ESPN NFL 2K5 Thread

[Brett Favre 0]

Signing bonuses likely.  You are required to pay off all of Martin's money to him, on top of taking on Jackson's contract.  I don't have the game (yet) but the one flaw with that system is that in reality, trades and cuts are supposed to count against next year's cap, where as in 2k5 they count against the current year.

Interesting, thanks.

 

So let me get this straight. Do I pay the whole Martin contract or just his bonus, PLUS the Jackson contract? Thanks again.

 

You grabbed a contract in Jackson and that is what you are paying for. And you still have to give Martin his bonus money for the year right then and there.

 

Plus lots of the players have a penalty clause.

 

Not to mention, the contract doesn't list the bonus that player will be getting paid if you trade for him.

 

You pick up the player, you pick up his full contract along with his bonus.

So I pay Curtis' bonus only for that year? + The Penalty, + Jackson's contract.

[KingPK 0]

Fuck. In consecutive weeks, I lose Brady and my stud rookie CB to injuries, leading to me dropping my last 3 games. Now I have to deal with Rohan Davey starting in the playoffs. Damn.

[Guest Kageho]

So I pay Curtis' bonus only for that year? + The Penalty, + Jackson's contract.

Yes. You pay his bonus, his penalty to the cap, and for Jackson's contract for that year.

 

So if Curtis is being paid 980k for a bonus, his penalty is 1.21 million, and Jackson's contract is worth 1.66 million, you'll be paying out 3.85 million.

[Guest TheArchiteck]

Tai Streets just got injured for the season and i'm in my 7th week.

The cutscenes in this game is just hilarious. I love the scene where the road team win and its a lone roadie in the crowd taunting the home fans, then you see the home fans just sneering at the guy.

 

Another thing I notice, the opposing team always, ALWAYS pick on Hakim(playing as the lions). They always shout out, "you getting covered hakim", "you not getting no where hakim!". They never shout at Rogers or Williams.

[Guest Vitamin X]

I traded for Dante Hall, and they usually yell at him or at Favre. As my Packers franchise, which so far has gone 15-0... With game #16 for the record coming up against none other than Chicago, at Soldier Field no less with bad weather. They've had a 3-12 season so far, and are ranked #32 in the power rankings, whereas I'm #1, but it's still going to be a good game.

 

I broke the single season rushing record with Ahman Green who now has 2200 yards rushing, and Cletidus Hunt and Grady Jackson are both a motherfucking force in the middle, both EACH have over 30 sacks so far. I broke the single season record for most points scored, aginst the Vikings in Minnesota, and the most awesome thing I think I'm seeing thus far is how the announcers MENTION the record breaking as well. AND the perfect season, it really gets you hyped up to hurry up and kick ass.

 

The Saints and Redskins are the other two top NFC teams, both of them having extremely awesome offenses (I saw a game where Brooks put up 500+ yards, and McAllister had 260 on the ground), and in the AFC it's the Patriots, Chiefs, and Colts (who had Edgerrin James break the single game rushing record by running for *345* yards). This game only gets better and better the more you play it, the only thing that starts to get on my nerves is Weekly Preparation and really trying to find the best mix for your players..Keeping them durable and whatnot while at the same time improving their weaknesses.

[Brett Favre 0]

So I pay Curtis' bonus only for that year? + The Penalty, + Jackson's contract.

Yes. You pay his bonus, his penalty to the cap, and for Jackson's contract for that year.

 

So if Curtis is being paid 980k for a bonus, his penalty is 1.21 million, and Jackson's contract is worth 1.66 million, you'll be paying out 3.85 million.

Alright thanks.

[Guest Kageho]

No problem. When I realized this, I suddenly didn't want to make trades anymore.

[Brett Favre 0]

No problem. When I realized this, I suddenly didn't want to make trades anymore.

Yeah I know what you mean. It's more realistic though, you'll rarely see many trades in the NFL.

