In both OOTP21 and 22 there is an issue when trying to extend arbitration eligible players while over budget for the following year. When attempting to submit an offer to the player, you get a message box telling you that the owner does not agree since you "Your projected payroll exceeds your budget by X".
For contracts that INCREASE the projected payroll this makes total sense. However the logic appears to be applied for ALL contracts, even ones that decrease the projected/budgeted arbitration amount. This means that you are prohibited from "fixing" the over budget problem by reducing the payroll for next year by resigning arbitration eligible players.
For the example below the players arbitration estimate is 1.5M and appears to match what the max allowable contract is. The offered amount would decrease his (expected) salary by 200K but is disallowed. The fact that the game shows the max allowable contract already makes me think this is in fact a bug and that this should be a valid method of extending players.
