Dynasty Trading Post: March 2020

TheFFGhost

Welcome back to the Dynasty Trading Post, formerly a quarterly column here at Dynasty League Football, which we’ll be bringing to our subscribers on a much more frequent basis. This column is intended to track which players or assets are significantly increasing or decreasing in value, allowing our readers to adjust their sights and values accordingly.

We will also feature many of the trading and player evaluation tools we offer at DLF.

The NFL season drew to a close in February with one of the more exciting and well-fought Super Bowls in recent memory. This season, this column will, for the most part, remain relatively the same as it has over the past two seasons. However, look for more integration with the player evaluation tools provided to our readers. This edition will examine how the current value of two players doesn’t tell the whole story and how DLF’s tools can be used to obtain valuable context:

Beckham? Hardly Knew Him!

A lot of the pre-draft talk surrounding possible trades seem to consistently involve one name: Odell Beckham. The rumors that involved Beckham state that, if he was to be traded, he would prefer to be dealt to either the Green Bay Packers or New England Patriots. Either move would have paired Beckham with a veteran quarterback (before Tom Brady chose the Tampa Bay Buccaneers) after questions persisted most of the off-season regarding whether he may have contributed to a statistical regression from Baker Mayfield. Dynasty owners have taken note and appear willing to make deals to offload him or acquire him with 51 unique trades involving him occurring over the past 30 days.

In February’s DLF ADP, Beckham was sandwiched between AJ Brown at 23 and Lamar Jackson at 21. We are using February’s ADP because this is the ADP that many of the trades would have referenced when they were agreed to. Using the ADP Over Time tool, we can immediately see that these three players are a story of two differing trajectories. A year ago, Brown’s ADP was 70 (WR35), Jackson’s was 127 (QB11) and Beckham was on top of the world at seven (WR2). My, how times have changed.

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Digging a little bit deeper using the tool, we are able to see how each player’s ADP value has changed over that time:

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Beckham’s value has dropped by over 200 points, or roughly a quarter of his value. However, Brown’s value has tripled over that time frame, increasing by nearly 400 points, and Jackson’s value has exploded by ten-fold, rocketing up nearly 600 points!

With that context, let’s take a look at some trades involving these players pulled from the Dynasty Trade Finder and then run through the Dynasty Trade Analyzer:

Beckham and Brown

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We will examine this trade because it is the most recent involving both Beckham and Brown, but the trade also keeps additional pieces to the trade to a minimum as well. In this, we see that the owner trading Beckham away appears to be able to trade away a player whose value is currently declining while also being able to gain a significant amount of value in the process. This trade likely would have been unthinkable for the Beckham owner just one year ago where Brown’s ADP was around 72 and Beckham’s was seven.

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For some additional context, the 1.08 pick, as of the writing of this article, would currently translate to Jalen Reagor according to DLF’s Rookie ADP or Cam Akers according to DLF’s Rookie Rankings.

Beckham and Jackson

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The only trade that involved both Odell Beckham and Lamar Jackson in the past three months is the one you see above, which occurred in the middle of January. I’ll be honest, I was a bit surprised by this fact given that both player’s ADP is within the top 25.

Nonetheless, unpacking this trade on face value leaves some serious questions. First, this seems like a serious overpay for a quarterback in a league that isn’t superflex. In this trade, Team B is giving up over twice the value (1,049.5) of Team A (502.6). The only real explanations here would be that Team B told Team A to name their price for Jackson, and Team A did just that, or Team A was looking to buy Beckham, Gordon and Brissett all on a dip since Beckham has dipped due to the issues talked about earlier, Gordon being a free agent and Brissett being supplanted (eventually by Philip Rivers).

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As you can see, Jackson is the only player in the trade whose ADP is currently on an upswing while all the players on the other side of the trade are at all-time lows.

The Change In Player Value application and the ADP Over Time tool provides us with some valuable insight into how trades can look vastly different as time progresses. It can be used to reflect upon trades made in the past to get a better sense as to who ended up winning the trade or used to help predict future value given the established value trends for individual players.

Additionally, using current Startup Dynasty ADP as a starting point, we can identify differing routes that individual players took to get to their current ADPs. No matter how you use DLF’s ever-growing set of tools, the insight you gain into player values is priceless. Head on over and see what answers, or new questions, you find for yourself!

As of this edition of the series, the Dynasty Trade Finder has recorded 278,914 trades that have occurred over 4,803 dynasty leagues, making it the premier trade database in the dynasty fantasy football market. Make sure you check it out today by clicking here.