Dynasty Fantasy Football Trading Post
The concept of dynasty value is so intriguing to me. To figure out the value of a player, you need to piece together a puzzle with pieces that look different to every person. The most common pieces are age, talent, situation, and production. To different people, the size of the age piece is exponentially larger than the situation piece. To others, the production piece is three times the size of the age piece. Even more fun (to be read as maddening) is that these puzzles are in different shapes for every position.
The position I have always had the most trouble with valuing is running backs. RBs and I have had a complicated past. In redraft, I was always a big fan of the Zero Running Back strategy. There has always been that certain thrill of finding that late-round running back who will win the starting job or making that waiver wire grab of the running back who an NFL team just signed off the street.
When you add that to my irrational love for many wide receivers, Zero RB and I seemed like a beautiful match. While this strategy absolutely works in dynasty, it is a little harder to navigate since rosters are much deeper and waiver wires less fruitful. In all honesty, I just don’t have the time or energy to keep my attention on my too many leagues to be able to enact this strategy effectively. Since I no longer play redraft, I guess I have to admit to myself that maybe valuable running backs have a place on my team.
As a reformed Zero RB guy, I find myself repeating “running backs matter” in my head over and over again whenever I see a trade involving higher-end running backs. I have to fight my instincts to choose the side with the equally-valued wide receiver and think about the trade with more of an unbiased opinion. If you watch the DLF Trade Show on the DLF YouTube Channel, with senior contributor Addison Hayes (@amazehayes_) and myself, I will always admit my WR bias and that I am trying to push that aside to more fairly evaluate a trade.
Even when I get myself in the headspace of objectively evaluating a trade involving a running back, I have found that my puzzle pieces look pretty different than a lot of the dynasty community’s pieces. This is both a good and a bad thing – good in the way that when people have different values, it helps deals get made, bad in the way that it can be hard to get the value I feel I deserve in return when trading away the running backs I value higher than most.
Two running backs who fit the above situations are…
Javonte Williams, RB DEN and Austin Ekeler, RB LAC
Williams is the shiny new RB toy – 22 years old, second year in the league, drafted in the second round of the NFL Draft and in the first rounds of rookie drafts. In PPR leagues, he finished the 2021 season as the RB15 in total points with 196.5 and RB25 in points per game with 12.28. According to May DLF ADP, he ranks in at RB5, the 11th player overall. For perspective, these mocks were run after the NFL Draft and after Melvin Gordon re-signing with the Broncos, so this is his “depressed value”.
Austin Ekeler is ‘old’. He will be 27 when entering his sixth season in the NFL, and went undrafted in both NFL Drafts and rookie drafts. In PPR leagues, he finished the 2021 season as RB2 in total points with 314.9 and RB3 in points per game with 20.99. (Man, I forgot just how good Derrick Henry was doing before he got hurt.) According to May DLF ADP, Ekeler ranks in at RB7, the 19th player overall. Again, since these mocks were run after the NFL Draft so if anyone believed that Isaiah Spiller being drafted by the Chargers was a bad thing, that would be baked into these numbers.
That is enough of the boring stuff. Let’s talk about trades.
In a 12-team superflex PPR league, the DLF Trade Analyzer has Javonte Williams worth 586.7 and Austin Ekeler worth 461.9. To put that into perspective, that is a difference of about a 2023 second-round pick or a player in the Leonard Fournette/Dallas Goedert area.
In all honesty, I was a little surprised to find them this close in the trade analyzer. Happy, but still surprised. As is true with any trading tool, they are just one weapon in the arsenal of building trade value. A team’s situation also plays a huge part in how a dynasty player will value certain players.
As a dynasty player who enjoys a good old-fashioned “blow it up and start all over”, I have a few teams with Ekeler that I have been trying to move him from. In replies to my DMs or in the comments of the rejection emails, I often hear “he doesn’t fit my team”, “I don’t trade for 27-year-old running backs”, and “not looking to trade for running backs in May”.
As a dynasty player who enjoys trading a little too much and will always try to cash in on running back value increases, I have a few teams with “shiny new toy” Williams who I have been trying to move and you know what I hear regardless of the team’s situation? “Yes please!” Of course, that is an oversimplification of the situation. Price, value, and assets involved always come into play in a deal but the important part is that just about everyone will listen to an offer with them getting Williams.
Here is where another aspect of dynasty value comes into place: the market. Each league is its own market. The price for a player in one league has no real effect on that same player’s value in a different league. We use the Trade Analyzer to try and get a baseline idea of value that we can take into our market and work from there. As I talked about in the previous two paragraphs, your market is much more limited when you are talking about a player that a team needs to be run by a specific kind of dynasty player in a specific situation with that team. This means there is less of a chance of being able to build up a hype about the idea of trading this player, which in turn means you won’t be able to create the environment of a bidding war. On the other hand, if you just whisper the name “Javonte Wil…” in a group chat, you will get three offers before you can finish his name.