[Exslade ZX 0]

Well...in my Pats Franchise, I had to trade Ty Law. He was just killing me money wise...and anyways, even though he had awesome stats...Pool was doing more then he was anyways, but I just know it's gonna bite me in the ass, when I play against that team or something now.

 

EDIt- And quick question..there's no way to manually get it to do replays is there? I mean without the pause screen replay...because occasionally, still has to many replays..but then when I turn it off..that's certain plays I would like replays of, so yea..but I guess for now, I'll just stick to going to the menu then replaying that way.

[2GOLD 0]

The best thing to do is to wait till the end of the year and trade your big guys for draft picks. This way, you'll be able to grab a higher pick AND all you'll have to pay is a bonus.

 

Also, the funniest voice I've heard was in Buffalo after I picked off Bledsoe three times. The crowd was dead silent until I heard, "what are you doing Drew?!?!"

 

I laughed.

[Brett Favre 0]

The best thing to do is to wait till the end of the year and trade your big guys for draft picks. This way, you'll be able to grab a higher pick AND all you'll have to pay is a bonus.

 

Also, the funniest voice I've heard was in Buffalo after I picked off Bledsoe three times. The crowd was dead silent until I heard, "what are you doing Drew?!?!"

 

I laughed.

lol.

 

Well the draft pick thing is a good idea. U'll save a ton of money, and won't have to cut as many people. This is cap system is actually better, makes u think a little more.

[Brush with Greatness 0]

So I pay Curtis' bonus only for that year? + The Penalty, + Jackson's contract.

Yes. You pay his bonus, his penalty to the cap, and for Jackson's contract for that year.

 

So if Curtis is being paid 980k for a bonus, his penalty is 1.21 million, and Jackson's contract is worth 1.66 million, you'll be paying out 3.85 million.

Are you sure you pay the cap penalty? I haven't played it, but I thought in real life you didn't pay the cap penalty.

 

However, you are (or should be) responsible for the entire bonus (not just the bonus for the remainder of the season) as the bonus is prorated over the lifespan of the contract.

 

So, I figured in a trade you would pay whatever bonus is left for the remainder of the season, as well as any bonus money owed in forthcoming years.

 

Bonus money is money guarenteed to a player no matter what.

 

I may be wrong however.

[LaParkaMarka 0]

So, I'm franchising as Minnesota. Go 6-0 to start the season, and then it's a showdown with the 6-0 Titans. The game quickly became weird when McNair throws a pick on the first play, then I throw a pick right back which is returned for a TD. Eventually I start dominating with Moss/Robinson/Culpepper, and I'm up 28-7. First drive of the 3rd quarter they go through my D like butter, 28-14. Then they sack Culpepper twice in a row on the next drive, leaving me on my 1 yard line. Fourth down, so I punt. The punt returner was a little close to the left edge of the field, so I make my punt a line drive to the right. He desperately tries to catch the ball, but it drops in front of him, bounces high in the air. He turns and tries to catch it again, but it bounces off the back of his helmet. Still going backwards, he tries to swipe it again and misses. Then he dives for the ball, but my boy Moe Williams gets there first. But wait, no other Titans around, the returner didn't down Williams...so I get up and saunter down for the TD. Off a punt from my 1. I celebrated with the robot dance (the dance of shame and humiliation).

[Lightning Flik 0]

After going 15-1 with my Pittsburgh Steelers and defeating the Colts, Texans and then finally the Vikings to win the Super Bowl last season, I ran into a huge problem during the offseason.

 

You see, I had gotten Kurt Warner from the Giants from the Giants for Ben Roethlisberger. Problem was, I forgot to restruture Warner's contract and found myself in a hole as he wanted almost 40 million over a five year period. Needless to say, I couldn't afford that. Worse yet, my favorite target, Plaxico Buress wanted 40 million as well over a 7 year period. Once again, I was unable to pay this as I only had 5 million for cap space. I also lost Townsend for my passing defense and someone else who I can't remember because they wanted 25 million over 3 seasons. Needless to say, I didn't have the cash to sign all of them.

