Ten Dynasty Thought Themes Sabotaging Your Rookie Draft, Part Two

In part one of the Dynasty Thought Themes, we identified “Homers”, “Adorers”, “Positionists”, “Adherents” and “Overvaluers”.

In part two, we will identify yet five more dynasty thought themes, outline how owners classified as each of these signs operates, and determine if they are amicable to getting a trade done with you.

Let’s start it back up.

Overestimating Current Team Strength

We all like to think our team is better than it actually is and we’re all in it to win a championship each season we compete. Usually once the first four-to-six weeks are all said and done in a season, our plans either shift towards next year or the dream of a championship fades for half the league.

It’s great to be an optimist in everyday life. The sky is bluer, the grass is greener and there is nothing that can’t be achieved with a little hard work. However, being an optimist can get you in trouble during a rookie draft. Optimists might think they are just one player away from competing, when in reality they are much further away. This might force these owners to make trades up to acquire assets that they can fully utilize just yet or ignore opportunities to trade down and acquire better depth for the future.

This tends to make Optimists willing trade partners when they are given an opportunity to move up in the draft, but difficult owners to cement a trade with if it involves them moving down the draft.

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Underestimating Current Team Strength

Much like the Western Zodiac sign Gemini, or the ancient Chinese concept of the Ying and the Yang, the polar opposite of the aforementioned Optimist is the Pessimist. The Pessimist, in a fantasy dynasty sense, views their team as one that is in a perpetual state of rebuilding or always too weak to make a run at the championship. This ideological theme will negatively impact owners that subscribe to it by making them less likely to acquire that last piece and more willing, and even likely, to trade down for even more depth.

Pessimists only see what is left undone with their masterpiece, not what has been achieved. As a true mirror to their Optimist brethren, Pessimists are more apt to trade down in the draft, acquiring more pieces to tinker with than to make a splash moving up in the draft to get that final piece of the puzzle.

Letting Past Interactions Cloud Today’s Negotiations

It’s fair to say we all have at least one owner in one or more of our leagues that we just don’t like as much as the others. Many times, this owner just doesn’t view player valuations, strategy, team compositions, or even the game itself, the same way that we do. In other instances, that other owner may be too much like us for comfort. They may see everything exactly as we do, making it infuriating, to downright impossible, to get a trade worked out between the two sides.

However, as frustrating as it may be, cutting that person off in regard to future trade negotiations might feel great for our egos, but it is bad business in the long-term. These are the owners I call “Rememberers”. They internalize every perceived wrong and absolutely refuse to let bygones be bygones. They will effectively excommunicate other owners in an effort to teach them a lesson or to make their own lives easier.

In a 12-team league, if a Rememberer cuts off just one owner, it reduces their potential trade partners by roughly nine percent. Imagine having nine percent less options in life or losing nine percent of the days in the year, that’s roughly 41 days that just disappear. “Great,” they think, “41 less days I have to work!” OK, but what if nine percent of their weekends disappeared? In a year, 104 days of the year are weekends, I’m not counting holidays either. Shave nine percent off of that and Rememberers end up losing just under ten days a year where they would then have to work.

This is an apt comparison in that by missing even one trade partner, Rememberers will have to put in much more work to get the same number of trades done as their leaguemates. Rememberers that refuse to deal with other owners might feel like they are hurting the targeted owner, or making their lives easier, but in reality, they are reducing their chances to win in the long run and making it much harder to complete trades as opposed to simply gritting their teeth and attempting to trade with those who rub them the wrong way.

Trying To Be Everyone’s Friend

A high percentage of dynasty owners are genuinely nice people. Well, maybe I’m being an Optimist now. Let’s say that a majority of dynasty owners are nice. Why wouldn’t you want to be friendly and agreeable to other people who are perceived as being “one of the good ones”? For the most part, we are conditioned from a young age to be accommodating and rewarding of those who interact with us in ways that we find pleasant. It is kind similar to the phase, “You scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours”.

