Dynasty Pet Peeves

Jacob Feldman

petpeevesWeek 6 of the NFL season is behind us. Whether it’s the trading, getting those waiver wire gems, or watching those prospects turn into studs, we now remember all of the things that we love about dynasty leagues. Hopefully we’re all well on our way to winning records and strong finishes in the playoffs.

This is also the time of year where the honeymoon period has ended and we all start to remember the things that drive us crazy about dynasty leagues or more specifically the owners in them. We polled the DLF partners and seniors writers and asked them a simple question, “What are you pet peeves in a dynasty league?” There were many different responses that were given but most of them involved the critical act of trading. Here are our top 15 pet peeves for your enjoyment. We also need to get them off of our collective chests so we don’t explode!

1) Owners in a startup league that have the rebuild mentality before the season even starts. These are often the same owners that are constantly in rebuild mode year after year. The point of fantasy football is to win. Sure, you want to build for the future as well, but if you’re always trying to win three years from now you’re never going to win now.

2) 16 team leagues that require you to start 2 QBs but have no cap on how many starting QBs each team can have. Simple math makes this league unstable but I see it all the time. The logic of some of those playing in it gets worse, “Well target QBs early and often.” Sure that might solve the issue for some of the teams but the second one team takes their third QB the whole league is unbalanced. Additionally, did these commissioners even consider byes weeks?

3) Coaches/Owners that treat their team like a weekend in Vegas week-in, week out. You can usually find these coaches trading so often that there is no continuity in their team. They turn their rosters over sometimes multiple times per year and you get a dozen or more trade requests annually. Teams are supposed to be built and tweaked, not treated like a refrigerator cleaning.

4) People who always complain about how “bad” a trade offer is or that it’s “insulting”. Get over it. It’s fantasy football; no one is trying to insult your football intelligence. Reject, say “no thanks, our valuations are way off” and move along. For someone to infer that they actually KNOW the valuations of a player is ludicrous. This is a hobby of judgment and we’re often surprised about how often a player emerges, is on the verge of emergence, or bounces back.

5) Owners who are trying to sell a trade to you by pumping up the players they are giving up while ripping down the players they are seeking to get from you. In what world does this logic work? If your guys are so great and mine are so terrible why not just keep your guys and I’ll keep mine.

6) Smack talking after a game. I love a good bit of smack talking ahead of a game, especially a big game. But once the game is over, win or lose, there’s no room for boasting, gloating or otherwise insulting the other coach or his/her team. “Great game” is all that is needed, or if it wasn’t a great game, some other neutral statement will do. Many of us take our teams and our Sundays very seriously and when it comes down to it, there’s a lot of luck that goes into a good week.

7) People that complain about how bad their team is or how the rules aren’t in their favor but consistently fail to make quality trades and wavier claims. These are often the same people that complain about the league but never offer solutions for the “problems”. Take that time that you spend complaining, do a little research, and get more active in the league to make it and your team better. If you don’t want to get more active, then find a new hobby.

8) I look forward to Sunday … always have, always will. There aren’t many pet peeves of mine greater than having that anticipation and excitement on Sunday morning, especially with a big game looming…only to have my team lay an egg with no control as my opponent runs up the score on me. The only way it gets worse is taking a lead into Monday night and watching your opponent seal a win in the last quarter of the last game of the week winning by a point or less.

9) Owners that just stop responding altogether when it’s obvious they are no longer in contention for the championship. Nothing is as bad as owners who don’t want to better their team or simply don’t care enough to put the best product on the field regardless of what their record looks like. These aren’t redraft leagues. Some of the biggest moves are the ones you make late in the year.

10) People that always seem to have a comment about how “unfair” every trade seems to be in their eyes. There isn’t such a thing as a perfectly “fair” trade and what you see is “fair” might be very different. This is especially annoying since the owner raising a fuss is often times the same owner that is constantly trying to take advantage of other owners (especially new/inexperienced ones) with their own deals. Talk about a hypocrite!

11) Trade offers that target one of your studs but just throw a dumpster’s worth of random (and often worthless) players your way under the guise of “adding depth” to your team. To place it in the context of Halloween, if players were candy they are trying to get that 4 inch long Jolly Rancher from you for a handful of Tootsie Rolls. No one ever makes that trade.

12) Teams that use the rules as a weapon against their league mates or that do things that they know they shouldn’t do just because the rules don’t explicitly outlaw it. This happen all the time. Usually it is at the end of a season. Suddenly, Team A, which has had a terrible year, starts to claim random (and frequent) rule violations by other teams and demands punishment or they search for loopholes to get an advantage. You can’t make a rule for every situation and not all rules are equal. In fantasy football certain rules must be enforced to keep the league from devolving into chaos while other rules that don’t hurt anyone or give anyone an unfair advantage might be ignored. If you commit the fantasy equivalent of a capital offense, then don’t tell the judge that you saw people jaywalking on the way to your hearing. Can we all agree to be grown-ups?

13) I hate it when I ask an owner what they’re looking for in a deal for a certain player & they say he’s “off limits”. For me, while I might be high enough on a player it makes him too expensive, every player should have a price. Equally bad is the owner that responds with “make me an offer” while refusing to have any discussions beforehand. This is usually met with me making an offer followed by them responding with “LOL … why do I need another receiver?”. That’s why we have trade discussions BEFORE a trade offer is made.

14) It bothers me when owner continue to stay in the middle of the pack because of fear. Usually that ends up with them staying in the middle of the pack in years to come, winning just enough games to miss out on some great players in rookie drafts and always making the safe moves over the bold ones. Keeping aging veterans on their roster over the youth/ breakout players on the waiver wire, not making trades, etc. Fortune favors the bold!

All 14 of those pet peeves were submitted by our partners and senior writers, many of them were seconded by another, but there was one pet peeve that was submitted by every single one of the respondents. The Grand Daddy Pet Peeve of the DLF staff is:

15) The owner that doesn’t give any kind of response to a trade offer. Just clicking reject without a word isn’t very helpful unless you’re trying to close all trade discussions. It doesn’t take that long to type a few words in response. Even worse, is the owner that just sits on trade offers, letting days go past before the offer times out because they can’t even be troubled to do a single thing. Our Senior Partner Jeff said it best when he said, “I don’t care how busy a coach is, how hectic things are right now or how insulting my offer is…Respond to all offers even if it’s “no”. Some coaches are so impossible to work with, you just write them off each season because it takes an act of God to get anything done, let alone get a conversation started.

That’s it for our 15 biggest pet peeves. What are some of your biggest ones?

jacob feldman