Taming the Wild
How many times has this happened to you? Your phone buzzes and you read a trade notification email and you are left pondering, “What is that guy thinking!?” You try to research information that you may have missed that would change your opinion on the trade but cannot find a thing. You then label that owner as a scrub and throw a terrible trade offer their way to get in on the reaping. They feel insulted and reject the trade. You are then left wondering why they would accept the first trade but see your offer as heresy. Sound familiar?
While ADPs are always the easiest reference points to compare two players against one another there will be biases towards certain players that an owner always has. What I have found is that there are four different types of owners found in every fantasy football league. These four types can be characterized as: the elephant, the hyena, the vulture, and the mouse. Over time everybody in fantasy will be one of these examples. Hopefully I am able to help you recognize where your league-mates are in their strategies, and how to best approach each of them with trade and counter trade offers.
The Elephant
A wise and intelligent owner, they often know a dearth of football knowledge. They have likely been playing fantasy football for a number of years and have a solid foundation for how they want to approach their strategies. Unfortunately, this knowledge can often hinder their decisions related to trading, cuts and drafting as they are set in their process. Players that are perceived as bad stay bad, and those that had a good year in 2013 are still those same players despite the ever changing situations in the NFL. An example would be those who held Peyton Manning as their QB1 heading into the season because he’s been the stud for the last two decades, reasoning why would you need another QB1?
The Hyena
Almost an opposite of the elephant owner, the hyena seems to be always changing what they perceive a player to be valued at and what their strategy will be. They are always on top of what the latest buzz news is around the league and try and jump ahead of the crowd without concrete analysis. While they may be sneaky to trade for the big name free agent before he moves to the ideal new team but they also get burned by the news that a player is meeting with another team only to end up in a much less opportune situation. Think those who trade for Trent Richardson after hearing about his move to Indy or traded away Doug Martin before last season’s rebound.
The Vulture
This owner is always waiting for a player to have an injured or bad season and will then look to pick them up across several teams. While in trade conversations they will often talk down the players that you have as old, broken or not that good while every player they have on their team is the next Randy Moss or LT. They will often also send out the most trade offers per season to which you wonder who would ever accept these crappy offers? However, at some point each season a league-mate or two makes a deal with this owner, whether out of necessity or to fit their own strategy, that everyone else in the league is left scratching their head.
The Mouse
These are the owners who keep their players close to the vest. While not all of these owners are inactive because they don’t pay attention, they definitely don’t make as many moves as the rest of the league. Think the same strategy as the Packers in terms of free agents. Similar to the elephant this could be because they have a set strategy to which they do not need to make a large number of trades. They instead would rather build their team through the draft (rookie and auction) without moving much of their own capital. That’s not to say they will not trade but they are more calculated in when they initiate and accept trade offers.
Developing a Strategy
Now that I have outlined the four types of players we can see a friendly illustration below of how each of the owners interact with one another.
As you can see each has two owners that they can frequently negotiate with and one that it is more difficult. This makes sense as someone who is set in their ways (elephant) is not likely to be swooned by someone with sudden and aggressive trade offers (hyena). Alternatively an owner who is savvy and recognizes someone panicking over a player’s situation (vulture) or someone who sees a player who fits well into their roster (mouse) will always investigate the owner’s interest.
It is now easier to see how strategies will develop when approaching trades with these owners in your league. The main point to get across regardless of who you are dealing with is COMMUNICATION. For different reasons and motives it is always important to stay in constant communication with everyone in your league. The second point is to know that every owner will fall into all four of these broad categories at some point with each of their players. The goal to being successful in dynasty is to recognize what their impressions are regarding each player and approach accordingly. This is ultimately where you are able to create tremendous value in trades.
Do’s and Don’t
Here is a quick list of how to approach each owner type:
Elephant
- Do offer the studs on the decline, especially if you are in a rebuild. Capitalize on that top dollar before your players retire or meet father time (ex. Forte, Marshall, AP).
- Don’t target their core players using savvy values. If you are in championship mode and looking for a few veterans to help your run don’t expect much for aging discounts on the players above.
Hyena
- Do try and capitalize on hype players. No player is untradeable and you should at least see if anyone will pay the moon for one player. (Alfred Morris, Lamar Miller, Brock Osweiler, Ladarius Green)
- Do establish a value for dropping ADP players. If an owner is souring on a player’s new situation try and see if you can pounce. (ex. Demaryius Thomas, Eddie Lacy, T.J. Yeldon, Chris Ivory)
- Don’t get sucked into the snowballing trade; keep your focus on a certain player. Often a trade starts one for one or two for one and then it snowballs into trading half your team for half of theirs.
Vulture
- Do listen to each offer that they send. Even the most ludicrous of trade offers can be narrowed down to be something that would hold value.
- Don’t feel you need to do any trades because you are rebuilding or strapped for cash. Just because you might be placed in less than ideal conditions doesn’t mean another owner should be able to buy your players for eighty cents on the dollar.
Mouse
- Don’t approach with too vague an offer. Starting a conversation with, “I’m looking at X, what would you value him at?” will usually go nowhere. Do your homework and have a flexible list of players and picks that you would be willing to offer.
- Don’t start the conversation involving their core players unless you are willing to offer up one or two of yours. Unless they are in a rebuild a mouse will usually only do ancillary deals to fill holes rather than changing the foundation of their whole team with one trade.
- Do offer savvy veteran pieces if they are in a championship run. While they might not offer the top dollar for aging players like the hyena or the elephant they will see value and will often be easier to negotiate with.
Hopefully from reading this article you are now able to recognize the different personas that are in your individual leagues. Remember that any one owner can be all four of these characters at once so you need to keep in communication about their impressions from one player to another. As each league gets closer to their rookie and auction drafts strategies will change and player values will fluctuate. For those of you that read my Fold’em or Hold’em article in the second part I will frequently reference these types of owners when it comes to developing a strategy leading into next season.
Bio: Nick is a Sports Administration graduate in Canada who has worked/interned with two NFL organizations. His 7 championships allow him to mock and ridicule relentlessly across his three different family and friend’s leagues to a point of annoyance. While the value of those championships is meaningless in terms of his professional enhancement he will subtly place them as “related skills” in his work applications.