This is the fourth installment of my step-by-step series on how I’ve rebuilt one of my dynasty squads over the past year. The first part covered why I made the decision to rebuild and the crucial first moves to determine the new shape of my roster. The second part covered how I trade and walked through one set of negotiations from start to finish. The third part (published late– whoops!) came at the end of the season as I walked through the final deals I made and evaluated all of the decisions during the rebuild.
In this part, I wanted to cover a few offseason trades on through the rookie draft and wrap up with a quick before and after comparison.
Trade #8:
On April 4th, a leaguemate approached me offering Mark Andrews for the 7th pick in the rookie draft. As context, remember that this league uses an extremely TE-centric scoring (it works out to about 2.1 points per reception for tight ends). As additional context, I had the 2nd, 7th, 9th, 11th, and 12th picks in the draft, while the other owner had the 6th pick.
For me, this was a very easy trade to accept. Again, tight ends are extremely important in this format, though most other GMs don’t tend to prioritize the position appropriately, IMO. In an efficient world, I’d venture 6-8 teams should be using a tight end in their flex on a weekly basis. Actual rates tend to be much lower, but I’ve always tried to roster two startable tight ends. Jonnu Smith had been a solid starter for me last year, but landing with Hunter Henry in New England complicated the picture, and behind him I only had long-shot fliers Chris Herndon and Dawson Knox.
The other GM mentioned afterward that he had Noah Fant and planned on taking Kyle Pitts with his 1.06 pick, so he felt Andrews was expendable. I had to break it to him that Pitts was not going to make it past me at the 1.02 pick. In hindsight, I don’t know if he regrets the trade. Sometimes trading for rookie picks before the draft can lead to bargains when tiers aren’t quite set yet, but usually if you want a specific player it’s better to wait until they’re on the clock.
With that said, by the time the draft rolled around this deal looked like relatively fair value. I clearly preferred the Top 3 rookies to Andrews, and I clearly preferred Andrews to my 9th-12th ranked rookies. I think there would be an interesting argument as to how he’d compare to the 4th-8th ranked guys for me in this format (in some order, Etienne, Williams, Smith, Waddle, and Bateman). I’m happy with the deal because TEs are scarcer, but it didn’t wind up being the home run I thought it might be.
(Also, neither of us got Pitts, who went 1.01. Of course, April was months before the drumbeat built for him, so expecting him to fall was much more reasonable at the time.)
On the surface, this seems like an example of me getting lucky. Most of the rebuild I had to work hard for, but this deal just fell into my lap. But I think this deal really underlines the importance of that whole “building relationships” thing I stressed in part 2.
Why did the GM approach me with this offer? Because he was a co-owner on my team for a year before a spot opened up for him. Because we’d spent countless hours talking about things like relative TE values in this scoring system. Because we often share our rankings and our thoughts, and we both trust the other that they won’t be used against each other. He told me he wanted Pitts at 1.06 because he knew I wasn’t going to change my rankings just because I got that new information. I told him I was going to take Pitts at 1.02 because I trusted he wouldn’t leverage that to try to jump ahead of me to get Pitts for himself.
A lot of my trade negotiations seem like dead ends, but in my experience, if you’re negotiating the right way, even the deals that lead nowhere are highly productive because they’re laying the groundwork for future deals.
Speaking of…
Some Trade Negotiations That Led Nowhere:
As I mentioned, my goal was to walk out of the draft with Kyle Pitts. For most of the offseason I felt pretty good about my chances of doing so. As the drumbeat started building for him in May, though, I felt my chances slipping away, so I started making some offers for the 1.01.
I offered Cam Akers for the 1.01, which at the time was most often being used on Najee Harris. I’d been meaning to diversify Akers because I have him rostered in both of my dynasty leagues, and that would let me walk out with both Pitts and Ja’Marr Chase. I was shot down. I tried various other offers (the 1.09 + 1.11 + 1.12 for the 1.01, the 1.02 + 1.12 for the 1.01, etc) and was shot down on all of them.
A couple weeks later the GM with the 1.01 posted his rookie rankings and he had Pitts at 1.01 even in traditional formats, which was a major buzzkill. I’ve continued talks, but chances seem slim of anything happening.
