+1 for both of these points. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect decent FA classes, which rarely happens currently. One way to accomplish this is to make cap management as challenging as other facets of the game.

That said, I'd rather see the "Signing players with 1 year left" issue fixed (it's broken IMO) and cap management made more challenging in other ways. At one point I think you mentioned implementing player attitudes in FA. Perhaps this could be one factor in addressing that.

Quite true, however NFL teams are still not required to sign a free agent to next years contract on the current years cap.

Most teams that end up like that are now in possession of a new owner who is now stuck with what a previous owner did

check my teams none are in a "screwed up" financial situation, and as far as retaining all my "best" players that's a laugh as all but 1 team I have I grabbed as rebuild projects and my team with the best roster I did a complete rebuild on this off-season http://mfn19.preview.myfootballnow.com/team/view/29, only 4 of the players came from FA, traded for 9 more (plus more draft picks) and drafted 9 others.

I just believe that the current way you have to resign players is wrong.

With the way the game is currently set up, giving teams the ability to retain players with the new cap would rob free agency of any decent players. I guess what needs to be done is to instead add other factors (e.g. player attitudes) that affect whether a player signs or not so that some players still make it to free agency despite the cap space available. This would also help you renegotiate large contracts with willing players to reduce the cap hit.

From a rebuilding standpoint I still think it's easier to get rid of players with excessive contracts than to deal with a nonexistent free agent pool.

Biggest issue that causes low quality FA pools in my opinion is how renegotiations work.

This is an example not an actual negotiation

You sign a player for (approx. numbers not doing the 5%) $20 million contract over 4 years with a $10 million bonus, so $2.5 mil salary $2.5 mil bonus each year.

Then turn right around the next year and renegotiate he asks for a 4 year $22m contract but if you reduce offer to $0 bonus it tells you he won't negotiate for less than $8 mil bonus. So now you can sign him for (approx. numbers not doing the 5%) a 6 year $10,666,674 contract comes out to $444,445 salary $1,333,334 bonus total bonus is $8,000,004 so meets the bonus criteria but here's the breakdown:

before negotiation
year 1 - $2,500,000 salary $2,5000,000 bonus $5,000,000 total
year 2 - $2,500,000 salary $2,5000,000 bonus $5,000,000 total
year 3 - $2,500,000 salary $2,5000,000 bonus $5,000,000 total

after negotiation
year 1 - $444,445 salary $3,833,334 bonus $4,277,779 total saved $722,221
year 2 - $444,445 salary $3,833,334 bonus $4,277,779 total saved $722,221
year 3 - $444,445 salary $3,833,334 bonus $4,277,779 total saved $722,221
year 4 - $444,445 salary $1,333,334 bonus $1,777,779 total
year 5 - $444,445 salary $1,333,334 bonus $1,777,779 total
year 6 - $444,445 salary $1,333,334 bonus $1,777,779 total

saved a total of $2,166,663

He asked for $5,500,000 a year, you ended up giving him:
$4,277,779 a year for years 1-3 ($1,222,221 less than asked)
$1,777,779 a year for years 4-6 ($3,722,221 less than asked)
That's a total of $14,833,326 less than he asked for in yearly contract amount.

In the last 3 years of the contract you have a player that should be getting paid $5-$5.5 mil playing for less than $1.8 mil............

Most players in the NFL would refuse it since its not only costing him $2,166,663 over the first 3 years in lost salary from the first contract, but is also for less than 1/2 the amount he originally requested, is 2 years longer, and for the last 3 years of the contract he's playing for 32% of the yearly contract amount he requested.....yet here in MFN we can cheat the players constantly by giving a bigger percentage of the contract as bonus and lengthening the contract so we can spread the same amount of bonus over more years......in real life the players would leave negotiations so fast if you blinked you would miss it.

easiest way to fix this would probably make the min bonus a player will negotiate for be a yearly amount instead of a total contract amount and also have a minimum contract bonus

so if a player wanted:
4 year $20,000,000 contract $10,000,000 bonus $5,000,000 yearly contract $2,500,000 yearly bonus

current style 6 year offer on this
6 year $13,333,338 contract $10,000,002 bonus $2,222,223 yearly contract $1,666,667 yearly bonus
you would save $6,666,666 on the contract, get 2 extra years, and save $2,777,777 in yearly cap

style I suggested for a 6 year contract
6 year $20,000,016 contract $15,000,012 bonus $3,333,336 yearly contract $2,500,002 yearly bonus
total contract is $16 more, you get 2 extra years and save $1,666,664 in yearly cap

if you negotiate you would still be able to save some money but it wouldn't be to the ridiculous amount it is now, and of course this is with the bonus set at 50% for the asking contract it could be set higher/lower depending on player attitude as chipped said with a set-up like this it could make caps a lot more interesting since depending on attitude you could have 2 players ask for the same total contract but have different percentages set for the amount of that contract to ask for as minimum yearly bonus and end up with completely different contracts

possible things that could affect attitude would be, play time, usage(ie. how often is a WR thrown to, or a RB used to run/receive, for a QB is he constantly getting sacked or having receivers drop passes) i'm sure there are several other possibilities

This. A good example of this is the contract that I managed to get my CB1, who is one of the best in the league, to agree to after his third year: http://mfn19.myfootballnow.com/player/3702

Basically $5m a year for the best player in the hardest to find position in the league? If the sim was accurate in terms of cap, he would be asking for a minimum of 12-15 a year and a bonus of no less than 36-42m over 6 years.

The cap really needs to be fixed.

+1