Has anyone ever done a soft cap in a progressive league, and if so how was it run/enforced?

what would a soft cap be?

soft cap is when you can go over, but there is a penalty and/or loss of flexibility for doing so. the NBA, for example, uses a soft cap.

for instance, for every $1M over the cap you are, you drop a spot in the draft order. or if you are over the cap, you can only make trades where you don't add salary. things like that.

I've never heard of one, but it would be interesting if you could match the cap to the progressive so that the penalties really made a difference

It sounds interesting, but I'd be concerned that the penalties wouldn't be fair. You might have an extra 500pa guy on the bench who sucks but costs 3mil. As fillies said, it would really need to be matched to the progressive very closely. If you want to penalize teams for having a 500pa guy who sucks on the bench, then you need to set the cap accordingly.