So we are once again into the free agency period, but you will notice that the market is pretty bare right now because everyone is still on their initial draft contracts. The free agent market won't have good players probably until next season when the first wave of contracts expires. But there are some potential upgrades out there if you want to bid. See the free agent tips for reference. The draft is also coming up. See the draft thread for reference.

There are also some new things you can do starting with this offseason.

1. You can change up your coaching staff by raiding other teams. Just like the real NFL, you can hire someone else's coordinator to be your head coach, or hire someone else's QB to be your offensive coordinator. So long as you are offering a promotion, it is fair game. The coach impacts a few things. The most significant thing is your playbook. Each coach has his own set of plays, which you can see on the coach card, which will say things like "pass heavy offense" "4-3 heavy blitz defense" etc. If you don't like your current play selection, this is the only way to change it up. The second thing coaches affect is your player development. Good coaches help your players develop faster. The head coach accounts for the largest percent, then coordinators, then position coaches have the smallest impact. Third, the coaches supposedly provide some in game bonuses, but it is not easy to quantify the effect. Just know that a good coach should provide some level of sim boost.

Coaches, unlike players, will sign the best offer they receive after only one sim. So if you really want a coach, don't low ball. However, because they sign the best offer after only one sim, you could get away with low balling coaches you think are in low demand. Like your kickers coach, when you sign some rank 59 guy, you can offer him a slave labor deal and he will take it if he has no other offers.

You can also sign coaches off the free agent pool. And coaches DO improve, just like players. You could sign a young coach with ratings in the 60s and he could develop into a 80 level coach over time.

You can also extend your current coaches by hitting the contract button on the coach card.

2. That brings me to the second big thing you can start doing, which is extending your current players early. At this point, almost all of your players are in contract years. It is to your benefit to identify the useful players and offer them contract extensions. Click on the player card and hit contract. It will show their demand. Usually if you just hit submit, they will sign for that amount. However, you can try to lowball them a bit, or play around with the years, making the contract longer or shorter. In general, they will not vary far from the demand on extensions, but you can save like thousands by, for example, offering a bigger signing bonus and cutting the base salary. As a general rule, you should re-sign any useful player. Do not let a player go into free agency and think you can re-sign him if he is good (like a rank 80 plus player), as they will get bid up on the open market. But you can take chances on lower ranked guys who ask for too much money (like rank 60-70 players) that you like and can probably get them back below their demand. Right now, the salary cap is a non-issue for all teams, but in the long run, it will be so careful planning now will set you up for the future.