Welcome back to the DLF Mailbag, the preeminent mailbag in all the dynasty fantasy football land. This year I’ll be answering questions from you via Twitter, Discord, or the old-fashioned way (via email).
Free agency is now far behind us. The 2023 NFL Draft has now come and gone. It’s the quiet season until training camps open, but that doesn’t mean the questions ever stop. While it may be the dog days of summer, and seemingly nothing is going on, this is a great time to evaluate your rosters and see what changes or upgrades can be made.
I need questions for this week's @DLFootball . Help me flex my brain muscles with some questions.
— Shanesays (@ShaneIsTheWorst) July 8, 2023
Step it up
10t/start 9/1.0 ppr/ 1Qb/3flex
The meat of my WR core is: Waddle, Olave, Amari, Jamo, JSN, Pitts
RB: Barkley, Connor, Mattison, CEH, Allgeier, Lenny
QB: Watson, Russ, Lance, Richardson.
Proj mid 24 1st. X2 25 1st’s
What realistic moves can I make to take the next step up?
— Jake (@Ferderko) July 8, 2023
I love getting player questions, and trade questions, but what I like is looking at rosters and trying to figure out which direction to go and how to get there. A couple of general notes before we dig into the roster:
Considering that the roster has five hammers in Deshaun Watson, Jaylen Waddle, Chris Olave, Saquon Barkley, and Kyle Pitts – out of nine starting slots – and three future firsts, I’d say this roster is closer to competing than not competing. If this is the first time you’ve seen me use the term “hammer” it just refers to a player who is a needle mover, a player with week-winning upside, a player who can put up crooked scores.
The starting lineup is small, only nine, which means depth is less important. You should focus on acquiring hammers, and when making trades, we don’t want to be on the receiving end of two-for-ones, we want the strongest singular asset in any deal.
The quarterback room is the first thing I look at in a superflex league. Watson is elite, and Richardson has the upside to be elite. I have some concerns with Anthony Richardson, so if I could use Richardson and one of my 2025 firsts to tier up to Justin Fields, (per current DLF rankings) or a 2024 first to get up to Lamar Jackson I would do so. But if you just want to hold Richardson and bet on his upside, I’m fine with that as well since Russell Wilson should be able to get through at least the 2023 season while Richardson gets his feet under him. Move on from Trey Lance – the Dynasty Trade Finder can help guide you. I prefer a Dameon Pierce-like deal for the specific roster shared above, as a running back is of greater need.
A wide receiver room with Olave and Waddle is very good, and having the Amari Cooper stack with Watson is a nice cheap stack. If we truly want to push for a title, I would look to pair Jaxon Smith-Njigba and Jameson Williams and see if we can get a Stefon Diggs tier of receiver. This isn’t a move I would look to make on every roster, but considering the assets and age of core players on this roster I would look to make it here.
Only one note about the running back, and this is more borne of my own philosophy than anything else, but if I could tier down from Barkley I would look to do so. I would try to move Barkley and a second-round rookie pick for someone in the Najee Harris range and a future rookie first, even if it’s a 2025 pick.
Injury discount
I have Tua in a few leagues. I'm constantly getting low ball offers for him. Explain the correct timing to sell risky players. It'd be silly imo to sell Tua now. When I know week 1 he's starting and could drop another 4+ td game
— Dan Smi✞h (@DAN0HMITE) July 9, 2023
Buying and selling players with injuries or injury concerns is one of the rites of passage of any dynasty league. When looking at when you should sell, I think we can all agree that the worst time to move a player is immediately after they sustain an injury. The sharks smell blood in the water whenever a player is injured and the lowball offers usually come en masse. Akin to this thought process is knowing you shouldn’t trade a player (unless you are receiving full value) once they are ready to return from a long-term injury.
As an example below is an example of a trade I would make sending away Tua Tagovailoa because you’re getting full value (+) for him.
Contrary to the trade above, the one below is selling short. Trading a QB1, albeit a low-end one with injury concerns, for a WR2 and a second-round rookie pick is a loss.
Why you would make the deal above now makes little sense to me. You held onto Tagovailoa through each of his injuries last season, including a season-ending one, only to trade him away two months from the start of the season, when every report is that he’s on track to be healthy come week one?
The thought process behind that confuses me when you’re selling at a loss on the player. Even if you think about the opportunity cost lost in a worst-case scenario, what have you lost by not making this deal? Let’s say he suffers another concussion and is ultimately forced to retire, are you truly going to be impacted by not having traded for a low-end WR2? No, you would not be materially affected by that. Is the potential downside of losing out on a WR2 greater than the potential upside of a QB1? No, it is not. Based on the risk versus reward ratio there’s no reason to accept a low-ball offer for Tagovailoa right now.
