Top 5 Offseason Questions
Now that the NFL offseason is about to begin, Reality Sports Online (RSO) owners can replace the void of no football games on the tube with offseason strategy. Now is the time that you set the foundation for your team’s future and ideally make moves to build a champion. Like Alec Baldwin says in Glengarry Glen Ross, “Always Be Closing”.
Let’s face it- you joined an RSO league because you wanted something more from a fantasy platform, basically the ability to act exactly like an NFL team General Manager. You craved all the strategic decisions a GM makes, including assessing your overall roster and salary cap situation, drafting rookies, and potentially using your Franchise Tag as an asset. Except you get to negotiate with players without them being divas or dealing with potentially greedy agents who are only about “Show Me the Money!”
Being an owner of an RSO team, you hopefully have a keen sense of strategy and utilize many information sources to manage your teams in the offseason and throughout the regular season. Let me first advocate our own Matt Papson’s Off-Season Team Analysis as an incredibly valuable resource. Simply put, it isn’t often that you get free advice from someone who has worked in an NFL front office regarding your fantasy team.
To help you through your offseason key decisions, I’m writing a strategy series that outlines potential decisions you may face as an owner, regardless of when you started your league. Consider this article a primer to that series, which starts out with the Top 5 questions you should be asking when reviewing your offseason rosters. So without further ado, let’s jump in and be “About That Action, Boss”.
1) What is my overall salary cap situation?
First off, the 2015 salary cap in the NFL was announced yesterday at $143.3 million, which is a $10.3 million increase on the 2014 salary cap of $133.0 million. What you first need to assess is based on the dynamics of your league which players will be the key free agents in your league and what they figure to command.
For instance, if you have a 2015 salary cap of $100 million committed on six or seven starters on your roster before using your rookie picks, you are likely going to be looking at getting one star in free agency (think like a DeMarco Murray type) and “painting the edges” to fill out your roster. This means that you end up with a few starters you may not be very excited about (maybe that means starting a Tight End like Heath Miller), unless you are good at picking sleepers.
You should also know your league opponents cap situation inside and out. If they are in a dire cap situation, you may be able to take advantage. If they have a lot of cap space, they figure to be your main competition in an auction or a team that may be coming in with less talent on their roster, meaning they could be a prime trading partner.
2) Which players do I think about trying to buy/sell in a trade market?
Offseason trades won the main league I was in last year by another owner as he maneuvered with first round rookie draft picks to separately dump David Wilson and trade for Le’Veon Bell, while having lots of cap space to sign Antonio Brown at a high price. The lesson is to approach the offseason trade market as an opportunity to upgrade at a certain position or hope you can pawn off someone you aren’t high on to another owner.
A key thing to remember is that in a league like this, everything is an asset, including cap space. What I mean by this is that while you may be excited about someone like Wisconsin’s Melvin Gordon and can nab him at 1.03 in your rookie draft, you may be better off packaging your rookie draft pick with a high salary player that you’ve given up on just to have ample cap space in what may be a bountiful Free Agency Auction Room experience.
Along those lines, players like Adrian Peterson, who fetched a pretty penny a few years ago (average RSO contract of 2.56 years and $22.6m annually) should be packaged with first round draft picks if you are looking to unload and value cap space more than players on your roster. For instance if you gave up 1.03 and dumped Peterson’s salary on another owner in exchange for a 2015 second round pick, you essentially created almost $27m of 2015 cap space (more if Peterson had additional years on his contract).
Another thing to think about when trading a player is whether they seem like a regression candidate as well. What I mean by this is that a player who performed well above their expectation may regress to the mean, or average.
One player who I view as a regression candidate (more on him in another section too) is Randall Cobb. While Cobb had the highest WR rating of 134.3 according to Pro Football Focus’ Signature Stats (subscription required), meaning that Aaron Rodgers had the highest QB rating of all quarterbacks when targeting Cobb, it is hard to imagine that Cobb replicates his 12 touchdowns in 2015, even if he remains in Green Bay. Cobb had 91 receptions for 1,287 yards (both career highs), which theoretically he could see again based on volume, but with Davante Adams figuring to get more looks, Cobb could certainly regress in 2015.
As such, you may want to gauge the trade market for the 5’10” slot receiver because someone else may be high on him whether or not he remains a Packer based on his 2014 season and his RSO salary cap figure.
If you are on the buy side, look for players that you think will breakout in 2015. This may be driven by your gut somewhat or based on a player who regressed last year that you may think will return to a certain performance level. This can take many forms in terms of players, so while Michael Floyd was terrible last year, you may be able to buy him cheaply this offseason if you think he’ll return to form.
Additionally an owner may be down on the upside of a player that you think will hit a new level next year. Lamar Miller strikes me as one of those players based on opportunity and at worst, he still was very consistent in 2014.
3) Is There Anyone I Should Cut Bait With?
