Post Season - Stupid Question

Hi guys,
To save myself from ending up with a terrible team for the next season, I thought I'd ask a couple of questions about the post-season.
I've just finished a season on single player. Trying to balance the books was harder than expected, and I lost a load of players as I didn't offer them enough money. That was bad enough, but when I came to the draft and it was my turn to pick, I had no information on the players I could choose from. Am I supposed to be scouting them during the season? I ended up letting the game decide what to pick and I ended up with two FB's I didn't need   

Anyway, any info gratefully recieved!

don't know much myself but you can Scout through the season on positions you think you may need.

Harps - players will often 'end negotiations' if you try and undercut them. A lot depends on how good the player is and how important to your team he is/is not.

As a general rule (altough sometimes players can be weird) if its an important guy always offer more than they request - for example 4 years x 5 mill request ... plus 2-3 mill for good measure.  Quite often you can offer the same total amount but with lower salary and a  higher bonus. If its a player you like but don't really need you can undercut them a little and they may accept.

You always have the franchise tag to fall back on too, but thats only for one player of course.

Basically, depending how important to you they are determines how much extra you're willing to pay. And always take into account their age, progression/regression potential and how it all fits in with your rookie draft plans.

As for the rookie draft - you get 'scouting xp' every week. A lot of guys like to do their scouting at the end of the season but it doesn't matter, as long as you scout your positions of need primarily because you will never get enough scouting xp to look at everyone!

If unsure just shout up - someone can always advise.

Its definitely not a stupid question. The offseason and the lack of any documentation about how it works makes it one of the most confusing things in Madden each year.
Good tips from Bish above and if you want to see how we will progress through the offseason here take a look at our schedule from last year as it should be relatively similar with the exception of the dates:
https://sml-europe.forumotion.com/t451-season-3-offseason-schedule

Once we get into the playoffs I'll post an updated offseason schedule too.

Right,  let me add my own stupid question. Say I have cap room of 45 mil and I sign a player to a 5 year, 40 mil contact. Does the full 40 come off that years cap or is it split between the 5 years?  My thinking is that it starts as a moderate amount and takes larger amounts as the years go on, but my cap never seems to do as I expect.

It is split between the years, as is whatever bonus the player gets. So if you have cap space of, say, 5 mill you can sign a guy for a 20 mill/4 year deal total contract which would be something like this:-

salary 16 million (4 mill per year x 4 years)
bonus   4 million (1 mill per year x 4 years)

Also, when signing contracts remember the total of the bonus becomes the cap penalty for that player if he was to be traded or cut (in other words the penalty = total unpaid bonus outstanding).

I think it's also worth remembering that when it comes to the draft the CPU will determine how much rookie cap room to take based on your draft pick position!

This rookie cap is taken from the overall salary cap I believe.

So if you manage to get 3 1st rounders in the draft expect your rookie cap to be quite large..

Now I could be totally wrong but I'm sure that's the way it works!

Yeah thats right Jimmy. And I think the rookie cap is taken out of your salary cap at the beginning of the offseason to make sure you have enough for the draft. I remember thinking I'd have money to spend on free agents one season then when we advanced to the offseason I didn't even have enough to resign my own guys because I had stockpiled extra first and second round picks.

Cheers guys, its making a bit more sense now. I might advance a new game to the post season to have another go as well.