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Post by gambler on Apr 5, 2012 15:20:58 GMT -5
A couple of "value of X player" topics got me to thinking on this for a few days now and I wanted to write something up and see if others agree or not. I'm pretty successful in fantasy football. I've been playing in 5 money leagues for 5 years now. Never had a negative cash flow season, average winnings after entry fees is anywhere from $500-$1000 per year. I'm no "guru" but I get by. So I'm trying to find whats different, and this is they hypothesis I came up with. I believe "most" owners are scared. This spans a couple phases: First is the draft. Most won't deviate far from the "established" ranking order 99% of fantasy sites regurgitate to the public. It's done because people fear being wrong and possibly being ridiculed for making a pick that others don't accept as normal. One example I've seen this year on the forums is people refusing to acknowledge Ryan Mathews is a top tier back going into this season. There is a mountain of evidence supporting the fact he is but that fear of being wrong keeps people from capitalizing on him. FF sites aren't saying it yet so they can't/won't believe it. Next we have trades. The average owner is even MORE scared to make trades during the season. The reason for this is obvious. If they are wrong on the trade, everyone in the league will see it. They will look like fools, their team will suffer, It may be harder to talk on the league forums (street cred). I've noticed repeatedly that owners with serious weaknesses on their teams will turn down solid trade offers just to not "sell low" on a player. They would rather lose the season & their money then take a leap of faith and try and salvage something. Last season I had horrid luck in a redraft. Something like 5 of my top 6 picks either missed most or all of the season (Manning, Austin, AJ, McFadden, etc, etc). I managed to salvage that season and make the playoffs (and collect positive money) by completing a week 8 trade of AJ for JJones and Tebow. Both finished strong down the stretch. Point being I didn't care if 100% of my league thought I was selling low on AJ. I recognized a need at QB and liked what I was seeing in Jones and did it anyway. Lets add to this that player rankings change drastically every year. Top10's are almost always half new. The players mostly don't change...our perception of them does. A RB gets a standard hammy injury and misses 4 games and plays at 75% for two more. Suddenly he's ranked 10 spots lower the following year then he was. A QB goes down and his replacement can't get the ball to that stud WR as well for a year. Two RBs share a backfield but the following year one leaves via free agency. You have to be able to evaluate talent and situation together. Then you have to be able to ignore what everyone else tells you that you should think about a player and make your own calls even if it's not popular. Long winded I know! But I thoroughly believe that's the key to being a successful FF owner. Stop being afraid, do your research (and research doesn't mean checking FF rankings from sites), and get the players that will help you win. Forward thinking! Don't live in the past! Am I off my rocker here? It wouldn't be the first time
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Post by burgandy on Apr 5, 2012 16:47:22 GMT -5
Good stuff gamblers. I think you should fine tune this alittle and send it to me, Sham-wow, or Jay Bird and we need to do a feature with this angle. ABT's of FF (Always Be Trading). Maybe take the angle on how to capitolize on that fear and how to predict to your advantage. IE) Predicting draft order and when you may be able to pass on "said" player for another round or two due to "group think" mentalities. That is EXACTLY what we here at DFW are trying to teach and cover. We hate at times to give up the secrets to our success, but at the same time hopefully it will keep people coming back. Any interest in editing this in article form and letting up publish it under "the art of trading" in our dynasty 101 section or whatever section we feel it fits best?
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Post by Jaysports on Apr 5, 2012 16:58:51 GMT -5
First of all great topic, and your point is SOLID advice. I agree 100%.
I play in 8 money leagues with the smallest being a $25 and the biggest being $150. However, I added the FootballGuys $350 redraft league last year with 3,000 owners and won my 12-team league taking home $1,600. On top of that I won 4 other leagues and brought home $3,500 last season. The year before I won 4 out of 8 and won around $2,700. Not trying to brag at all, but we all have the same goal here. First of all we all do this for fun, some of us do this to win money, some as a competitive outlet. In the end we all want one thing which is to win and kick ass.
