When trying to sign a high rated player in the first round of early FA, I would set the bonus on max and then slide the salary down to where the minimum bonus amount requested by player was covered, and then give it a little more salary, or up to 30% or more if I really wanted to have a good shot at the player. Never had a problem with salary cap amount. Cant do that now with the high amounts requested, if you make offers on 3 or 4, you could get them all and go south on your salary cap and if its a lot, your roster is decimated. Plus, with leagues that only have a few human owners, there are a lot of high rated FA's that the AI managers did not re-sign, which is one of my major complaints about the AI managers, they wreck a team roster-wise.