The preseason games are out of the way, the regular season has begun and its time to look at your team after the draft. Maybe you tore it up and have your dream team or panicked and everything fell apart, but no matter which players you drafted they are yours and you are going to have to make the most of them. The draft is only a small part of what determines the seasons out come. Fantasy football isn’t a set and forget game, how you manage your team will determine if you take it all or crash and burn.
Replacing your injured players and searching for great ones off of the waiver are child’s play compared to trading. First and for most you need to know what a player is worth. You need to know your league rules. All of the time people ask should I trade X for Y or similar fantasy advice but with out context of their league it is impossible to say. If you are in a PPR league that gives points for return yards then your wide receiver that does kick off and punt returns should be coveted like gold. Is it a 2QB league? If so then all of a sudden the value of QB 11-20 is ten times higher. If you are going to improve your team by trading make sure you know what your currency is worth.
To make a good trade the first step is to analyze your team and decide where it is weak and what position you want to improve. Once you have decided you can search you opponent’s teams for players that you would want to fill that position. This is where the three types of trades come in.
The first is a trade for positional strength. You leverage your depth at a position to trade for another. An example is that you are weak at running back but strong at wide receiver. You would find a team who is Weak at wide receiver and strong at running back and make a trade to improve both teams. Usually these trades involve bench players that when swapped would be a starter on the other players team. These types of trades are great to be apart of and making multiple of them over a season can give you the edge over most of the league. Think of it like this if you made a trade like this with a third of the member in a 10 team league, your team would have gotten better 3 times while each of theirs only got better once.
The second type of trade it trading your depth for strength. These trades are usually 2 for 1 or 3 for 2 trades where one team trades many of their benched players for one of the other teams starters. Trades like this can happen for many reasons. Injuries leave team A with no good running backs and the owner has no replacements. So they trade their Stud Receiver to team B for a downgrade and two start able running backs. Team A’s weekly points likely improve or at least become far more consistent while team B trades away their extra players to improve their starting line up. These trades can be a great late in the season when losing owners need to shake things up if they have hope to make the playoffs. You can hopefully trade away your depth to them for studs that will get you through the playoff push.
The last trade type is less important than the first two. Its to fill an immediate need. This trade happens to resolve temporary problems a team has by trading for a player they don’t feel good about starting for the rest of the season. These trades are almost only bench players and don’t truly improve either team. An example is that two teams have player that could fill in for the others bye weeks and it benefits them both teams to trade players that wouldn’t be played beside during a bye week.
Keeping an eye out for good trades is what separates the great fantasy owners from the good. So remember to look not only for where your team is weak, but where your opponents are too.