I know that in a format like this you can get attached to your multi-year contract players. However, sometimes having 50% of their cap space is more valuable to you, especially if you are only eating one year. It killed me to drop Andre Johnson (apparently more than it killed the Texans) with one year remaining at $10.6 million after I lost in my league playoffs. However, the $5.3 million in cap space is more valuable in 2015 to me to fund other roster moves (sadly he cleared waivers and ended up on the league champion).
Remember that in Year 1 of your auction you may not have fully known what you were doing and got carried away in the auction. While dead cap money is essentially paying someone for not being on your roster, and essentially equates to admitting a mistake, the relative value of the flexibility of the added 50% of your cap money buys you all sorts of option value on how to use that money (rookie draft, franchise tag, free agent auction).
I would not advocate dumping someone who has more than one year left on their contract, unless the contract is small enough that the escalators, etc. are insignificant or it is clear this player will no longer be productive and/or playing.
As someone who was born in Cleveland and raised a Browns fan, I will say that I’d cut bait on Josh Gordon in your RSO leagues because the risk significantly outweighs the return unless you priced Gordon’s risk in your winning auction bid and can wait him out.
4) How Can I Most Effectively Use My Franchise Tag
While the prospect of paying a Top 5 average salary to one of your players may seem outrageous, especially if your auction got out of hand, the Franchise Tag is a very useful asset in RSO. In a format like this, the perception is almost always that locking up good players on multi-year deals is the best strategy. However, there are misses along the way, which make one year deals or option value like the Franchise Tag pretty valuable as well.
In my mind there is a certain type of player who is an ideal candidate for use of the Franchise Tag. Personally, my prototype example is Rob Gronkowski. When I originally signed Gronk to a 2 year, $26.0 million deal, it was known he’d miss some time at the beginning of the 2013 season and then he tore his ACL at the end of the season. However, for $13.3 million in 2014, Gronk ended up being a steal. Given his injury history, it is nice to have two separate one-year options on a player like Gronk, especially given the positional fantasy point differential he will earn me.
Running back and wide receiver positions typically have the largest Top 5 contracts that serve as the average for the Franchise Tag. These numbers may seem outrageous to you- probably around $25 million and up a year. However, if you are in a scenario where your team has one of the best rosters/cap situations in the league and keeping someone like Jamaal Charles for another year works under your cap, you have to think about it.
You should also think about using the Franchise Tag based on what potential free agents are available. If there are seven of the top ten fantasy running backs in terms of scoring available in your auction, franchising your guy is essentially bidding against yourself and causing you to overpay. So then, it is best to see what the positional need is of other owners in the league and franchise the more scarce option if the players are somewhat equal.
Speaking of bidding against yourself, if you are a Peyton Manning owner, I would (and will not) use the franchise tag on him for 2015. While I like the one year option value for a player with injury risk who is a known top producer, I view franchising Manning as bidding against yourself, especially if his salary numbers escalate based on high dollar quarterback values.
Since you only need one starting quarterback in most leagues, the salaries of quarterbacks may be way less than Manning would command. This is the case in my writer’s league. I have the ability to franchise Manning for around $20 million in a league where most quarterback salaries are $5 million because these owners believe in the “Late Round QB” strategy. So for me to franchise Manning would be stupid, especially with Tom Brady on my roster at $3.0 million in 2015 (got him price enforcing in my auction).
Don’t sleep on Tight Ends or Defenses for use of the franchise tag. Their price tags will be significantly less than running backs or wide receivers. I know that tight ends were incredibly inconsistent in 2014 and you may want to wait for the auction to get yours, especially if your options are somewhat boring. As for defenses, if you have the ability to protect someone like the Texans or Seahawks who have most of their core defensive players locked up and defensive scoring is worth solid value in your league, you can probably franchise tag a defense for $2.0 million or less which could be valuable.
5) How Does “Real” NFL Free Agency Impact the Analysis Above?
When you were in the heat of the auction and someone like DeMarco Murray’s name came up, you were high on the guy and had to have him. Last season he made you look smart. But wait, you signed him to a three year deal (no time to really check this in a fast-moving auction) and now he is an unrestricted free agent that the Cowboys may not be able to afford.
This scenario means that you have a real NFL free agent whose value is mainly tied into what offensive system he plays in (same goes for Cobb, my friends). Meaning that if these players moved to an unfavorable situation on a new team – think Cobb leaving the cozy security blanket of having Rodgers throwing him the ball and then Cobb getting his best offer from the Raiders or Chiefs. As they said in Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, welcome to “Ouchtown, population you, bro!”
So if you have someone in your league that is a speculative buyer for productive free agents and can make a trade with that owner at a high price, but not necessarily a ceiling price, you may be smart to go for it. Otherwise you could be facing 2014 Eric Decker on the Jets.
Peripherally, you also want to check and see if any stalwart offensive line changes happen in free agency. Not that you’d be giving up on Rodgers if his tackle Bryan Bulaga left, but if you are an Eddie Lacy owner perhaps you’d try to see what value you could get for him if losing a key lineman is something that you think would be detrimental to Lacy’s future production.
That’s all for now, folks, but we’ll continue this throughout the offseason. You can find me on Twitter @mattgoody2