 

So I did what any GM in my position would do. Dump them all and aquire the best draft picks I could. I striped my team of its fantasticness for an o-line by trading away Alan Fanaeca to the Oakland Raiders for the #1 Overall Draft pick in the 2005 draft; to which I picked the best QB in the draft, pocket passer Hubert Phelps from North Carolina St. I then made trades to aquire some more depth in positions I didn't have the depth in, and also got 3 more draft picks (I had 10 in total).

 

So now my team is pretty mediocre, I've got the toughest schedule this season after winning the super bowl, and I have a rookie QB leading the charge. This will definitely be an interesting season. Oh and my mission for this year's contract is to make the playoffs. Fun stuff...

Edited August 7, 2004 by Lightning Flik

[Guest El Satanico]

You probably could've kept Plaxico. When I get contract demands I don't want to pay I'll resign the player and then trade him. Of course that only works if you have cap space. If I had cap space issues and multiple guys up for mega money, I'd resign and trade them one at a time.

[Lightning Flik 0]

Problem was, I'd be getting hit with cap penalties. It wasn't as big of a deal as I thought, I ended up with a decent team.

[Guest Vitamin X]

Let me attempt to clarify everything here.

 

I spent quite an extensive time with my team last night. I tend to be a fuckin pro when it comes to being a GM on a team in these games, so naturally I looked at this whole cap penalty thing quite nicely.

 

I think you guys made it out to be a lot more complicated than it actually is. The penalty *IS* the signing bonus, which you'll realize after you sign a player and give him a 50% signing bonus (which is somewhat ludicrous unless you plan on keeping the guy around for sure). But let's say you sign a player to a 1.00M contract and give him a 50% signing bonus, what it means is that the player is getting 500k upfront, and 500k as his salary for playing. Players want the signing bonus more because it's guaranteed money and it's a method of job security. So if you're signing a guy for low money but give him a huge signing bonus, you're basically giving him job security.

 

Now when it comes to trades, I actually had to wheel and deal a little bit with my franchise, but I love to trade around especially for draft picks. Since Sharper had a season-ending neck injury the season before and Marques Anderson stepped up and played huge, I decided to get rid of him and eternal-backup-playing-starting-OLB Hannibal Navies for a new draft pick I had gotten in the draft. The trick in trading players is to go to contracts and ALWAYS ALWAYS look at a player's contract before releasing or trading him, and seeing if you're actually going to save money by getting rid of him.

 

Often times the contract penalty (i.e. the signing bonus/guaranteed money) will be larger than the salary, and that means that when you get rid of him, you'll actually lose money in cap room since you'll owe the player money. What happens is anytime you get rid of a player, you subtract the penalty from the salary and that's how it affects your cap room. So if you have a guy whose salary is 1.00M and his bonus is at 0%, get rid of him anytime you like whether by waiver wire or trade and you'll shave 1.00M off the payroll. However if you have someone like Kabeer Gbaja-Biamila on my Packers who has an insanely huge signing bonus, you'll have to let him play out the rest of his contract or try to restructure it. He has something like a $3M salary, and his penalty is somewhere like 6-7M, so if I got rid of him, there would be a good $3-$4M being taken up in cap room to a player who isn't even on my team anymore.

 

This was actually the problem that killed the Dallas Cowboys in the late 90's, too much money being owed to players who weren't around anymore. Best way to play the game really is to be careful how you sign and re-sign players. If you're not sure you'll keep the guy around for the whole remainder of his contract, do not give him a signing bonus larger than 30%. If you're positive you'll have a rookie around for a long time to replace an eventual starter (say like how I drafted a QB to eventually replace Brett Favre), give him a low salary with a huge signing bonus.

 

Something else I've noticed is that it's kind of difficult to entice players to longer contracts. A trick I was doing with signing the rookies last night is I was looking at what they wanted and how it would affect my cap room. If it would leave me with 800k, then I just messed around with the salary figure with more years to leave me at around the same number for cap room, but give them a bigger signing bonus (again since they're rookies I'm going to keep them around for a while, hell at least until they hit their primes) to entice them to sign for less money, but guaranteed over a long period of time..

