Player contracts can be signed and renegotiated at any free agency/midweek/game/training camp stage, with one notable exception. You are unable to renegotiate a contract for a player in the year that you signed him. For the first season in a league, this will be your entire roster (which is why your players all have at least a 2-year contract). For all future seasons, this will impact any players that you sign in the current year. If you sign a player to a 1-year contract, you will not be able to resign him without him going to free agency.

The request that players make for a contract are based on similar players in the league and their contracts. For renegotiation, your player will not accept a contract that is below what he is asking; if you cannot or choose not to meet his demand, you must let him test the free agent market. Because of this, it is very easy to quickly use up your cap especially if you have lots of really good players. So, be careful with your renegotiations and free agent offers, lest you find yourself filling most of your roster with players making the league minimum.

Your salary cap is impacted by a player's contract as the sum of their base salary plus the portion of their bonus. The base salary increases at a rate of 5% per season, which matches the salary cap increase; the bonus is equally spread out across all the years of the contract. If you renegotiate a player who has a bonus, his previous bonus remains and the new bonus is added to his salary cap hit. It is recommended that you not renegotiate a player who is not in the last year of his contract unless renegotiating saves you cap room, which is indicated on the player contract calculator.

If you cut a player, his current year bonus remains on your salary cap, and any future years are applied to the next year's salary cap. So be careful cutting a player who has several years left and a high salary cap. You are warned about what the cap implications will be when you cut a player.

Is there a way to determine what a draftees salary will be prior to drafting him so that you can possibly choose a player with less skills to save some cap space

Draftees salaries are based on the position they are selected in the draft. Therefore, selecting a player with less skill will not save you any money.

If I want to know exactly what the draft pick will cost me, I go to another league in the same season (year), and look at the pick selected that would be the same as I would pick. This will give you that pick's dollar value.

thanks, I was wondering because I am in a start up draft for TIC league, and have my first 5 players using a quarter of my cap space. I was just wondering how many players I was going to end up with, with only $120 mil for the whole team.

You can go to the draft history page and click on those players cards to see what they are getting paid providing they are on their rookie contract and havent been cut and picked up by another team. If this is what your asking anyways.