League settings
What dynasty league setting is as divisive as pineapple on pizza?
— Nick (@NaC_NaC317) July 8, 2023
It could be because I play in a lot of leagues with like-minded people, but I don’t ever really see many divisive league settings. If you’re old like me, you remember the wars that were fought over superflex, PPR, and tight-end premium, but those battles were decided some time ago, with superflex and PPR becoming the standard.
I think there are still two settings that people will still butt heads over. Whether the startup draft should be an auction draft or a snake draft is usually a lively debate. Anyone who prefers auction will tell you it’s fairer, and it takes more strategy than a snake draft. I don’t agree, but that’s the argument.
Whether starting rosters should start two tight ends is also a fun topic. I am firmly opposed to starting two tight-end leagues, only because of just how poor the production is at the position outside of the top tier. Some may feel that brings more value to the position, but I am not a fan.
And though not a league setting exactly, my favorite ongoing debate is which platform to use for the league. I have become a giant fan of Sleeper, but there are still folks who prefer My Fantasy League (MFL). That’s the debate I want to hear about. So if you don’t mind, just let me know which platform you prefer, and why, below in the comments.
- Dynasty Fantasy Football Mailbag: Pivoting Away from Jonathan Taylor - August 29, 2023
- Dynasty Fantasy Football Mailbag: Kyle Pitts, Brock Purdy and Roster Construction - August 22, 2023
- Dynasty Fantasy Football Mailbag: Late-Round Stashes and More - August 15, 2023
I prefer MFL because I play in fairly complex leagues. 3/5 are start 11 offense and 11 defense with varying levels of complexity. One is a 32 man with 53 player rosters (meant to be as close to the NFL experience as possible), one is a 14 man auction that follows the NFL salary cap and has double header matchups (which sleeper doesn’t support), and the last one is my “home league” where we constantly make tweaks and improvements and also has double headers. I use Sleeper for my redraft and my basketball dynasty league because they’re simple. I like and enjoy both, but if I had to choose one, it would be MFL for the depth of customization.
I’ve never played on MFL so what do you mean by double headers? Is it three teams all playing each other in the same week? Sleeper has the option of median scoring, where you can earn two wins per week, one win for beating your opponent and one win for scoring in the top half of your league
Question. You recommend: “I would try to move Barkley and a second-round rookie pick for someone in the Najee Harris range and a future rookie first, even if it’s a 2025 pick.” But a paragraph before you stated, “we don’t want to be on the receiving end of two-for-ones, we want the strongest singular asset in any deal.” I know it’s not QUITE the same thing, but it’s pretty much the same thing – tiering down for lesser players and picks is essentially similar to tiering down to two lesser players (unless you think a future first is worth more than Barkley, which I doubt). Understand there are exceptions to every rule but why are you recommending it here? Thanks in advance.
I’m newer to dynasty (just a couple years) and only played redraft or keepers before on ESPN, yahoo and CBS. Sleeper is miles ahead of those for both redraft and dynasty. Never tried MFL but all the stories and the screenshots I’ve seen have turned me off of even trying it.
Hands down sleeper is the best IMHO followed by yahoo. If I had to pick a 3rd, I’d go with ESPN and fleaflicker is complete garbage.
Took me 3 yrs to convince a league to move away from FF, thank God. It took my self and 2 other managers to threaten leaving if we didn’t migrate.
I’m an MFL truther, but I’ve never used sleeper so I can’t actually offer any comparative observations. I love the level of complexity MFL allows. I personally run a contract-cap league and two normal dynasty leagues. There’s a fairly steep learning curve, but eventually the MFL site can work with a myriad of settings for free agent acquisition, draft settings, in- and off-season transactions, salary caps, etc, etc…. Also, their customer service has been very helpful when I’ve needed to reach out for assistance.
MFL has many gadgets to customize a league, so I understand those who do contracts, salaries, double headers, etc, liking it more. But I am in a 12-team PPR 1QB with only a few scoring tweaks (all supported by other sites), and pushed hard to move from it to Sleeper. Not only is MFL not as user friendly as other sites, they charge you for the privilege. I’d rather see our fees go to league mates based on finish than to a platform.
And to the one bit of trash talk I saw about FleaFlicker, it’s user friendly and the only thing it won’t do for our 12-team, SF, IDP league is allow instant trade processing. And I feel it’s a little easier to use than Sleeper. I’m in two leagues on FF, and their customer support has been accommodating and even added a feature two years ago when we asked.
