I think this should interest a lot of us – my dad is launching a new website called Ultra GM (he has plans for mobile apps down the road), where we can live out our dream of being an NFL GM. Ultra GM lets us take control of our chosen team (presumably the Lions) fantasy football-style subject to the real NFL salary cap and real player contracts. I remember the very early brainstorming stage of Ultra GM a few years back and it’s really cool to see it now coming to fruition.
In Ultra GM, you pick an NFL team to manage and you will acquire that team’s roster as of the start of the league year and free agency. From there you can build your team through the draft, free agency and trades and compete in two different leagues. That just means each week your team’s score based on the performance of the players on your roster is compared to the scores of two different teams in two different leagues. The first one is a 32-team league that mirrors the actual NFL, so you control one of the 32 teams and go head-to-head with other users managing the other teams. The second league is a 14-team league where all the teams start with the same NFL roster. For example, if you choose the Lions, you’ll compete with other users who are also managing Lions-based teams, as well as the actual Lions roster. We’ve been lucky to have Holmes at the helm of the team-building, but most NFL fans think they can do the job better than their team’s GM. You’ll be making decisions on trades, draft picks, free agency, player cuts, and even practice squad maneuvers—you name it—all in a dynasty-style format where your roster and transactions carry over from season to season so you can build your team the right way over time. It’s kind of like a combination of fantasy football, a mock draft and/or GM simulator, and Madden Franchise Mode.
It’d be great if we could get a group (or multiple groups!) of us together for a private 14-team Lions league (or multiple private leagues, if there’s enough interest). You get to manage the offseason for your own Lions team and then compete against each other’s unique Lions-based teams during the season. I’m really psyched about Ultra GM and I think it’s something we’d all have a ton of fun with. Let me know by PM if you are interested in playing in a private league in which we will compete to see who can build the best team from the Lions roster.
Ask general questions here so others can get the answers too.
How true to the NFL salary cap is this? I lose interest in most things like this because they don’t have restructures, void years, vet minimums based on accrued seasons, 5th year options, veteran exemptions, LTBE and NLTBE bonuses, cap rollover, etc.
If I’m going to play pretend GM I want to be able to do it all. Otherwise, I can just play Madden for the basics.
But, be careful of copyright and trademarks. The NFL won’t allow anything remotely like the NFL in a game they’re not receiving money from. RetroBowl had to change their team names and football-gm.com have kept things completely random in terms of teams and player names.
Draft – You will draft where the Lions picked but can trade picks in this draft to move around.
Free Agency – You can bid on and “sign” free agents. Players and their contracts are a package deal so you are bidding on the player and the contract together and will be subject to the salary cap.
Trades – You can trade players and current season draft picks, but subject to the salary cap, so there are dead cap hits if you trade guys with big contracts.
Practice Squad – You can sign players to practice squad and poach players from other teams’ practice squads. For this, the rules are a little simplified compared to the NFL. You can sign a player to your PS from another team’s PS, but anyone else can then sign them from yours. So if you want to “protect” that player, you have to put him on your active roster. They aren’t using the rules about the player having to be put on the active roster for a certain number of weeks or restrictions on how many times a player can be elevated, etc.
Scoring includes all positions and is calibrated to the relative values of the positions (as established based on contracts and use of draft resources) by position.
The first drafts will be in July for leagues that fill and lock by July 1 so ideally you’d be in by then. There is a later draft in August for leagues that fill later, but that gives you much less time to develop your roster through FA and trades.
If there aren’t enough people here for a full private league you can play in a public league and still play with others from this forum (or other friends) using the Find a Friend feature. If you do that, you will play against your friends but also people you don’t know (yet).
The FAQs on the site are pretty extensive and give more details.