 

Hope that helps, even if my explanation is a tad confusing, but the concept is generally a little confusing once you get the hang of it.

 

So I pay Curtis' bonus only for that year? + The Penalty, + Jackson's contract.

 

So to answer this question, again, The bonus IS the penalty. When you got rid of Curtis, what determines what you saved or now owe is subtracting the penalty figure from the salary figure. If you end up with a positive number, that's what you saved. If you end up with a negative number, that's how much space that player is still taking up in cap room because of his signing bonus. So of course you'll be picking up Jackson's contract naturally (which you can look at via Contracts in the Front Office menu for other teams) and you'll be free of Curtis as long as you don't owe him any money.

[LaParkaMarka 0]

Nice post, VX. I have a question...when signing free agents, I purposely brought down their bonus so I could cut them whenever I felt like it. Has anyone tried restructuring the contract of a player with a stupid high signing bonus, and then cutting them right away? If you give them a huge amount of non-guaranteed money, they'll probably sign. And then I can cut them, possibly on Christmas Day.

[Guest Bricks]

Is anyone having trouble recovering the onside kick?

 

I (The Vikings) was up 10 with about a minute and a half left when the Texans scored a TD. They went for the onside kick and they recovered, scored a FG, and then a TD to finish me off in OT. This has been like the 10th onside kick that I haven't grabbed since I started playing. Is it just me?

[Guest Vitamin X]

Nice post, VX. I have a question...when signing free agents, I purposely brought down their bonus so I could cut them whenever I felt like it. Has anyone tried restructuring the contract of a player with a stupid high signing bonus, and then cutting them right away? If you give them a huge amount of non-guaranteed money, they'll probably sign. And then I can cut them, possibly on Christmas Day.

That would probably be the loophole in beating the game's system. Of course you couldn't do this during the regular season since you might have to restructure a player's contract so high that it wouldn't fit under the cap, but it could definitely work during the preseason and offseason.

 

I (The Vikings) was up 10 with about a minute and a half left when the Texans scored a TD. They went for the onside kick and they recovered, scored a FG, and then a TD to finish me off in OT. This has been like the 10th onside kick that I haven't grabbed since I started playing. Is it just me?

 

Yes, absolutely. I've had 5 or so onside kicks attempted against me, and they've only recovered maybe once or twice. There's really a 35/65 chance (35 for, 65 against) that a team will recover an onside kick, from the looks of it in the NFL, but it seems often times it comes through for the team looking for the onside.

[Brett Favre 0]

That really helps Vitamn X.

 

I have one question though, I think I get it, but just a question. What goes against the cap is the salary + the bonus, or just the salary? Because if it's only salary, then it makes sense doing what you do with the rookies (low salary, high bonus).

[KingPK 0]

I re-structured Brady's contract, since I didn't want to have to deal with him in the offseason, so I was able to sign him for 5yrs/31M, freeing up some cap room for this year in the process, which I'll probably need since I lost Troy Brown for the season with a fractured leg.

 

Has anyone tried to bring a guy like that back with rehab? Should I put him under the knife and hope for the best? It happened in week 1, so I only want to cut down the injury time so I can get him back by week 15-17 (or the playoffs).

 

And I had to cut ties with Vinatieri. The guy wanted 5M for one year! Dude, your a kicker, no matter how clutch you are, you're still a small white man with a good leg.

[Guest Vitamin X]

That really helps Vitamn X.

 

I have one question though, I think I get it, but just a question. What goes against the cap is the salary + the bonus, or just the salary?

What goes against the cap is the salary ONLY (duh, it's the SALARY cap ). If you'll look closely, you'll notice that the number under the penalty column is whatever percentage the signing bonus is of the contract.

 

Sign someone for 1M a year and give them a 50% signing bonus, and you'll see that 500k appears under Cap Penalty. So if you cut them, you're not shaving 1M off the salary, you're only shaving 500k.