Reasons for my personal success are similar to what Gambler stated.....
1) Research, research and more research. It gets to the point where you know this stuff like the back of your hand.
2) You have to have forward thinking. I see it all the time where people are chasing last year's stats from players. History is good to help determine reliability and consistency. But, teams can change over night due to the draft, FA and coaching changes. That can have a huge change on the value of player "x" moving forward. You have to be willing to put yourself out there in trying to almost predict the future based on past performance and new variables that will affect future results.
3) Player values seriously do change over night, and if your not proactive about moving players before their decline or trading for players before they breakout than odds are more than likely that you will always be stuck in the middle to bottom of your league year after year. This is obvious in dynasty as we keep our players year to year. But, I see this happen in redraft every single year. How many times have you gotten done with your main redraft draft and you're talking to your league mates and 99% of the guys say this....."I love my team, can't believe I got player "x" in the 7th round" or whatever it is. Everyone always loves every player on their team, that's why they drafted them right? Well folk, sh#t changes fast. 4 weeks into the season those same owners are still saying the same thing....I can't trade him, I like player "x" and that's why I drafted him. It's always the same scenario too. They drafted a name value player who busted and he's getting what he thinks are crap offers from owners who are trying to buy-low on said player. Well, I can't tell you how many times I've been so thankful that an owner has turned down some of my offers since that player I was trying to buy-low never rebounded. I guess my point here is this. These owners just can't get over the fact that their player who was valued at $100 at the start of the season is only worth 60 cents after only four weeks instead of realizing they have a very legit solid offer in front of them. I'm sure they do get some truly crap offers, and maybe that's what makes it foggy for them when a good offer is finally sitting there.
4) You have to be willing to overpay to get your guys. Like Gamblers stated a lot of folks are afraid to trade unless they feel like the deal is a slam dunk in their favor. I have no issues losing on overall current value, but I do expect that value to turn in my favor sometime in the near future based on how the players in the deal are trending up or down moving forward... Who knows, just one guy rambling here. Lol
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Post by gambler on Apr 5, 2012 17:42:00 GMT -5
Justin elaborated on a lot of it but I don't mind fleshing out the idea with more examples if you want to add it into an article. Had a few extra points I thought about after posting I'd like to add in anyway. Thanks for the positive feedback gang.
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Post by houdini on Apr 5, 2012 17:42:43 GMT -5
Good stuff.....
I'm willing to bet that the majority of the vocal members here are probably pretty successful in this hobby. That's why we're here posting, debating, discussing, offering insight and opinions....cuz we're all pretty confident and have experienced some level of "winning".
I agree that there are a lot of owners out there in the FF community that are afraid to take chances or separate themselves from "group-think". There are also a lot of owners out there who simply have to "win" the trade in order to make one. I think Flip said it in another thread...the best trades are the ones that benefit both sides....but many times those trades don't happen because some owners want - or need - to get so much value back that it becomes obvious they're the clear winner of the deal. I'm not so sure it's the fear of making a bad deal that haunts those particular owners as much as it is a need to walk away victorious every time.
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Post by gambler on Apr 5, 2012 17:46:34 GMT -5
I'd agree with that Houdini. I know many an owner that if the trade looks even they pass. Reason being they think I have got some inside info on their player they don't know about and it will end up looking bad for them.
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Post by shamrock84 on Apr 5, 2012 18:36:02 GMT -5
Great thoughts and I totally agree. 90% of the time people are not active traders because they are afraid. They aren't confident that they know enough about it and so pass on it if its even remotely close. This goes to Justin's point that you sometimes do have to really overpay for players. And that is fine assuming you have the value to give up.
A lot of people don't put in the time that I'm guessing most on this message board do. As a result they really can't make a quick decision on a trade. They need to research it in real time and that kills many deals as well.
