Third Annual AGOP Contest

1. The title of your Fanpost must begin with "AGOP:" (no quotes). You can follow that with whatever title you want, but it must begin with "AGOP:" so we can easily distinguish it from other Fanposts. If you do not follow this rule your entry will be excluded from consideration.

2. The deadline for Fanpost submission is 9 a.m. ET on Tuesday, March 10. No exceptions.  One entry per GGN member.  Multiple entries will be disqualified.

3. There is no mandatory length, but there should be as much explanation as is necessary to fully explain how your plan benefits the Jets, works under the salary cap, makes reasonable trades, etc. Spelling and grammar are not paramount, but entries should be reasonably readable. Use spell-check, use paragraphs and try to proofread for grammar and punctuation errors.

4. Your plan MUST fit under the 2015 salary cap or it will be disqualified. In addition, consideration will be given to how the 2016 salary cap will be affected if you try to backload too many contracts and push all salary cap hits into 2016 and beyond.

5. Feasibility of plan execution is important. Don't propose a trade of Geno Smith for J.J. Watt and a draft pick. It's not going to happen.

6. Plans must be salary cap compliant using overthecap.com #s. Jason at overthecap.com has a really nifty salary cap calculator tool, which you can access here. We strongly urge you all to make good use of this tool, as it allows you to fiddle with the contracts of every player on the roster and every Jets' free agent, doing all the calculations for you in terms of salary cap consequences for cuts, trades, restructures, franchise tags, re-signings, etc. THIS TOOL IS A MUST USE FOR ALL PRACTICAL PURPOSES. If you use the calculator you can be assured your numbers are correct. Use it. And in case I haven't made this clear, USE IT. It will make the cap much less of a bear to wrestle with. Restructuring of current contracts to create cap room is allowed provided it complies with the data on overthecap.com, is allowed under the CBA, and is shown to be something the player should realistically have no objection to. Please keep in mind proration of signing bonuses is permitted for a maximum of 5 years under the CBA, so no proposing a ten year proration to finagle some cap space.

7. Draft picks are limited to the first five rounds. Although compensatory picks will not be unveiled by the NFL until late March, we are assuming for the purposes of this contest that the Jets will not get any compensatory picks in 2015. That makes the Jets' draft, for the purposes of this contest and prior to any trades, as follows: 1, 2, 3, 4 (if Percy Harvin is cut), 5.  The Percy Harvin situation MUST be specifically addressed in your plan, as it effects the draft choices you will have.  We limit the rounds in the contest because later picks are unlikely to have any significant impact on the 2015 team, and we as judges also have limited time and/or ability to try and evaluate every obscure 6th or 7th round pick suggested by numerous entries. Draft picks must be justified in being available at their designated slot by at least one reputable mock draft site. You can find an extensive list of Mock Draft sites here. If you are using a Mock Draft that appears to be an outlier in terms of where one or more players are chosen, tell us which Mock Draft you used and why. For example, if you are picking Kevin White in the third round, there better be some very good and highly persuasive reasons why you think he'll be available there, or we aren't buying what you're selling. No more than 2 trades of draft picks are permitted. Unlimited player trades are permitted. You should provide some reasons why the trading partner would want to do any proposed trade. Any trade of draft picks must be in rough compliance with the standard trade value chart. You can find a nifty interactive version of the trade value chart here. This interactive chart allows you to input any team's name and it highlights all of that team's 2015 picks on the chart; very cool. Although Jets draft picks for the contest are limited to the first 5 rounds, trades may include picks from any round, as well as future years.

8. Trades of current players for draft picks are limited as follows: Wilkerson for a #1, Richardson for a #1 and a #4, Mangold for a #2, Decker for a #3, Amaro for a #3, Pryor for a #4, and T-Bo for four #1s and three #2s (just kidding). No other Jets player may bring back anything more than a #6 in a proposed trade. The reason we have set values in players for draft picks trades is so that everyone is playing by the same rules. That is, Entry X may propose trading Mangold for a #2, while Entry Y proposes trading Mangold for a #4. Entry X then has a clear advantage in his plan, though they are both simply trading the same player. To avoid such issues, we have set standard trade values, similar to the way we require you to roughly comply with the draft pick trade value chart. Please don't bother disputing the set values; they aren't important so much for their accuracy as they are for their uniformity.  Every year somebody feels it necessary to enter into lengthy debate about the set trade values; DON'T BE THAT GUY.  It isn't important; what's important is that everybody is on an even playing field with standard trade values.  Everyone has to play by the same rules, so just go with the values given. You may propose trades of other players for lower draft picks as a means of reducing the Jets salary cap number, but no other players will be permitted to bring back draft picks in the first 5 rounds.

9. Whether the Jets might realistically execute your plan doesn't matter as long as the plan itself can be considered realistic given the current free agent and trade markets. In other words, you don't have to operate the same way Big Macc would operate. Just make your plan something that could in some world be seen as realistic.

10. Free agent salaries should be realistic. You may sign any unrestricted free agents you wish, INCLUDING ANY FREE AGENTS SIGNED BY OTHER TEAMS AFTER THE SIGNING PERIOD BEGINS, provided they have not been signed prior to the time you submit your entry, and provided they fit under the cap and the proposed salaries are realistic. You may not sign free agents who have already signed and thus are off the market PRIOR to the time you submit your entry. You may NOT sign other teams' restricted free agents. If you are proposing some backloading of contracts to fit better under the 2015 cap, that's fine, so long as you then sketch out how the whole contract works so we can gauge how it impacts future years.

On the trading of draft picks, up to two trades involving draft picks for both teams involved in the trade are allowed. However, you may make as many trades involving picks for players, players for picks, or players for players as you wish. Any hybrid trades (i.e., my picks for your player and picks, or vice versa) will count as one of your two permitted picks for picks trades. I hope that clarifies all possible trade scenarios.