Fantasy football: Tips for the trade market


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SALT LAKE CITY — With bye weeks upon us and teams beginning to separate themselves from the pack, fantasy football trade season has begun in earnest.

Objectively, the process of wheeling and dealing is the most exciting part of fantasy football. When else can an owner feel like a real-life NFL general manager in a more realistic sense than while concocting crazy blockbusters that could wildly alter the course of both teams?

There's an art to the trade market, though, and just like other areas of the fantasy world, those with a few of the right savvy tricks can find some little edges. Here are a few basic tips to make sure you're never the one being taken.

1. Know the rules

It always sounds simple, but it's always the most important factor. Different leagues play with different sets of guidelines for transactions, and these distinctions can often be a big deal.

First, know what the processing time for trades in your league is. Most leagues use an owner veto system (more on this in a bit), which typically leaves a 48-hour window open upon a trade being agreed to, wherein a majority of other owners in the league can vote to reverse the trade. Not all use this system, though — others have shorter or longer veto review periods, or none at all. Knowing which your league uses becomes important if, say, you're making a trade on Wednesday involving players active for that week's Thursday game.

Other details are also important, such as a league limit on total transactions and especially the trade deadline date. As always, don't be the one making a bonehead move because you couldn't check the league settings page.

2. Leverage, leverage, leverage

The casual fantasy player wildly underrates the degree to which leverage between owners dictates the course of trade negotiations. There are two major types of leverage, which often interconnect: team standing and team depth.

A typical fantasy regular season is just 13 games — teams multiple games below .500 within a few weeks are often at serious risk of being out of contention in short order if they don't get some wins right away, and those with a more comfortable record can often pounce. The right panicked owner could be convinced to give up premium value for an uneven package in return.

Relatedly, it's common for the teams near the bottom of the standings to be low on depth — that's often how they found themselves there. These owners will often have one or two studs surrounded by busts, and they should be prime targets for more well-positioned teams with depth to spare.

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I personally owe a large portion of my fantasy success in recent years to savvy manipulation of these facts. I'm aggressive as early as week two or three in any league where my team has started out well, prowling for increasingly desperate owners. I never, ever send away the best player in these sorts of deals, and search for moves I can make where I sacrifice fringe bench players for starter upgrades. The onus is on the weaker teams to start winning, and you can lean on that.

3. Buy low

It's said often, but bears repeating. Go back to week four or five in a given fantasy season and look at the leaders at each position — then jump to the end of that same season, and see how much changes. A few good weeks is no guarantee of continued production in every case, and the best owners make deals that may seem even at the time but become lopsided later on. Target guys who project to see increased usage, return from injury or face a weaker schedule later in the season.

4. Use the veto appropriately

Perhaps the largest misconception surrounding trades is the idea that the league veto rule is a way for managers to block any deal they feel is too one-sided. This is absolutely not the purpose of this rule.

The reason the rule was actually designed was to prevent collusion — two or more owners teaming up to unfairly strengthen one team, ostensibly with the goal of splitting any resulting profits at the end of the year. This is a valid and well-intentioned goal.

That's not how the veto ends up being used in the vast majority of cases, though. Instead, most owners treat it as an "unfair" button, vetoing any deal they fear makes a rival stronger regardless of whether anything nefarious was at play. In many leagues, it becomes so ridiculous that any deal without virtually identical value on both sides ends up being impossible to make.

This isn't how fantasy sports should be, and it removes much of the true competitive advantage for the best players. The whole point of trades are to allow owners to try to get the upper hand in a deal. Why should the other owners be allowed to remove that possibility with no evidence of actual cheating available?

The best leagues are built on trust between players — the knowledge that the veto will only be used for the right reasons. The very best don't even have such a rule, having built enough trust that the commissioner automatically approves all trades without real evidence of collusion.

If your league does contain a veto rule, don't be a jerk. If someone simply makes a great trade, don't vote it down just because it might not help you. Fantasy is only fun if it's done honestly.

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Ben Dowsett

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