[Popes]

Here's an illustration of my contention.

Let's say I'm tendering a WR who has a clear $700 value, making him a 3rd level tender. Let's also assume there's a few bidders interested in the player.

If I tender him at the 3rd level, the opening bid has to be at least $600. If this were UFA, we'd expect him to be bid up to around $700. But since this is RFA, we all know we need to pay a premium to pry him away from the team that has the right to match. Here, that might take the bidding up to maybe $800-$900. His "RFA market value" is $700 + some premium to discourage matching.

If I tender him at the 4th round level in order to acquire a 4th round pick, people can look at my team and see that I've undertendered him with the intention to decline. So the opening bid is $300. Our competive bidders bring him up to the market value and he sells for around $700. His market value is now more UFA-style, whereas he would have sold for maybe $100-$200 more if I had tendered him at the appropriate level.

My point is that people will get a 4th round pick one way or another if they need one, so why force them to under-tender guys to do it?

I do agree that seeing that there will be no match might encourage other bidders to enter the fray and that might make it a wash (the extra bidder compensating for the lack of a match threat). Or it might not. And when it doesn't, the lack of a match threat will drive down the price. That is, the lack of a match threat will be present in every one of these situations. The extra bidder only shows up sometimes to compensate for it.