As the draft kicked off, the GM who traded Andrews to me and I spent a lot of time talking about our respective rankings and our respective picks. I had picks 2, 9, 11, and 12, while he had picks 6, 7, and 18. We talked a lot about the best way to shuffle picks between us so we both wound up with players we liked the best. For instance, I felt there was a pretty solid dropoff after Smith and Waddle, while he was really interested in walking out of the draft with two of Bateman, Smith, and Sermon.
These were actually some of the most fun negotiations I’ve had because many of our competitors publish rookie rankings. We knew Pitts would go 1st, I would take Chase at 2, and Najee Harris would go at 3. 1.04 was a wildcard, but the pick wound up going to Javonte Williams, at which point we knew Etienne would go 1.05.
That left Smith and Waddle on the board at 1.06 and 1.07, and I liked the idea of trading 1.09, 1.11, and 1.12 to get both of them. The problem was we were pretty sure the guy at 1.08 would take either Smith or Waddle if they were available, but would take Sermon if they weren’t, which means my partner would only be able to get one of his three targets.
My partner could take Bateman at 6, I could trade up for Smith at 7, the wildcard GM would take Waddle at 8, and then my partner could take Sermon at 9. But at that point I just didn’t see much motivation to move up from 9 to 7 on my end since I could stand pat and likely get one of Smith or Waddle, anyway. So we never wound up making the trade, I stood pat, and sure enough, Waddle fell to me at 9.
We had some discussions later about me trading down from 12 to 18, but the problem was I had 17 guys I liked in this class and I was reasonably confident they’d all go in the top 17, so I was reluctant to trade down. My read on the situation wound up being right, so I was happy I stood pat; if I had gone down to 18 I’d have been left choosing between Freiermuth, Zach Wilson, or Mac Jones, but I already had Murray and Herbert at QB and I wasn’t the biggest Freiermuth fan, even in this format. He’d have been my pick, but I wouldn’t have been that thrilled with it.
Either way, these negotiations didn’t result in any deals, but they still felt pretty productive.
Rookie Picks 1-12
As I mentioned, Pitts went 1.01, which left me with a choice between Chase and Harris at 1.02. It was a close call, but I thought Chase was a more talented player and I’d rather bet on that. My one hesitation is that I don’t often find myself drafting at the top of the round in this league, and good young running backs rarely make their way to the back of the first, so this would be one of my few opportunities to land a young cornerstone at the position. But my mantra is draft for talent, trade for need, so I took Chase.
Sure enough, running backs went off the board with each of the next three picks. My friend took Bateman at 6 and, after agonizing for a bit, grabbed Sermon over Smith at 7. (His calculus was the same as mine; he liked Smith better, but this league did not present many opportunities to grab rookie running backs with a pulse, so if he wanted one he’d have to “overdraft” him a bit.) Smith went at 1.08, and I was thrilled to get Waddle at 1.09. (A nice reminder that consensus is great but players will always fall if you’re patient.)
Fields was a surprise pick at 1.10, which left me with back-to-back picks and Trevor Lawrence still on the board. Ordinarily, Lawrence would be a no-brainer (or even Lance if Lawrence was gone), but as I mentioned, I already had Kyler Murray and Justin Herbert. “Draft for talent, trade for need” is awesome when you’re in the late 2nd. I’ve had six picks in the late 2nd round in this league’s history and I’ve used them on Justin Herbert, Baker Mayfield, Deshaun Watson, Austin Hooper, Jameis Winston, and Teddy Bridgewater. Despite already being pretty deep at QB (and TE) in each of those seasons, those picks overall wound up returning tons of value relative to the RBs and WRs who went in that range.
But I’d rather not spend a premium asset on a #3 QB in the middle of a rebuild if I don’t have to, so I shopped around to see if anyone was willing to trade up to grab Lawrence and resolve that dilemma for me. I was able to find a taker, so I took Elijah Moore at 11 and traded pick 12.
Trade #9/#10
I approached the GM with the roughest roster in the league and offered to trade him Lawrence for some of his older assets (at a discount). I offered Lawrence + Myles Gaskin for Aaron Jones.
