The Seven Sins of a Dynasty Off-Season

Jacob Feldman

seven

This past weekend I was sitting down on my couch trying to figure out what I wanted to watch since my wife went to bed early. As I was flipping through the channels, I came across an old favorite of mine, the movie “Seven.” It reminded me about the days when Brad Pitt was more an actor than a celebrity and he could produce what I view as exciting movies like “Twelve Monkeys” and “Fight Club” instead of stuff like “Mr. & Mrs. Smith.”

As I was watching the suspense and gruesomeness that is the movie “Seven,” my mind wandered to fantasy football for a moment. I started to think about the biblical seven deadly sins in a fantasy context. More specifically, I was thinking in terms of the dynasty off-season that we all have just begun. Most of us know the sins: Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Wrath, Envy, and Pride. Things to avoid according to most, but how exactly do they fit into the world of dynasty football and the current offseason? Here is how they fit and some common things to avoid this offseason!

Lust – Intense Desire

With the 2013 regular season behind us and the NFL Super Bowl roughly a month away, the season of rookie fever is almost upon us! It is kind of like flu season except there isn’t a vaccine. It is a yearly illness that sweeps through the fantasy community and those with experience in dynasty leagues are especially susceptible to the illness and tend to get it the worst.

We start to watch the highlight reels, sometimes failing to realize that they are just the best 20-30 plays of the 1,500-2,000 snaps of their college career. We drool over combine performances, not always remembering football is played in pads against other people not in shorts on an open field. We instantly insert the rookies into the starting lineups for their teams once they are drafted, forgetting almost everyone else on their team was also drafted at some point or another and was also impressive in college.

We lust after these rookies and imagine them leading our fantasy team to the Promised Land for years to come. Some lust after them so much they trade away high quality, consistent starters with lots of years left in them just to get those rookies on their team. We need to remember the majority of rookies are never fantasy starters. Even first round picks are less than a 50/50 proposal. Giving up proven starters for picks is a major risk that doesn’t always pay off. Control your lust for the rookies and make sure you have a level head when looking at their value.

Gluttony– Over-indulgence

When I think of gluttony, I can name you a team or two in just about all of my leagues that fit into this category. No, I’m not saying that they eat too much but rather they obsess about one position too much. This over-indulgence at a position is a major roster management issue. This is most common with the quarterback and tight end positions.

The vast majority of leagues only start one of each. To me that means you have your starter, a quality backup, and if your first two are a little bit older you might have a prospect at the position as well. That’s two or three roster spots for one starting position. That’s more than enough! Yet there are some people who have four, five, sometimes six quarterbacks or tight ends on their roster as they search for the next big thing.

Having that many roster spots dedicated to one starting player is a huge waste and could really hurt you as you try to find and keep prospects at other positions. Pick out your best two or three and get rid of the rest. In a lot of leagues, a low end QB2/TE2 isn’t worth much at all so just cut them if you can’t find a trade partner and pick up a running back or wide receiver. And please, for the love of all that is good, if your league still uses kickers, drop them during the offseason and pick up someone else. Whatever kicker you have can be easily replaced.

Greed – Wanting Everything

This is the time of year is when every player evaluation starts to center around the words “potential” and “prospect.” These are simple code words for “they haven’t done anything yet.” We have an obsession about being the one who finds the next big thing. I’ll admit, it is very satisfying when you can say you picked up someone like Arian Foster or Jimmy Graham on waivers the year before they went off. Like all things in life, acquiring prospects or high potential players needs to be done in moderation.

Just about every off-season I see a team that goes out of their way to get all of the high profile, high hype players. They want every player we are all talking about and they don’t care what it takes to get them. Even if you can manage to do this, it really isn’t something you want to do in most cases. In fact, doing such a thing is often a great way to destroy a team.

Think back to last summer. If someone managed to build a team with Trent Richardson, CJ Spiller, David Wilson, Lamar Miller and drafted Latavius Murray and Christine Michael at the running back position, we would have been calling them a favorite for the title. Yet all were largely unproven and not one of them was a top 25 running back this year. Worse yet, in order to get some of them probably meant giving up at least one “older” star like Matt Forte, Marshawn Lynch, or Adrian Peterson. Prospects are good, but if more than a third of your roster fits into that category, you could be in trouble.

