Dynasty Fantasy Football Trading Post: ‘Old’ Tight Ends
Receiving a random trade offer is a mixed bag of emotions. At first, you feel the buzz and elation of possibilities. You get excited that someone thought you have a player on your roster who is worth trading for and that they sent you an offer that will be fun to dwell on and maybe even get to have the fun of sending a counter-offer.
But then the feeling quickly changes to something grayer. How often do you really receive cold offers that are worthwhile? More likely the cold offers you receive lead to head shakes, face palms, or eye rolls. Managing expectations is a safe way to get through the day. This way you are happy when you are pleasantly surprised when things go well but just find it par for the course when you get the “meh” feeling taking over. Okay, this got a little dark pretty quickly. Let’s reel this back in.
I recently moved all of my league chats over to Discord, which I love, because I can still have the 11 separate chats for each of the Trade Addicts leagues but also have the large general chat with everyone involved. Besides being a great place to talk about random fantasy football happenings, whenever a trade goes down in any of the leagues, it usually gets brought into the general chat (respectfully, of course).
A few weeks ago I received an email that claimed I had a trade offer. I hopped onto my emotional rollercoaster and rode the excitement, then the sobering disappointment waves, and checked it out. In case you didn’t know, Trade Addicts leagues are 12-team, superflex, PPR, .75 tight end premium. The offer I received was Evan Engram for my 2.03 2024 rookie pick and Parker Washington.
I stared at this offer for a minute or two and looked around as if to look to see if I was missing something. I hit that high note of “pleasantly surprised” that I received a cold offer that not only did I think was a good offer but was a straight-up accept. No need for counter-offers or negotiations, just hit the accept button and move on.
I skipped my way over to the group chat which happened to already be discussing the trade. To my surprise, the group was pretty split on the deal. Engram finished as the TE4 last year and the TE5 the year before. I understand the 2024 draft class is seen as very deep, especially in superflex leagues, but the 2.03 definitely felt like a win. But the other manager who doesn’t believe as highly in Engram and loves the group of wide receivers he feels will be landing in that 2.03 area walked away happy as well. Of course, this is the definition of a good trade: both managers walking away happy (or both walking away feeling like they made a mistake).
Reeling this conversation further back in, aging yet productive tight ends feel like a perfect target for competing teams to set their sights on. We have “generational prospect” Brock Bowers coming in this draft class and a group of young and talented tight ends producing in the league such as Sam LaPorta, Trey McBride, and Dalton Kincaid. This is leaving the veteran tight ends in this limbo of producing at high levels but having relatively low dynasty value.
Since we already talked about my Engram trade, let’s use the DLF Trade Finder and Trade Analyzer to look over some trades for other “old” but productive tight ends and see how the market appears.
12 team, superflex, PPR, start 9.
This is the kind of move I love to do on my competing teams. Chances are I have none of my draft picks on competing teams. If I want to be involved in a rookie draft, I want to be in the top half of the first round which means my pick won’t get me there. If there ends up being a player I like in the back end of the first, I have found it is usually pretty easy to trade back in around draft time. This means that if I can send my first-round pick a year from now and get a player who has shown the ability to score at the top of his position, I will do that every time. The analyzer shows this in favor of Mark Andrews and I definitely agree. If I am on the other side of this trade I would need something much better than a third-round rookie pick to make up that difference.
12 team, 1QB, PPR, start 9.
Travis Kelce has been dominant for a long time. This past season he matched his worst finish in the past five years by finishing as the TE2. How do we thank him? By having him ranked as the sixth most valuable tight end in the Trade Analyzer and with trades like this showing up in the Trade Finder. This was literally the first result in the Trade Finder but six of the first eleven trades are a variation on the theme of “Kelce for a second, plus a little”. Such disrespect makes me shake my head. Then it makes me send trade offers. If your team is competing, go get Kelce.
I talk about the non-point-scoring season being the time that you shouldn’t worry about your lineups but instead worry about the total value of your team. What you need to remember is that once points start being scored, players who score points will be more valuable. You can pull off trades like this for these “older” players right now but once September rolls around, points will be on our brains and that will make it harder to acquire the players who are doing that well. So go and get them now and watch your value increase every day that we get closer to the point-scoring season.
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