Structural advantages were something we discussed last week, and it will be the main focus of this piece for the next couple of weeks. There’s a few very important concepts I use as building blocks, that once explained, will make the success probability charts easier to apply strategy-wise. Dynasty leagues have a plethora of concepts and ideas that can work, but having a strong grasp of how the wheel is turning can create awareness for why things are working the way they are.
Alright, that’s enough for introductions, we already know each other. Let’s get into the meat and potatoes.
THE HORIZON EFFECT
It’s important to recognize there are two different types of value. Value to a roster, and value in a trade. Veteran players can come cheap and provide huge assistance to a weekly lineup, but age kills all dynasty value over time, regardless of how productive a player is. Antonio Brown over the last couple of seasons is a great example. Despite keeping similar pace in fantasy finishes over the last three seasons (over 100 receptions and 1200 receiving yards in 2016, 2017 and 2018), his dynasty ADP has steadily gone down. The fact of the matter is, there’s a finite amount of production in an NFL career, and Brown has already accumulated 11,207 receiving yards. This is coming to an end at some point relatively soon, even if we don’t know exactly when. The market is smart enough to recognize this, and therefore, dynasty rosters can’t really be built around veterans. I mean, they can, but it’s very similar to a term I learned in chess.
The Horizon Effect is a chess term — discussed when evaluating games where there’s a lot of possible moves to play for an opponent, but none of them can shift the end result, and they all EVENTUALLY lead to a losing end game. There’s an identical effect for win-now based teams in dynasty leagues. Teams built around veterans can avoid a full disaster in the first few seasons by continuously trading future rookie picks for win-now assets. But, eventually, father time comes to claim his victims. Veterans first lose their market value, then lose their lineup value. A team filled with those players, and no future picks, will eventually hit a wall. Having long lost a base of market value, losing the lineup value as well creates a devastating combination. When that happens, since they have no appealing market value assets, there’s no way to save the roster. When this happens, roster rebuilds can take three or more years to fully turn over.
Despite some popular perceptions, the number one reason an owner will leave a dynasty league is that they executed a plan similar to this. Over and over again, owners think they can out-maneuver father time. I promise, you always lose.
Trading Studs For Multiple Assets
The long-held belief of “never trade studs” is a solid base to build off when first starting out in dynasty leagues. Especially when first learning how to evaluate players, trading away the top valued players on a roster can be a disaster waiting to happen. However, once player evaluation and experience strengthens, there’s a lot of avenues to find success. One of the main things I focus on as an owner is the evaluation of my ENTIRE roster. From the top player to the bottom, the most valuable to the least valuable.
Some important questions I ask myself every offseason, ESPECIALLY directly after a startup:
How many players on my roster are viable starting lineup options?
How many Top 50 (based on dynasty ADP) assets do I have?
What type of upside does the bottom ten roster spots have?
Early on in playing dynasty leagues, especially in the first two seasons, I’d always notice a theme that it was incredibly difficult to get players with upside onto those final ten spots. Even before fully engaging on a draft position-based approach, it felt like there was a lot of wasted space. How can I get value into those spots and increase my odds at finding viable players with the end of my roster? Well, draft position is certainly a way. Filling the bottom set of my roster with players drafted in the top three rounds of the NFL draft sounds great. The issue is there’s only so many of those players to go around, and most of them are being drafted in the top 10-to-12 rounds of a startup draft. There will always be high pedigree players who’ve failed through the first portion of their careers, like Kevin White and Laquon Treadwell. But despite their initial odds and advantages, it’s clear their careers are careening towards not being productive.
Generally speaking, a startup draft (12 team) will provide around 12-15 rounds (around 130-160 players) of valuable assets before it becomes really, really difficult to find good odd investments (as draft position drafters, solid odd investments tap out around round 20, but with most folks not drafting that way, a lot of low odd players become prominent around round 15). Considering that, all teams in the league are managing (again, generally speaking) 15 players. Among those 15 players on every roster, we know a significant amount are going to suffer serious injuries or fall off in play in the coming years, even the younger assets. So really, per team, adjusting for all the disasters that are going to happen in the next couple of seasons, there are probably around 10 players on a roster that will be valuable from the startup. Because we don’t know which players will bust, the only way to truly protect a roster from players busting is accumulating depth. One more time with emphasis, of all the players rostered in an entire dynasty league, very few will become fantasy relevant, and even a smaller amount will sustain themselves for an extended period of time.
What does this have to do with trading, and also, trading your good players? Russ, if there are only so many fantasy relevant players, why the heck would I trade the most valuable ones?? Because I said so. But also, because the way leagues are set up, every roster starts out incredibly dependent on the success of their top few selections. Any injury or issue can submarine a team in year one. Diversifying into less established players can appear like a big gamble, but staying put with studs in the first two years of startups is actually the bigger gamble. The first two years should be spent building depth and accumulating future picks so there’s ALWAYS enough roster equity to sustain a few players busting or getting injured.
Trading away a stud requires a few things. First, there needs to be a way to get, at the very least, fair market value. This can sometimes mean making a four or even five player for one trade if dealing the highest equity assets. In order to trade a player like Odell Beckham, the quality of depth needs to be strong, and the lost points in that one starting lineup spot need to be averaged out by the upside gained in the final roster spots.
EXAMPLE
I recently made this trade in a 12 team, 35 roster spot league (yeah, that’s too many roster spots):
Odell Beckham
FOR
Hunter Henry, Rashaad Penny, Parris Campbell and A.J. Brown
This deal would make most folks panic. Odell Beckham is a generational talent at WR and is only 26. He’s teamed with a young stud QB in Baker Mayfield and should be set up to crush in the next few seasons. Rashaad Penny rode the bench in his rookie season, Hunter Henry is coming off a major injury, along with Parris Campbell and A.J. Brown being rookies with relatively uncertain situations. But what did that side get? It extended the depth and high upside nature of three extra roster spots. This type of depth creates a scenario where my roster could lose a main player, and it’s actually viable that one of these players can slot in with legitimate production. What are the main themes of those players? All under the age of 25. All drafted in the top three rounds of the NFL draft. All have direct lines to snaps and production in 2019. Again, jiving with the idea we DO NOT know who will be the breakout players every season, this trade sets up four routes to creating a big market value boost. Will any ever come close to the value of Odell Beckham? Almost assuredly not. But can two become top 40 dynasty ADP assets that can be sold for profit? Yes, that’s very likely.
This will be a topic I’d like to hit next week, but it’s also important to recognize this has multiple functions. Not only will this be affecting your roster, but it’s also dramatically shifting the depth of the other teams. I call this tactic Stripping.
Stripping is taking a significant amount of young depth and future assets away from an owner. By gaining a lot of young depth from an opposing roster, they’re losing that insurance policy, both for the upcoming season and in the future. Shifting with the idea that all teams start with 15-ish base assets, losing two or three pieces to bolster the top of a roster is an incredible game of chicken. Again, it can work out for them, but their room for error essentially moves to zero when making a trade like this. I’ll throw out one more thing. If trading an elite asset, I almost always get the owners future first in the deal. Future firsts are THE safest assets in dynasty leagues. They always increase in value as the season goes along, and they can’t get hurt or fall off in play like NFL players. First-round rookie picks also have unlimited upside, in that, if the opposing owner’s team falls apart because of injury, that pick could jump into a top selection. Paper champions get bad injury luck every season. Take advantage of irrationally confident owners.
Next week, we’ll discuss which teams are optimal to target for these types of trades.
