In Part 1 of this series, I brought up the notion of paying a premium to get something that you value greatly. Part 2 dives into when and how that might make sense in fantasy football.
I specialize in the FFPC dynasty format, where there is a somewhat unique constraint that drives market action. You have to cut down to 16 players by the end of March, carrying just 20 in-season including a K and a DEF. That means that after the Super Bowl there is only about a month and a half to get deals done to get your roster trimmed down. Or you can risk cutting guys that have a lot of value. Most owners try to avoid that. This makes that particular trading period an absolute boon of market activity. There are lots of “one man’s junk is another man’s treasure” kind of deals. And there are lots of premiums paid for studs and there are lots of “cashing out dollars for three quarters” type of deals.
Around 60% of FFPC dynasty trades occur between the FF championship round and March 31st cutdown deadline
So when do we consolidate assets and when do we liquidate them? When do we pay a premium to move up in the world, so to speak, and when do we liquidate a declining asset before it rots on the vine? When do we decide we need to get younger and acquire draft capital? Is it dependent on the asset itself in a vacuum or is it dependent on something larger and more nebulous?
What is the overall state of my franchise and what does that mean for players X, Y, and Z?
I kidded on Robert Woods in Part 1 like a guy that might be worth a dollar as a shiny ice-cold Coke, but that he might only be a warm RC cola that has been sitting out too long, and therefore I might consider selling him for three quarters. But he also has tremendous production value still and might help prop up one of my lineups where I am perhaps a contender but a little weaker at WR. If so maybe I’m less likely to move him. If I have him on one of my more dominant teams then I am more likely to sell him for three quarters and advertise him as a dollar.
But it is based on an assessment of what my franchise looks like overall, which is a tricky thing to do. We can do it subjectively and look at our presumed starting lineup(s) and then bang our chest and say it looks great but what if we tried to look at it quantitatively?
What is the quantitative value of my franchise and what does that mean for players X, Y, and Z?
It is one thing to look at production projections and to sort players according to those values. That is pretty close to what we do in redraft. But in dynasty, we aren’t just looking at production, we are looking at trade value or some kind of combination of trade value and production profile that gives us a sense of what the market value is on a given player or set of players.
Enter the trade calculators. It is a tough topic for some people so all I will say is that I like to look at about four or five trade calculators, and I more or less average them out, making my gut instinct adjustments on a few players that I am either way higher than consensus on or way lower. I never use any calculator or ranking as gospel in any way. All this process represents is a way of estimating a range of reasonable market value expectations to inform us during negotiations. But I also use the values to populate my DBs where I have all my rosters loaded. By summing them up relative to 16 roster spots in the off-season and 20 in-season, I can have some kind of market-adjusted estimate of my overall franchise value. Future draft capital is given a number as well, though future draft picks might have the most pliable values of all.
How useful is it to have an idea of franchise value?
I would like to explore that question more and more throughout the next few seasons. But for now, I own 29 FFPC dynasty teams, many of which I bought as projects at auction when the previous owners decided to leave those leagues. Such teams can be bought and sold at FFPC’s partner site Dynastydepot.com and I bought 20 of them this offseason. Mostly at the $250 tier but added a couple of $500s in there as well. The vast majority of them were discounted and in the end, I have about $2,300 in freeroll credit. The other nine are from startups I did either this year or from previous seasons. I have 10 single-QB leagues and 19 Superflex, which I am finding that I might have an even bigger specialty in than the standard FFPC single QB leagues, but that will be a future topic.
Some of these discounted teams were discounted for dubious reasons. Like the previous owner put a killer squad together in a startup in 2020 but took CMC and their season didn’t go so great. Then they sell the ($250) team for $99 to me. Other teams were much worse but had similar prices and I decided I wanted to take on a few project teams and write about them. I bought other stacked teams closer to the at-cost price and I even paid over the $250 sticker price for a couple that had just come off championships or solid playoff campaigns and looked good for years to come. People sell for a variety of reasons.