Now, Jones doesn’t really fit with my rebuild. I think I’m good enough to make the playoffs this year, but am still probably not a top-3 title contender. I hate to spend young assets on a 26-year-old RB if I’m not sure about my 2021 title odds. But I think Jones is a more liquid asset than Lawrence (more teams need starting RBs than young QBs at the moment), and I think in a vacuum he was more valuable than the pieces I gave up, so I was tentatively okay with the trade. Hopefully Jones gives me enough of an edge to let me contend this year. If not, hopefully he doesn’t get hurt and I can flip him for value to someone who is contending. I’m taking on risk, but I think I’m at a point in the rebuild where I can afford to do that.
The other GM wanted a bit more than my initial offer for Aaron Jones, so he countered asking for Darrynton Evans and my 4.02 as well, giving back his 5th round pick in the exchange. I countered back asking for Blake Jarwin instead of the 5th, and he agreed. This worked out great for me, because in this system I preferred Jarwin to Evans and my 4.02, anyway. Dalton Schultz was TE10 last year, TE5 before Dak got hurt, and Jarwin signed a big extension last offseason. He could easily be a weekly flex for me if things break right. So I really viewed this as two different trades– Gaskin + 1.12 for Jones and Evans + 4.02 for Jarwin. (The 4.02 wound up being used on Breshad Perriman. Things are typically pretty ugly by the 4th round of rookie drafts.)
That wiped out all of my picks until the 5.02, so I was mostly reduced to a role as an observer. As I mentioned, all the other players I was considering at 1.11/1.12 wound up going in the next five picks (after Moore and Lawrence went Trey Lance, Terrance Marshall, Kadarius Toney, Michael Carter, and Rondale Moore.) With them gone, I liked Zach Wilson and Mac Jones but not when I was already so strong at QB, and Freiermuth had value just because of the format, and then we were firmly in the land of longshots and fliers.
Where Things Stand
I still haven’t gotten to my 5.02 pick yet, but currently here’s how my roster looked at the beginning of 2020 compared to how it looks today. Bolded players in the second screenshot are guys who were on my roster 10 months ago:
Of the 26 skill players (I also have the Rams defense, but they don’t count), only six are holdovers. Two of those (Ross and Hurd) only survived because they were able to hang out on IR and therefore didn’t cost a roster spot. Another two (Ruggs and Herbert) were my top two rookie picks last year. Finally, Herndon and Fournette were low-value players whose talent I liked more than their cost where I decided to gamble on things breaking right for them and their value going up. Fournette played well but re-signed in Tampa. Herndon did not play well, but with a rookie QB and a non-Gase head coach he gets one last chance to make some noise.
Currently, my Top 2 quarterbacks are both 24 or younger, my Top 2 running backs are both 22 or younger, and my top ~9(!) wide receivers are all 24 or younger. My tight ends are a hair older than I’d like (which is partly why I wanted Pitts), but some of that is just the position. Right now, tight ends are either 26+ and productive or <24 and not productive. My guys are among the younger tight ends available. With the exception of Aaron Jones (which I discussed above), I feel I’ve done a great job at maximizing my potential competitive window in case I whiff a bit on aspects of the rebuild.
I also think the composition is pretty strong. I may only have four running backs with a pulse, but three of them are Top 15 per dynasty consensus. I may not have any WRs projected to be Top 24 this year, but I have seven guys who are 24 or younger and drafted in the Top 50 picks of the NFL draft; with that many dart throws the odds are good that several hit. I consider a second TE to be a virtual starting position in this league, and I’ve got four guys behind Mark Andrews who I think could be Top 18 this year if things break well.
Here’s where everyone on the roster was acquired.
If you count rookie picks that weren’t originally mine (the 1.09 and the 1.11), 17 out of 26 players on my roster were acquired via trade in the last ten months. That’s about 2/3s of the team. Regardless of source, about 90% of players have been on my team for 12 months or less. We’ll see how productive the rebuild proves to be, but my original complaint was that I hadn’t been putting in enough work on my team, and there’s no question that that’s no longer the case.