This is also why trading is so much fun for me. So much goes into every deal that you want to try and make. There is no “right” value, there is no “correct” way to build a team, and there is no “absolute” win or lose in trades. And when you are in the non-point-scoring season (my favorite time to trade), all values are completely hypothetical. There aren’t any of those pesky points getting in the way. Remember, puzzle pieces, lots of them and in many different shapes and sizes.
Now it’s time to step into the real world. No more hypotheticals. It’s time to hit up the DLF Trade Finder and see what we can find for these two studly RBs. Be prepared, I am going to try and find ceiling value trades for both players. I want to show the possibilities of what can be done with these running backs even though their value is technically very close.
First, we look for Williams trades.
Here it is. Right off the bat. The Unicorn. Javonte Williams straight up for Kyle Pitts.
You don’t have to be Matt Price to know that Pitts is far and away the TE1: the value positional advantage of all positional advantages. I think no matter what position we are talking about, if you have the opportunity to trade away the fifth-ranked player for the first-ranked player at a different position, you probably want to do it. When that first ranked player happens to be the generational talent, 21-year-old, second season in the league, uber athlete, you TOTALLY have to do it.
I got nothing.
I think… um… Nope… I still got nothing.
Last one – a move I endorse in theory, maybe not in execution in this instance:
I am thinking the same thing you are all thinking. Christian McCaffrey is three years older and coming off the past two seasons where he played in a total of ten games. Also, it is not very often that a 26-year-old running back (will turn 26 in June) will ever gain dynasty value again regardless of how many fantasy points they score. But on the other side, would you be surprised if McCaffrey played most, if not all of the season and ended as a top-three RB in points per game? I would not. Then there is the gold that is a 2023 first. If they were to yet again remake Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory ,you would find a 2023 first-round draft pick when you opened your Scrum-diddly-umptious bar.
Williams is very good at football and plays on a team that should have a very good offense but the upside on the other side is just way too high to ignore. I love this type of move with highly-ranked running backs – “downgrading” and getting extra capital on top. I said before that I like this move in theory but maybe not in execution and that is because I play a bit more risk-averse when it comes to running backs so I don’t think I would invest in McCaffrey right now. Though, I don’t know if I could bring myself to reject this offer if it was sent my way.
Now we look for Ekeler trades.
I was actually pleasantly surprised to see this one:
Trey Lance is not without his risks. Jimmy Garoppolo is still on the team and brought the 49ers to the playoffs last season. Reports out of camp have not been stellar. But Lance was highly drafted and has immense upside in both NFL play and fantasy production. He technically hasn’t been named the week one starter but already has a top-two-round startup ADP.
For most situations, trading Ekeler for Lance is a great move. You get much younger, you get a quarterback on your superflex team without giving one up, and Lance just has more value – brilliant move.
This one seems fair and the analyzer agrees. It doesn’t feel great though.
We have already talked about 2023 first-round rookie picks so we don’t need to get into that again. Even if Ekeler finishes as a top-five running back this season, there is a good chance you might not be able to get a 2023 first for him after the season just given the fact that he will be a 28-year-old running back. If you are rebuilding and want out on the age and don’t want the production on your team, I think this is something you have to take. Again, it just doesn’t feel great though.
I see this as the right move on either side:
I think there is a strong probability Ekeler will outscore Cam Akers this season. I also think there is a strong probability (if Akers has the season we all want him to) that after this season, Akers will have more dynasty value than Ekeler. If you are the Ekeler manager I like this move because you are getting five years younger and also gaining two draft picks in a very valuable draft class. If you are the Akers manager I like this move because you are buying production and helping your team.
The factor that hasn’t been brought up yet is just how much of a gap do you think there will be in the production between Ekeler and Akers. While Akers didn’t look 100% in his medical miracle of a return in the playoffs, would you be surprised if he came in next season and scored 75% of Ekeler’s production? Ekeler scored 20.99 points per game last season. 75% of that would be 15.74, which would have put Akers in at RB13. RB13 also happens to be Akers’ current positional ADP. All of those factors put together equal a good deal to me.
Looking over all of the trades listed above, it is clear you can still make good valued trades that are helpful for your team. But if you have both of these running backs on your team, which of these deals would you rather explore? My puzzle pieces for RB value make a much prettier picture with Ekeler on my team and scoring all those beautiful fantasy points. While showing the Williams puzzle to the rest of the league probably would display a much more magnificent picture, which will gain me better value in a trade.
Here is the real and fun answer: there is no right answer! There is no right or wrong way to build a dynasty team. There is no right or wrong way to value players. And the even more fun answer is that two people valuing players differently is how trades get done. Those are also usually the trades where both sides walk away feeling great about the trade (or feeling like they “won the trade”).
We can get so zoned in on valuing players and how that relates to your specific team that sometimes we need to remember to take a step back and look at the bigger picture. How do you value positions on your team? How would you value positions outside of your team? Or even on someone else’s team? These exercises, besides being fun (for me at least), will help you understand yourself better as a dynasty player and help you not only make trades but help you like the teams you build better.
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