So I was attempting to sign a free agent to an escalating contract with a mutual option at the end.  He was asking for $5,640,000 for 3 years.  I meant to add $1MM to the last year and take $1MM away from the first year, but fat-fingered it and added $2MM on to the last year.  Which made my first offer:

Year 1 - $4,640,000
Year 2 - $5,640,000
Year 3 - $7,640,000

He rejected it saying something about wanting a contract that was more evenly distributed.  So for fun I came back with:

Year 1 - $4,640,000
Year 2 - $5,640,000
Year 3 - $6,640,000

He accepted this one.

Yeah it's stupid but it's designed to work that way.
A contract will be rejected if imbalanced (look in the help for details), no matter how much you'd like to give to the player.

Safeguard to keep jerkoffs from ruining teams with 5/5/5/20 offers.

I actually had a guy who was looking for $2.8 for one season.  He was only 26, and a solid defensive/PR bench guy so I offered $2.8M x 5 year, and he REJECTED it.  The agent said something like "my client's no star, he'll be booed off the field with a contract like that".

Oh, that's right.  In a 3 yr deal, no year can be more than 40% of the total.  40% of the total of the first contract offer is $7,168,000.   That makes sense.

And, iain, there must be a top-end contract filter for players with low overall ratings.

The sim saves iain from himself. Again.

Posted by iain on 10/4/2010 2:55:00 PM (view original):
I actually had a guy who was looking for $2.8 for one season.  He was only 26, and a solid defensive/PR bench guy so I offered $2.8M x 5 year, and he REJECTED it.  The agent said something like "my client's no star, he'll be booed off the field with a contract like that".

This is plausible. If a guy is young enough, he may settle now and hope to sign the big one next season. Why should he lock himself up for his prime years of his career at a low ball price?