 

Because if it's only salary, then it makes sense doing what you do with the rookies (low salary, high bonus).

 

Yes, unless I decide in a couple seasons I don't want the kid around anymore because I want this big-time free agent or I need to re-sign someone else desperately and the guy I signed to a huge bonus and didn't turn out to be better than a backup is now a big regret, because I'll end up losing someone I really need on my team over this bastard who's going to kill my salary cap.

 

They really should place that post of mine in the instruction manual, seriously it sucks that it has absolutely NO explanation of the signing bonus/cap penalty thing in the manual at ALL. That cost me a decent franchise too, I had to delete and start over when I first got the game because I thought I was saving a bunch of money by trading my overpriced players for draft picks and solid starters (which is what I *ALWAYS* do in most of my sports-franchise games) and I ended up $13M over the cap.

 

It's especially infuriating when you keep thinking you're cutting players and saving money and your payroll figure keeps on inflating and you don't know why. I thought it was a glitch at first.

 

And I had to cut ties with Vinatieri. The guy wanted 5M for one year! Dude, your a kicker, no matter how clutch you are, you're still a small white man with a good leg.

 

If they want just a one-year contract, that's your cue to draft a new kicker to eventually replace him. Or just sign him to a decent and fair long-term deal with a huge bonus, since Vinatieri is a damn crucial part to your team's success.

[KingPK 0]

I grabbed a kicker in the draft, and he's got an 81 overall rating, and my scouts say he was pretty clutch in college (and he has a high composure rating) so I'll take it.

 

No one picked Adam up in free agency and he's still there one week into the season, so I think it would be wise of him to lower his demands. I tried to give him something like 3 years, 11M (with a 60% bonus), almost zero interest from him, and I had other guys to sign, so he loses out.

Edited August 7, 2004 by Kingpk

[Guest Smell the ratings!!!]

a signing bonus is guarenteed money, so if you cut or trade a guy, you have to pay off his bonus right then and there.

[2GOLD 0]

I only resign guys I have interest in the future of my franchise. If I can't see a place for them, I let them walk out the door.

 

And if they are a bench player, they better be young or they are walking out the damn door.

[Guest El Satanico]

If my cap room is comfortable I resign everyone who's at least 80 overall even if I don't want them. They are cogs in my machine and I will not let them go for free. On Madden I'm normally 10+ mill under the cap. I only keep a player for around 5-6 years, so I seldomly find my self in cap hell.

[2GOLD 0]

If my cap room is comfortable I resign everyone who's at least 80 overall even if I don't want them. They are cogs in my machine and I will not let them go for free. On Madden I'm normally 10+ mill under the cap. I only keep a player for around 5-6 years, so I seldomly find my self in cap hell.

 

If I know a player isn't part of my long term, I trade them when they only have one year left and a low cap penalty. This way I get higher draft picks for younger players that can be part of the future.

 

I don't give anyone a huge contract who isn't the future of my franchise.

 

So far, only my WRs and my QB have big deals. I have Dansby a good sized one since he is the future of my OLB, I signed a rookie ILB to a good sized deal since he will be the Ray Lewis and he has been. My corners are expendable, Wilson my SS is signed long term and Jackson at FS isn't worth the money since he is blowing tackles and missing picks.

 

This year, I have about 8 guys up for resigning and maybe 2 of them are coming back since I'm not going to waste my money on them.

 

Considering I have two straight Super Bowls, I am doing just fine. But these teams are catching up to me REAL fast.

[EricMM 0]

I'm playing Carolina

 

All three of my HB's have arm injuries.

 

I'm like, running two fullbacks in my backfield.

 

Muhammed is out.

 

Then one of my guys gets food poisoning.

 

I can't believe this shit...

[2GOLD 0]

I'm playing Carolina

 

All three of my HB's have arm injuries.

 

I'm like, running two fullbacks in my backfield.

 

Muhammed is out.

 

Then one of my guys gets food poisoning.

 

I can't believe this shit...

 

Damn, you are screwed.