Thursday, October 20, 2011

Fantasy Football Strategy: How to Pick A Smart Trade

**Before we start the post. As you all probably know, the Ronnie Brown trade did not go through. If you need a RB. Get Morris. I have a funny feeling that Best isn't coming back any time soon.**

With all the noise made this week in the NFL about trades, I thought it was time to address the art of the fantasy football trade.
I get a lot of questions on the site about trade advice and while a lot of it has to do with predictions, there is a bit of a science to it that entails looking at the past. With a little bit of time, and a little bit of math, you can figure out if a trade is right for you in just a few simple minutes without getting stuck in overthinking things.
Let’s look at one of my Yahoo! leagues. The scoring is PPR and some ridiculous changes to QB that make their total astronomical. The lineup looks like this: QB, RB, RB, WR, WR, WR, TE
My team looks like this (the number in parentheses are their average points per game):
QB- Matt Ryan (40), Matt Schaub (41)
RB- LeSean McCoy (16), DeAngelo Williams (5), BenJarvus Green-Ellis (8)
WR- DeSean Jackson (9), Mike Wallace (14), Greg Little (6), Michael Jenkins (7), Sidney Rice (9)
TE- Jason Witten (12), Jermaine Gresham (9)
K- John Kasay
DEF- Atlanta Falcons, San Diego Chargers
Since Jamaal Charles went down, I’m definitely short at running back.
So, let’s say that I was offered Darren McFadden for Mike Wallace. Time to do some math.
Since this trade is only affecting running backs and receivers, those are all the positions I need to look at. I’ll start, by adding up the total average points of the starters that I have. (Do this with your best players, not the ones that you are starting any particular week, so don’t mind the bye weeks too much.) By starting McCoy, BJGE, Jackson, Wallace and Rice…my average points total from RB and WR is 56.
Now, do the math with your new starting lineup. This would be McCoy, McFadden (13), Jackson, Jenkins and Rice. This comes out to be 54 points per game. You can simply see that my new lineup is making fewer points per week than my previous team.
Say no to the trade.
Now in comes a counter-offer, where I give up DeSean Jackson and get Frank Gore (12)
My old lineup was 56 points. My new lineup of McCoy, Gore, Wallace, Jenkins and Rice is 58 points per week.
Take the trade.
The more parts of the trade (RB/WR for RB/WR or QB for RB/WR, etc.) the more important doing this math is.
It is a simple way of just crunching the numbers that these players have accumulated this season and using it to your advantage.