Ok, so franchise values. Here is an example of one of my $250 legacy squads, that according to my system here, has the most current franchise value of my single-QB teams. I have no intention of selling it but I believe if I listed the team for sale I could get as much as 4x the price. Yes, people are paying the “assuming it wins a championship” price for some of these. The one on the right is a $250 team I bought for $39 and it is by far the worst in my portfolio.
This is pliable and changes from week to week – the black cell reflects how crappy this team is because right now I don’t project keeping 16. That will change. Don’t @me about the colors – I’m a cartographer by trade
The way I lay this out is my presumed starting lineup of 10 up top, then my presumed six bench keepers for the end of March, then the next four are my presumed bench keepers to get up to 20 in-season, and the stragglers below that thick black line are the players I would cut as of today. Or I should say as of the time of this screenshot because looking at it I see I need to downgrade James Robinson. I have done it to my other rosters where I own him but I see I still have him pegged as being worth 25 here. That is an error on my part and I need to update some of these lists now that the rookie draft season came and went. In FFPC we do our rookie drafts in May. And I also see I need to change some of my presumed cuts/keepers. I don’t think I want to cut Fuller and DeeJay might be the backup in Seattle to own. I’m also likely to drop Fitzpatrick and keep Trequan for example. But this is the rough-cut look of what these two franchises look like.
And in a different cell, I type out a narrative of what this team needs and what my approach is going to be say going into cuts, or into the draft, or the season. This helps inform me the next time I assess my franchise and update values or cut and past names around.
For reference, the team on the right was purchased in February of this year and held a franchise value of 125 when I bought it and during this offseason, I have increased it up to 205 and increased my future draft capital. It still has a long way to go to become competitive but I could also theoretically sell the team right now, having never competed with it, at a profit over the $39 I spent to acquire it. But I plan to keep building and let it ride, then reassess next year. Here are a couple of trades I made from that team:
I should have got more for Mahomes and Mims looked better to me 3 months ago. Took Nico Collins at 2.07 and Gainwell at 2.12
This legacy team on the left was a playoff team last year and came up just short. I came into the offseason in 2021 with a surplus of talent and draft capital. This was a perfect example of a time to consolidate assets and pay a premium to do so. I’m not super proud of the move, and alcohol was involved, but this is what I did:
I was able to keep Pittman, 2.01 (Marshall), and another 2022 1st
I am not going to defend this trade that hard as I truthfully kind of regret it. I negotiated very hard and managed to keep three of my most important pieces that had been on the table, so I don’t hate it either. But after the draft played out I saw that I could probably be in stronger shape had I stayed put. But you don’t acquire guys like Diggs for cheap. My starting lineup is fundamentally better than it was before. I did not think the Jags would take Etienne and on some level had more faith in Robinson than I probably should have. But Henderson and Corey Davis were guys I wasn’t starting and they were taking up space, particularly going forward. I think on an individual piece by piece level, I probably sold them as dollars for three quarters and lost a little value, and it is the same story with the draft picks that I moved. But overall, I paid something more like six quarters for the dollar that is Diggs. And maybe it is more like I paid $7 for a $5 bill. Whatever.
The point is I paid a premium to get Diggs, a very nice shiny ice-cold Coke that will likely stay cold for a couple of years. Antonio Brown will eventually be an easy cut or cheap add-in to some trade I make and I didn’t care if he was in this deal or not, so I have effectively cleared a roster spot as well. And that has immense value, something I will dive into deeper in an upcoming article.
In Part 3, I will look at some Superflex examples, and attempt to use this lens of franchise value and vision as we determine whether we should liquidate assets or consolidate them.
Thanks for reading! Feel free to reach out to me to chat about fantasy football on Twitter @Ship_Chaser and follow along with me on my journey as I chase six-figure paydays! Look for my new articles soon!
