Overview
I’ll admit it. I’m a tradeaholic.
Two players… five players… keeper players… 3-team trades… auction trades… I’ve done it all.
I’ll trade almost any player at any time, as long as I think I’m improving my team. When people in my leagues are looking to move players, they come to me first.
Have I made trades that didn’t work out? Absolutely
Do I still think trades can greatly improve your team? Absolutely
There have been numerous articles written about how to properly approach a trade. These typically boil down to: “Make reasonable offers.” I don’t think you need me to tell you that offering Rod Smith and Kevin Jones for Shaun Alexander isn’t going to succeed, even if the other team doesn’t have a healthy wide receiver on their roster.
One aspect of trading that is typically ignored in fantasy circles is the Draft Day trade. From my experience, the benefits of draft day trades exceeds almost every other trade you could possibly make during the season. (This is also reflected in the NFL as well. Compare the number of trades revolving around the draft to any other time, and there is no comparison.) If done intelligently, you will be able to steal important players and still have the other owner thanking you. Best of all, other owners will never complain about collusion or unfair trading.
Why will everybody be happy? Because every owner believes they can draft better than anybody else. Each owner will have their own sleeper players they need to have and will be happy to trade with you to prove their intelligence. Even a bad selection makes other owners happy because it means another quality player for them.
What is the key to making a successful trade? One word: Preparation.
You’ve heard it a million times, “They key to a successful draft is preparation.” The same holds true for draft day trades.
Unlike trades that are made during the season, the results of draft day trades are based solely on your projections for each player and how valuable they are to your scoring rules. If you don’t prepare for your draft, you’re better off staying in your draft position and stop wasting your time on this article. On the other hand, if you spend some time getting ready for your draft and trust your player rankings, keep reading.
Steps 1-3 should all be completed prior to your draft. This is where your preparation, with the help of pcDrafter and 4for4 can begin to make a difference.
Step 1: Complete your player rankings.
As I mentioned above, the first step for preparing for your draft and for trading on draft day is preparation. The first step is making sure you have completed player projections and believe their accuracy. If you don’t have the time or the experience to complete your projections for every player, this is where a site like 4for4 can come in handy. They can provide player projections based on first-hand knowledge of the players and teams in the league.
Once you have the projections for each player, the next step is translating those projections to your individual league. It doesn’t matter if Peyton Manning is projected to score 54 touchdowns if your league only values touchdown passes at 2 points apiece. Likewise, a league that requires a starting tight end every week will greatly increase the value of Antonio Gates or Tony Gonzales. So don’t make the mistake of assuming that all players and positions can be based on their points alone.
Step 2: Get a feel for where players will be drafted.
This is where the power of pcDrafter and the Gold algorithm really begins to make a difference. Once you have created your league and loaded your player projections, calculating the rankings of each player is done automatically. At this point, you are ready to run some Mock Drafts to really get a feel for how your draft will proceed.
By stopping the draft at your pick each round and making your selections, you can get a feel for which players will be available and whether you are satisfied with your projected team. If you know certain teams always draft certain players, go ahead and make those selections as well. The end result is that you should have a reasonable feel for where players are going to be drafted.
Step 3: Determine what moves you can make in the first two rounds.
While most draft day trades will be affected by team needs and the remaining players available, you can definitely plan your strategy for the first two rounds beforehand. Even for large leagues, this means looking at only 28-30 possible picks. These will also be the most important trades of the day, especially if you have a low first round pick.
Your overriding goal for the first two rounds should be: “Studs win leagues”. Do I agree that depth is important? Absolutely. However, you can only start a limited number of players each week. I’d rather have a set of superstar starters and no bench than a team of mediocrity. (I could expound on this topic, but 4for4 already has an article detailing the benefits of this approach.)
Let us look at a real world example. My league has 14 teams with performance based scoring. If I am drafting 14 th overall, a Mock Draft in pcDrafter projects Reuben Droughns and Julius Jones to be the two best players available. Both of these players are solid starters. Combined, they are projected for 2800 total yards and 14 touchdowns.
This sounds impressive until you realize that Shaun Alexander (1), Larry Johnson (2), Tiki Barber (3), and LaDanian Tomlinson (4) are all projected for more than 1700 yards and 13 touchdowns.
Clearly, if you are drafting 12-14 in this league you would better off trading both your first round selections for one of the top 4 picks plus a later round pick. You might even be able to get the other team’s (high) 3 rd round pick in exchange. You’ll be happy getting that top player, and they’ll be happy having 3 selections in the first round. Everybody wins.
Essentially, you are preparing a draft trade matrix much like the NFL teams use of draft day. By using pcDrafter, you can evaluate what players might possibly be selected with each pick in the draft, and thus determine what trades are beneficial to you, and which trades should be avoided.
Now that you’ve completed your preparation, Steps 4 and 5 highlight the items you should watch while your draft progresses.
Step 4: Watch what positions and players other teams have drafted.
This sounds intuitive, but this if often difficult to put into practice due to the time it take to track those items. However, pcDrafter allows you to view the following items with a quick glance: how many players at each position a team has drafted, what bye weeks each team needs to cover, and when each team will be drafting.
By combining these items, you can determine what needs each team will be addressing throughout the draft and you can make moves faster than any other owner. Speed is important, since most leagues put some time restraints on selection, and this is where you hold a huge advantage. By utilizing pcDrafter, you can quickly determine if you need to trade ahead of teams to get that last good running back, or if you can afford to trade down and get another selection since you have a grouping of wide receivers that are interchangeable. Pay special attention to teams that have not filled their starting players. These teams are often more likely to trade up as the draft progresses so that they can complete their starting lineups.
Since other owners will not have this information at their fingertips, you’ll be able to drive the negotiations.
Step 5: Evaluate your trades.
This is more of a continuation of the Step 4, but the final thing you should do during the draft is to evaluate your trades for a sanity check.
Once you identify a trade that you believe will benefit your team, you can use the Trade function in pcDrafter to Evaluate your trade. This will show you the players that are projected to be available for each of the picks that are part of a trade. This allows you to do a quick comparison to see if your proposed trade really has the value you expect. While pcDrafter isn’t an oracle, it will give you some indication of the quality that will be available in a future draft round.
Conclusion
- Trading is a fun part of Fantasy Football.
- Trading successfully is a funner part of Fantasy Football.
- Trading successfully during your draft is the funnest part of Fantasy Football.
Why?
You get the biggest steals and everybody is happy since everybody gets the players they chose. You just happen to be better. |
