OFFSEASON SCHEDULE
Each Advance Stage Is 24 Hours
WHEN: Immediately After Super Bowl
WHAT: Advanced to Re-Signing Period
--In this stage, you will be able to negotiate new contracts with the guys on your team that have expiring deals. You get this one opportunity before they hit the open market and any team is free to bid on the said player.
BE AWARE: You only get one shot during this stage. If you offer someone a contract they deem unacceptable, there is no second chance to offer another one. They will decline it and go straight to free agency. So make sure if you have a pending free agent that you want to keep that you offer them a fair market deal (maybe even exceeding it).
If the player you wish to negotiate with has a status that reads “unavailable” the its unfortunately too late, they have already decided to go the route of free agency and you will have to compete for their services with the other 31 teams.
After offering a contract to a player, you should be able to hit "B" to backup out of the re-signing screen back to your task console and it will show instantly if they've accepted your offer or opted for free agency.
You will have 24 hours from the time I advanced it to this stage to renegotiate with your players.
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NEXT ADVANCE
WHEN: Following Re-Signing Players Advance
WHAT: Free Agent Bidding/Final Rookie Scouting
During this stage you will be able to put in bids on Free Agents, pretty simple. If you don't have the cap space to bid on a particular player, the game will notify you and you'll have to make roster adjustments to do so, if you wish.
This year's game features LIVE free agent bidding. So you may bid on players and anytime another team bids on a player, you'll be able to see all the interested teams that are vying for that players services.
If you make an offer to a free agent that you'd like to take back off the table for whatever reasons you might have, then you are also able to do that by going to the free agent section and using the RT button to find "MY NEGOTIATIONS" and it will show the players you are currently in talks with.
From there, you are able to select one player you want to review as shown below
You will notice you have
THREE options at this point
Increase Offer: Up the current contract offer you have on the table based on the current market value of the player as determined by the other teams bidding on the player.
Withdraw Offer: Pull your offer for the player completely at no penalty to you.
Wait It Out: Just as it says, keep your current offer on the table and wait it out.
During this phase, you will also be able to use whatever scouting points you have remaining in preparation for the Rookie Draft. This will be your LAST opportunity to use your points so don't forget to do so.
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NEXT ADVANCE
WHEN: TBD (Rough Estimate Thursday, November 1st- Sunday, November 4th)
WHAT: 2013 ROOKIE DRAFT
At this stage, we will have scheduled a Date/Time for the draft to be held somewhere in the estimated dates I've given above. The first thing you'll notice is that you can check out a Free Agency Recap to see what players went where and for how much, also a way to see if your bid won on any of the available players.
Madden 13 has stripped the commish of a lot of powers we had in Madden 12. For instance, I cannot change the draft timer for later rounds. So we are stuck with the times they give us. So on the night of the draft when we schedule it, you might just want to open up a few free hours for this or stay for as long as you can/want to.
After we run through one of these new drafts with the bulk of the league then I think we'll be able to form a more solid method for doing it in Season 2.
There
WILL be a Live Chat for the draft which will be posted in the hours leading up to the draft.
When you register/login to the chatroom, I'm going to ask that you keep your dumb names out of it and simply use your TEAM NAME (EAGLES, LIONS ETC.)
That way if someone would like to trade their upcoming pick, others can easily identify with who is who. So please, make this easy for the league and just enter the room with your TEAM NAME.
Trading of picks DURING the draft will be allowed for the beginning of the draft, if I notice its dragging the draft to a crawl and just making the process a pain in the ass, I reserve the right to nix all trading during the draft at that time. But we will give it a shot in this upcoming draft.
At the conclusion of the draft, you'll be able to review your rookie signings. Madden signs them automatically so this just allows you to see how much each pick will cost you.
Finally....at this point, we are ready for Season 2 preseason and games will begin once again!!!!