Do You Value, Value?

Let’s face it, fantasy football requires some luck…maybe even more than “some”. I would say that just like poker, fantasy sports (especially football) is a mix of 50% knowledge/manager ability and 50% luck. There is nothing you can do about Brady getting injured in week 1, or Jerome Harrison having on the best days in the history of football against you.

Now before you say, “Well, that stinks, guess I’ll wing it and hope for the best each year,” let me help you. Even though there is a good deal of luck involved, there still is a reason many of the same people make the playoffs each year. It’s just like poker, where the best reach the final table a higher percentage of the time than the rest. Why is that? It’s two-fold. They win because they do their research, and they understand “value”.

Research is the easy part. You visit websites, review rankings, read articles, follow position battles, participate in mock drafts, etc. Anyone can do that, but not everyone takes the time. Basically, it’s the fantasy sports version of practice. “Well that’s all well and good,” you say, but, you want even more probability of winning. Okay then, to take your potential to the next level, you need to understand and work value.

Value plays a part in the draft and throughout the entire season. Many owners end up limiting their potential because they draft improperly, only look at names, don’t maximize on changing values, and get hung up on their own team. These are the pitfalls that keep owners from taking the next step to greatness.

Let’s start with the draft. Here are a few ways to maximize value and start your season off on the right foot. Get a set of rankings you like (whether someone’s you found in a magazine or online, or even making up your own), but don’t stop there. You need to place the players into tiers. This is taking a group of players that you deem comparable and grouping them together. So, the last person in a tier has comparable value to the first. This prevents you from waffling over a few similar players come draft time.

When you are picking in a snake draft, or a player comes up in an auction, refer to your tiers. Let’s say a RB is on the board, and he’s in a tier with 5 other similar players. At the same time, the next likely WR on the board is the last one in his tier. In this situation, you go for the WR. Why? Value. The drop off for the WR is more significant than the drop off for RBs since there are still similar RBs left. This is step 1 to maximizing value.

Next, let’s talk about names. Owners too often get hung up on who the player is instead of how he is performing. For two perfect examples, all we need to do is look to last year. Who at the beginning of the season would have traded Brandon Jacobs for Ray Rice or Terrell Owens for Miles Austin? You would have been laughed at for such an offer. However, come the second half of the season, you would never have been able to get Rice or Austin for those players. What I see owners do is turn down offers or hang on to players too long because of their name. If you are getting good value, make the move. Don’t get hung up on a LaDanian Tomlinson. Soon it will be too late, and you won’t be able to move him for Justin Forsett.

Now, during the regular season, you need to maximize your players’ values. Let’s pull another example for this point. Last year I told a friend, while Miami was on their bye, to trade Ronnie Brown. Why? Because I’m psychic and saw his injury coming? No. It was because his value would never be higher…ever.

Even if Brown had stayed healthy, there was no way he was going to average about 20 points a week (which he did from weeks 2-5). The fact is, his value was at its peak. So, even if you could get equal value at the time in a player like Steven Jackson, you make out better because Brown regresses to his true value. Granted SJax had a poor end of the year, but if you were smart, you could have also sold high on him after his stretch of great games and improved again. See the pattern?

This holds true for buying low on value too. People are impatient and want immediate gratification. Do you know how many owners I saw panic last year and trade Brees away after two games of no touchdowns? Do I need to remind anyone that he threw 9 in the first two games? Take a guess how that worked out for them. You should pounce on owners like this, the ones who had Brees, or Steve Smith (south), or the aforementioned Steven Jackson, etc. You go with talent because it wins out almost every time.

Lastly, in a combination of points, owners need to not be hung up on their own team. In relation to over-valuing names, owners become too attached to their players and their own team’s benefit. Something happens that is almost tangible when teams are filled. The owners start to feel like real-life GMs. This creates an overvaluing of players since every owner sees his guys as better than they truly are, or he doesn’t want to admit he’s lacking somewhere. Then, when someone comes to them offering Ryan Grant for Pierre Thomas, instead of being unbiased and taking the deal (as they should), they ask for more or decline.

In addition, owners will also decline trades because they “don’t want to help out someone else.” The main point of trades is to help out both teams involved. It’s the inherent concept of trading. Again, let’s look at an example. An owner proposes Tom Brady and LeSean McCoy for Cedric Benson. The catch is the team with Brady also has Schaub and wasn’t even using Brady. The natural instinct is to say, I don’t want to upgrade his RB position in return for someone he’s not using. Yet, you have Palmer at QB, and the difference between QBs is much greater than at RB. This is where you swallow your pride, or whatever is holding you back, and make the move.

We’ve already discussed that fantasy football is 50% luck. There’s always a chance Schaub or Benson could get hurt, or Brady and McCoy could have huge second halves. What’s the point of fantasy football? To win. How can you give yourself a better chance? Improve your team. Don’t sit by and watch a good trade pass you by to spite another team. Chances are that team will probably trade those guys to someone else anyway.

I’m not guaranteeing that if you do all of these things properly you will win all of the time. No one can or will. However, if you work at becoming better at each aspect of the game, you will increase your chances exponentially.