Quoting: F50marco
Also what happens if 5 teams offer the exact same contract? What If i offer 6 years @ 5M and someone else 5 years @ 6M? Who wins the argument? Both have valid reasons.
The idea I had for that is players below a certain age prefer term, while players above a certain age prefer AAV.
Not sure where I'd place the cutoff point, but maybe start at 30 and work from there.
Players under 25 years of age are normally RFA and often go through at least one bridge deal, sometimes 2 or 3.
Once they are a year or two away from UFA status, they are likely to sign a long term deal between 5 and 8 years.
Once a player hits around age 32/33 as a UFA, team will prefer to avoid term and increase AAV as incentive instead.
After 35, 1 or 2 years should be the maximum term, but there are often exceptions for superstar players (3 or 4 years maybe).
The principle is that the older a player is, the more short term contracts they are likely to get, so they will prefer higher AAV. Maximizing their earning power in the time they have.
Just some rough ideas we might be able to tweak for our purposes.