Unfortunately I'm not sure there's a way around this. You can try and form a league with just experts who are active but those types of leagues are much harder to keep intact than leagues with friends. Sometimes you just have to take the good with the bad.
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Post by gambler on Apr 5, 2012 19:11:33 GMT -5
Typed out an extended version on this (and a tad more refined) and sent it vi PM to you burgandy. Feel free to use any or all of it.
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Post by Coin Flip on Apr 5, 2012 19:36:43 GMT -5
Question is .....how do we get more people to relax and fight their fear of trade fright? It really is what your explaining. Trade Fright.
Great article. Look forward to more on this topic.
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Post by burgandy on Apr 5, 2012 20:52:28 GMT -5
Question is .....how do we get more people to relax and fight their fear of trade fright? It really is what your explaining. Trade Fright. Great article. Look forward to more on this topic. Gamblers forwarded my an edited and updated copy. I will publish tomorrow. I'll tell you how. Post a link to this glorious website tomorrow as it will be featured.
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Post by shamrock84 on Apr 5, 2012 21:03:01 GMT -5
Haha nice. Much props to Gambler for providing this insight. Love your willingness to share your thoughts and rankings with the community. Thanks a ton!
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Post by blitzers on Apr 5, 2012 22:44:48 GMT -5
Like the topic and look forward to the article. I must say that group think is important. I wish all my competitors use group think.
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Post by orangecrush on Apr 10, 2012 16:14:39 GMT -5
From my experience (I've been playing fantasy football since the late 70's if you can believe that), in order to be ultra competitive, you have to be fearless in making trades without being foolish. The trick to walking this fine line is to fully analyze your roster and pinpoint the exact need you have to make your roster a championship contender and to not take your eye off of the ball and get distracted by other offers.
Case in point: I am in a 10 team, 45 man roster dynasty league that started up last year. I drafted a very good team which included Jones-Drew, McFadden (with Bush backing him up), Murray, Wallace, Julio Jones, Antonio Brown, Graham and Akers. I also drafted Peyton Manning and didn't back him up well, taking some of the players mentioned earlier instead. Why would I need to back up Manning? He's the iron man right? Never missed a game in 12 years. Well, we all know how that turned out. Half way through the season, it was clear that if I was going to contend for a championship, I needed to do something about a QB. I traded Sanchez, Santonio Holmes, and my #1 and #2 rookie picks in 2012 for Cam Newton. This trade stirred up quite a bit of controversy in the league, many thinking I gave up too much. I don't know if I gave up too much, but I gave up what I had to to make the deal. Bottom line: I ended up winning the league championship.
Identifying the deal you absolutely need to make and then going out and making that deal happen is the key to winning championships IMO.
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Post by Jaysports on Apr 10, 2012 17:00:19 GMT -5
Great take OC, I think some were probably second-guessing it at the time because there were still a ton of Holmes believers out there. It wasn't until later in the season when all the hate comae for him. You definitely sold on Holmes at the perfect time while buying Cam at the right time too before he proved his consistency.
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g
Newbie
Posts: 32
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Post by g on Apr 10, 2012 17:01:39 GMT -5
I think that to know your league is a key #1 . If you play in 150 $ league and up , chances are that majority of owners are very good and knowledgeable. This make trading difficult at some degree . I will give you very clear example (I hope LOL) I win 12 teams ppr last year and the main reason WHY is Brees and Stafford at QB position (starting only 1). Well, in off-season I tried to trade Brees or Stafford for upgrade at WR position (Bowe,Garcon were my starters). One owner (he is here on Dynastyfootballwarehouse and very active LOL) clearly needs help at QB (Bradford was his best) and have very solid team (Calvin,R.Rice for example and one). His BEST OFFER for Brees was .........you ready ? Brees for Bradford and J.Simpson from Bungals !!! But my favorite part is how he explain IT IS very good for me because I own Stafford already and gain Simpson (who is weed addicted) in this trade. What I am trying to say is : every league is different and the same player could be value differently in different league.
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