While many of us view such behavior as normal and desirable, there is a dark side to trying to be everyone’s friend: exploitation. “Buddies”, as we’ll term them, might agree to trades that pull on their heartstrings or hold the implication that declining the trade could negatively impact a personal relationship between the two owners. These owners usually place a paramount value on personal interactions. As such, they will accept offers that might not be viewed as good for their team when judged by an unbiased third party.

Buddies will view the good will they’ve garnered by allowing themselves to be taken advantage of as capital though, potentially to be cashed in as part of a future trade. The return back scratch, if you will. Unfortunately, that capital is rarely redeemable, much less recalled, by the other owner. Buddies make great trade partners, but don’t be the kind of person that looks to exploit them, just don’t be “that person”.

Simply Going Through The Motions

Some owners seek to distance themselves from the comradery that dynasty leagues are designed to foster. These owners don’t want to make friends. They are all about business and winning. Some may describe them as cold, calculating, or robotic. Dynasty fantasy football is supposed to bring out emotion and sportsmanship, who hasn’t had fun, win or lose, in a close game with all the chips on the line come Monday night? The “Borg”, that’s who.

These owners approach the draft without so much as a peep to their leaguemates. They’ve done the calculations, they’ve acquired every metric available on every player, and if they move down their rankings methodically, showing no deviation or emotion in the process. No compliments are given to leaguemates who got great value when selecting a player who fell in the draft, no congratulations are relayed to owners in a solid trade, and trade negotiations are non-existent, the trade partner either accept their initial offer or there is no trade.

Just as Rememberers reduce their chances of completing a trade by steadfastly holding on to an event in the past, Borgs will be one of the least likely owners to move around in the draft. Their “my way or the highway” approach will turn off more than one owner in any given league, significantly decreasing their trading opportunities. Borgs will usually be the ones who end up angering Rememberers, to them it’s only business, to the Rememberers, it’s personal.

In spite of how rigid and inflexible Borgs may end up being, owners should try to engage them in trade talks, if for no other reason to simply test the waters from a value perspective. It might require multiple offers, and subsequent rejections before something gets done, but if you follow the process that they are comfortable with, you might get a surprise trade accept for your troubles.

Summary

So, do you see yourself or another owner in any of these thought themes? Are you or a leaguemate an “Optimist”, “Pessimist”, “Rememberer”, “Buddy” or “Borg”?

As I stated back in Part One of this piece, most owners subscribe to at least one of these thought themes. Some unlucky owners will exhibit one or more of these themes throughout a rookie draft, making them either targets for others, or unpleasant to deal with. Many of us, though, try very hard to suppress these themes as we inherently know that they are undesirable. God help you if you’re a Buddy mixed with a Pessimist, the dynasty wolves out there likely have you pegged as their next meal.

I’m kidding, somewhat. The best course of action for any of us to overcome these would be to do some deep introspection and to determine how you have conducted yourself in previous rookie drafts. If you are more aware of your shortfalls, it allows you to work on fixing those flaws, hiding them, or – for those truly looking to take on a challenge – leveraging how you may have been perceived in the past to your advantage in the future.

For instance, if you have been viewed as a Borg in the past, then strike up a conversation with someone in your league out of the blue. They’re apt to feel privileged that you reached out to them and might be more willing to do business in the future. Maybe you’ve been a Pessimist in the past when it comes to your team, reach out to an Optimist in another league and ask them to share with you what they view to be the positive aspects of your team. You might come away surprised, encouraged, and you may even come up with an idea or two on how to make that elusive championship run.

I’ve played against some of the biggest and brightest names in this industry and trust me when I say every one of them, especially myself, have weaknesses and flaws in our game. There is no shame in it, I’d only be ashamed if I didn’t constantly try to improve upon my game every day, in every imaginable aspect.

Don’t simply accept that “you are the way you are”. Flip the script, turn over a new leaf, shift the paradigm. At least try something different if that championship has eluded you. Only be embracing and working to fix the holes in our game can we ever hope to establish a long-lasting dynasty in this game that we all love.

Best of luck to everyone this season!

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