If the AI is going to poach a coach for a non-vacant position, can you force them to do so early into the off-season? It really blows having a coordinator poached on the last day of early FA, so that I'm completely stuck with whatever the remaining dregs are (which are not much).

Edit: Just realized they may have been making offers throughout the off-season, and just not landing anyone. In which, make them more competitive in their offers. Or allow back-up offers (a feature I would -love- to see).

Yeah, I guess my OC was poached overnight also. I don't know where he is. Any way I can find out where he is?

I don't like this poaching **** either. Just gives me headaches!

If you knew about what his rating was you could do a coach search for OCs.

Poaching is fine. Just to be clear, poaching without any way to replace the coach is my only gripe here.

Pretty much, seems like half my teams head into the draft missing at least one coach because someone gets poached at the last second.

Thats not unrealistic though is it?

I've also noticed that it's crazier the younger a league is. After a few seasons it falls in to sort of an equilibrium and there's not as much movement with coaches.

When's the last time you've heard of a coach hiring onto a new team minutes before the draft? Obviously we have to find a balance between realism and playability.

One suggestion I'd offer is to limit poaching for HC to maybe day 3 or 4 of early FA. That would avoid at least some of the headache, and be much more realistic.

You could always offer them a new contract at the start of the season. That way he couldn't be poached on day 5.

I've considered that, but ultimately decided it was a bit too 'gamey' for my taste. Re-structuring a contract for $1 more shouldn't prevent other teams from hiring a coach off someone's roster.