Firstly, thanks for making this game - as a massive Football Manager and NFL fan from England, this is the exactly the kind of game I've been looking for for years!
One issue I'm having is with contract renewals. I know the contracts are not designed to be completely accurate representations of the way they work in the NFL, but I find that upcoming free agents tend to request excessively high contracts - a backup CB (72 OVR) requesting 10-12m a year, for example, or a low-level linebacker asking for 8-10m to re-sign. There are other factors involved (how highly they value money etc) and FA is obviously a place for overspending, but it still seems unrealistic and detracts from the immersion. There's less incentive to draft and develop a player to be a functional backup or rotation option if you know they are going to demand way more money than you can afford to spend. The knock-on effect is that in free agency a lot of players end up going unsigned (and subsequently retire) because they effectively price themselves out of the market - this happens sometimes in real life but not to the same extent.
Am I missing something, is there a way to fix it, or could this be part of an update? I've tried lowering the maximum contracts per position, but this seemed to make the problem worse.
My second problem is mechanical and I'm probably doing something wrong. Is there a way to watch the game without calling the players? I've tried playing the game but when I turn off the 'call plays' options, the game just skips to the end. Is there a way around this or have I missed something obvious?
Thanks again!