With the first week of the NFL season just a few days away, the Fantasy Football season is about to begin in earnest. While some of you may still have drafts to complete, and I'll direct those of you who do to my Draft Tips, most of you have probably already completed your drafts. While we prepare for week 1 of the Fantasy Football Season we might be evaluating our rosters and seeing deficiencies or at least areas we wish we were a bit stronger in.
While scouring the waivers is definitely a winnable options, so too are trades. In the NFL we rarely see player for player trades anymore. Before this past season's McCoy for Alonso, the last notable player swap was Champ Bailey and Clinton Portis. Hopefully your Fantasy League is a bit more friendly when it comes to swapping players. Yet the reason trades are so hard to get done in your Fantasy Leagues are likely the same reasons they're so hard to get those trades done in the NFL. Teams value their players differently, and it's hard to compare players out of position or put a number on them. Luckily in Fantasy Football we get a little help with Player Rankings and Cheat Sheets, but even these can fail us at times.
When sending or receiving a trade, it's important to be able to evaluate that trade and see how it benefits you. While the nature of trades is that they're supposed to be balanced (why else would both parties agree to them), there are typically still winners and thus losers of trades. Hopefully after reading this fantasy football trade advice you'll be able to win your trades.
The first part of every trade is considering the league you're in. This needs to be considered for every roster move you make, but it's important when trading players. Things to be considered? Starting Roster Spots, Bench Size, IR Spots, League Scoring Settings, Is it Re-draft/Keeper/Dynasty, how many teams make the playoffs, and who are the managers Experts/Novices/Friends? This is a good starting point, it helps shape the sort of moves you might need to make for your team and gives you a general awareness of what moves should happen and what moves could happen. If you're not considering these things then you might be missing out on value, or just making the wrong move for your team.
The second part is knowing your roster, knowing its strengths and weaknesses, and having a feel for your year long strategy. Who you're starting, where your depth options are for bye weeks and injuries, streaming options, punt weeks, and such so you can get a better sense of where you can afford to move talent and where you need to sure up.
Once you receive the trade, look at each of the players, really look at them. Don't just read the name and rank them off a cheat sheet. Chances are you haven't looked at the other managers players as closely as you have yours. Whats their schedule look like? Are they coming off powder-cake match-ups that inflated their price tag only to head into a horrible stretch, are they a buy low candidate or a sell high? What is their opportunity going forward? What is their playoff schedule like? It's probably a good idea to freshen up on your own players, you probably want to avoid selling low.
Now that you've actually looked at the players in the trade, puzzle out who the best player in the trade is. Not just off rankings, but going forward which player is likely going to be the best (almost every player has upside). In fantasy football trades you almost always want to be the owner receiving the best player in a trade. Why?
You want to be upgrading talent. Players do not contribute to you winning unless they're starting. You have a limited number of starting roster spots so any time a player scores points on your bench you're losing value. Too much depth is a waste (yes you do need some depth, don't trade it all away). If you're able to turn a 15 point starter and a 10 point bench player, into a 19 point starter you're winning the trade. That's the most encouraged and straightforward answer I can give you. This means that you want to turn your depth and multiple players into better players.
Which brings us to another point. Your bench is limited, and while your bench can't contribute to you winning by scoring points, it does give you value. Bench players are essentially assets, ones that can be traded or used. If you're simply sitting on your assets all season you're not getting value out of them. Move those assets. If they're not returning on investment drop them, and looking for new ones. How do you cash in on their value? By trading them. In a typical 10 or 12 man league, there's going to end up being talent that isn't rostered due to bench space limitations. It's not necessarily starting talent, but it could be if the opportunity is right. By trading depth for starters you're not only increasing your chances to win each week, but you're also opening up spots on your bench for additional assets.
If every trade was as simple as getting the best player and trading depth for starters, trades would likely never get done (and perhaps that's why they're still hard to accomplish in fantasy football). There are other considerations, typically ones that come about due to poor circumstances. Mistakes during drafting, poor foresight, or injuries can often put a roster into some uncomfortable situations that make accepting "losing" trades necessary. If your RB1 goes down, and the gems you drafted late never pan out and your RB2 has an ugly stretch of games down the line, well its time to start looking for some RB help. This is when you start looking at trades perhaps a bit differently. Yes the other manager might be getting the best player, but your receiving a couple of RBs you're comfortable starting and still have some upside to them.
Sometimes you have to pay a premium for scarce resources. This is perhaps the primary reason so many Fantasy Football Experts tout the roster as many running backs as possible advice. Running backs are a scarce resource, there's typically less than one startable running back per a team, and a typical league needs 20 to 24 before flex considerations. This means that running backs tend to be a scarce resource, however TE1 can also be a scarce resource that costs a premium. Typically I would advise against trading for them if you have to pay the premium, but sometime times it can't be avoided or you just have the talent elsewhere to pull it off. Particularly down the stretch when you're attempting to make your roster playoff friendly. This is when unloading depth for QB1s and TE1s makes sense when your trying to fit those extra 2 or 3 points into your starting line-up for the post season.
My final bit of evaluation advice would be to never trade for Kickers or Defenses, if your in a bad situation there simply start streaming. It's common place enough that you'll be able to find guides relatively easily. In fact here's dtlerch who will release weekly rankings for streaming defenses. Outside of that, there's just little value to be had in a trade and offering up any positional players for one is just a loss in value in most cases. They're typically unreliable week to week with a tendency to be highly match-up reliant (or in the case of Kickers, random chance). I would extend this advice to QBs as well, but I'd amend that you should rarely trade for a QB (see paragraph above) but trading your own QB for positional players can be good value.
Hopefully after reading this you've come away with some ideas on how to better evaluate the trades being proposed to you. If you took one thing away from this it should be that you want to upgrade your starters. Depth is important, but a player never won anyone a game while sitting on their bench.
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