Sloth – Laziness

Out of the seven, this is the most obvious and the easiest one to fix. If you’re in a dynasty league, hopefully you realize it is a year round commitment. If you don’t realize that, you need to wake up and smell the coffee. What sets dynasty leagues apart, and what sets us as a website apart, is that it is a 365 day endeavor. There is no offseason and you need to take this approach.

Just because the fantasy games are done being played and your players aren’t putting up points on a weekly basis doesn’t mean your work is done. This is the time of year when you need to be evaluating your roster, checking out the up and comers, reading DLF articles, and sending out trade feelers once you decide on your targets. You should be keeping your effort consistent not letting it tail off.

Wrath – Uncontrolled Rage

A lot of the off-season trades and discussions tend to center around players coming back from injury, aging veterans, draft picks, and prospects. Opinions on the value of these items vary drastically from one owner to another. Two very educated people can have vastly different views on a player. That is what allows trades to happen in the first place! Those discrepancies in views are amplified this time of year with all of the unknowns. It is important to remember that as you head into the offseason and talk about, send and receive trade offers with the other owners in your leagues.

It pains me a bit when I hear people talk about “offensive offers” and things of that nature. If you’re often talking about being offended you need to get over it. If someone wanted to offend you, they would surely do it a better way than sending a fantasy football trade offer. People have different values on just about everything. If you don’t like an offer, that is your prerogative. Getting upset, flying off the handle, or being rude in response just isn’t okay. I don’t really care one bit about past history or anything like that. Just turn the deal down and move on. Don’t hold on to the rage or do something foolish.

Envy – Jealousy

Over this off-season you are going to have targets that you identify. You’re going to make offers you think should be accepted, some of them might even be over market value for a player. Then someone else is going to swoop in and acquire your prized target. It might even be at a value you think is far below your offers, and it is going to make you a little upset. Once again, you need to remember everyone values players differently. The offer that was accepted obviously wasn’t a worse offer in the eyes of the person making the trade or else they wouldn’t have done it. They just wanted something different from what you were offering and you can’t be upset at them for it.

This jealousy creeps up in another way as well. One of the hardest things to do for some people is to mind your own business. If two teams make a trade it isn’t your job to get involved and tell everyone you would have paid more. It isn’t your place to email the two teams and tell them how bad the trade was. We are all adults and you aren’t supposed to police the league. You need to realize when you’re upset about a deal it is most likely because you’re jealous you didn’t make an offer like the one that was accepted and missed out on the deal. Don’t be the guy that gets bent out of shape over it and makes a big fuss.

Pride – Unable to Acknowledge Other’s Success and Your Failure

Let me start by saying I sincerely hope you already sent an email, tweet, or some kind of message to your league champion to congratulate them, especially if you were in the playoffs against them. If not, go do that now and then come back to finish this paragraph! No matter how friendly, competitive or casual your league is it is just good sportsmanship and goes a long way towards building community in your league. Plus, it makes you seem friendly which makes other owners more likely to approach you for deals in the future. Every little leg up helps!

Pride is important in all things in life, including fantasy football, but there is a fine line between the good kind (confidence) and the bad kind (arrogance). The later tends to show up in two ways in dynasty leagues. The first is when you overvalue someone just because they are on your roster. I’m going to let you in on a little secret. None of your players know or care that they are on your team. They don’t play harder because of it which means them being on your roster has no bearing on their value. If you like someone more than the rest of the community, that is fine, but if you are valuing them more highly just because they are on your roster don’t get upset when people send offers that are less than expected.

The second and sometimes more difficult to avoid trap in terms of pride is knowing when it is time to admit you were wrong on a player. For me, the most recent example is Isaiah Pead. I thought he had a chance to be just a notch below LeSean McCoy.  I was certain he would show us what he could do last year when Steven Jackson was hurt and then again this year when Jackson left. Well, it never happened. It is tough to admit, especially since he was a middle first round pick in a lot of leagues, but I was wrong on him. We all have our players we loved, and it is often difficult to cut the cord. Sometimes you just need to do it. You can’t be right all the time!

If you avoid these seven sins this offseason, it should help you to continue to build a team to be reckoned with year in and year out. If you fall victim to them, you could end up staring at the figurative head of your dynasty future lying in a box. If you don’t get the reference, go watch the movie. It is well worth your time! Good luck in the off-season!

jacob feldman