Done it a quite a few times with a pretty even split of success/getting burned. Now it mostly depends on what else I see out there. 

I do this with IFAs more than with regular FAs. With IFAs, if it's a great player, I assume most teams that can see him will be at their max bid amount within 5-6 cycles. So if I'm ahead after two days, it's not likely someone is going to be able to jump in and outbid me (unless they were on vacation or something). So I'll scale back a million or two to try to save money. If I'm suddenly not first place anymore, no problem. I'll just go back up to my original offer.

With veteran free agents, everyone can see them, including all the teams with more money than me. So if I'm in first place, I'll usually stay at my current offer. Since there are so many teams and so many free agents available at once it's always possible that another team that was only willing to offer $10m per year will lose out on another of their targets and suddenly be willing to offer $12 million on day 3.

And I have done the same thing as Mike. If you don't have a backup option in mind, you might as well leave your max bid on the table in case the higher bidder drops out.

You'll do better (especially with IFA's) to jack up the bid on ones you don't want. When you stop getting outbid, withdraw your bid. Works like a charm. Spend someone else's money.

Lot of times there is no one else worth bidding for so why remove your bid? I have won a few IFA because the leaders bid dropped below my bid or they removed the bid altogether because a better IFA came along.

I almost always start the slow pull back after a day of being in the lead. I've been lucky enough so far that it hasn't bitten me. I also tend to make huge bids when I really want someone under the idea that I don't want anyone else ever feeling like they were in the lead and therefore getting in a ******* match with me that might go to levels beyond where I am comfortable so that may figure in.