Currently, the constitution only contains limits for the time period of June 15 - Draft Day (The requirement is that all teams have 16 players and/or draft picks.)
I would like to see an additional timeframe/limit added:
- From the end of NFL week 17 through June 15 (cutdown day), each team may only have 16 players on their roster.
> This limit would obviously be changed to whatever the current active roster limit is for any given season
> At the end of the NFL season, all players on IR would be moved back to a particular team's active roster and that team would be given a grace period to reduce their roster to the appropriate limit
> Teams must have a minimum starting lineup as they enter the "offseason" (i.e. teams with multiple players on IR cannot dump their kicker and defense to make room for those players; following the legalization of all rosters, teams are more than welcome to trade away kickers, defenses, or whatever for any positions and/or draft picks)
I believe this would give us more competitive balance in the offseason since at least from a numbers perspective, all teams would be on equal footing. In addition, the size of our draft pool for the following year would be fairly set, since waivers end at the close of the season.
This would also allow us to expand the size of the IR without significantly impacting the offseason.