Trading Out Of The Rookie Draft, Every Year, & On Purpose

[clarion contrarion]

I think it depends on your preference and ability to scout talent. The guys who drafted AJ Green, Calvin Johnson, and Adrian Peterson are probably glad they drafted.

Take Calvin Johnson: 1st year in the league was good, but not good enough to start.

His second year, he did better, and became a starter on all fantasy teams.

In his 3rd year, he took a dive. He actually did worse than year #2... a lot worse. He could be had for a first rounder at this point.

In his 4th year, he's starting to dominate and not look back this time.

So if I traded away my first round pick in 2007, I could have traded him for a full-time starter for 3 years (2007, 2008, 2009) while allowing CJ to develop on someone else's team. Theoretically, I then could have traded my 2010 pick for CJ, and guaranteed a stud on my team for years.

Here's the 2007 rookie draft for the experts:

1.01 1. FantasyFootballXtreme.com Peterson, Adrian MIN RB
1.02 2. Gridiron Grumblings Lynch, Marshawn BUF RB
1.03 3. FantasyFootballWhiz.com Johnson, Calvin DET WR
1.04 4. FantasyFootballStarters.com Jackson, Brandon GBP RB
1.05 5. Footballguys_Smith Bowe, Dwayne KCC WR
1.06 6. HuddleGeeks.com Ginn Jr., Ted MIA WR
1.07 7. FantasyTailgate.com Quinn, Brady CLE QB
1.08 8. TheFootballExpert.com Meachem, Robert NOS WR
1.09 9. FantasySharks.com Russell, JaMarcus OAK QB
1.10 10. RotoWorld.com Bush, Michael OAK RB
1.11 11. FantasyFootballCafe.com Henry, Chris TEN RB
1.12 12. FFToolbox.com Wolfe, Garrett CHI RB

I see 0 qualms with trading away my 1.04 or later pick for ANY player in the league.

With the exception of RBs (who can start and produce right away), I'd rather trade away my first rounders for guys I know will produce.

my take is having a website does not an expert make ?

do your own research and decide for yourself
my usage of the draft is to draft bench guys after building a solid nucleus then you can afford to wait for them to be ready.

[jlasaf2007]

Look, I think your original post was good and I can appreciate the strategy behind it. It's hardly new or groundbreaking, but it doesn't need to be in order to have a good discussion about its merits. Lets just not get carried away though and pretend like you can always pick up top tier studs for pennies on the dollar though either. Many of us play in competitive leagues with knowledgeable fantasy owners where this sort of thing is MUCH easier said than done.

This.

Many of the guys in my leagues would rather ride it out and hope that a player is merely going through a valley than trade them for pennies on the dollar just to get something out of them.

[49ersFaithful80]

...Anyone who thinks they could have traded a single 1st round pick for Calvin Johnson at any point in his career is delusional.

lol I love the whole "why take the risk on rookies? you can just trade one single 1st rounder for the AJ Green's and Julio Jones's of the world" philosophy.

If you wait until these young players show any promise you are going to have to pay WAY more than a single 1st rounder for them.

Whatever moron is in your league and traded David Wilson going into this season for a single draft pick should be banished from fantasy football.

In most leagues people were giving up 2-3 1st rounders for a player like Wilson going into the year.

Trading away your draft picks caps the upside of your fantasy squad, without risk there are no returns

[Mad Macedonian]

Look, I think your original post was good and I can appreciate the strategy behind it. It's hardly new or groundbreaking, but it doesn't need to be in order to have a good discussion about its merits. Lets just not get carried away though and pretend like you can always pick up top tier studs for pennies on the dollar though either. Many of us play in competitive leagues with knowledgeable fantasy owners where this sort of thing is MUCH easier said than done.

I will second this as well. I have employed the draft pick for players strategy for a couple years and had only one hit. I usually end up using my rookie picks and then trying to trade them once they do show promise. I had the 1.01/1.09/1.10/2.02/2.10 in 2014 and 2 firsts/2 seconds in 2015. They only trade I was able to make strictly with picks for a stud was 2014 1.09/2.02 and a 2015 first (higher of the two) for Gronk before he got hurt. (I did not own the 1.01 when I did the trade). Since acquiring the 1.01 in 2014, here is a list of players I have been rejected offering my 3 remaining firsts in 2014/2015 and my seconds (in any combo):

Julio/AJ/Calvin/Dez/Gordon/D Thomas/A Brown/J Charles/Forte/Lynch/Gio

Someone up above posted that going second tier for picks is a better strategy. I am sure if I offered picks for Roddy/VJax/Garcon/DJax to teams that were trying to rebuild, I might get more trades. From experience, no amount of picks alone will pry top studs from GM's.....just got lucky once.

[mjreardon]

If you search Calvin Johnson in 2010 on these very forums, he's being bought and sold for much less than a 1st rounder.

Don't be so naive.

Calvin was the 18th overall play drafted according to MFL ADP data from 2010. That was good for the #5 WR overall. I very much doubt you could have traded a 1st round pick for him, nevermind "much less than a 1st rounder."

[mjreardon]

This strategy sounds nice, "trading away risky rookies for proven studs," but I'm not convinced it's a good idea in most leagues. Whether or not this is a good idea depends entirely on what you can get for your draft picks. Would I trade 1.09 for DeMarco Murray? Sure I would. Would I trade 1.10 for Matt Forte? Yep. But I don't think either of those deals are very likely to happen.

What happens if the best player you can get for your 9th overall pick is Torrey Smith? Or Andre Johnson? Would you trade it for Darren McFadden?

I don't think a 1st round pick outside of the top 5-6 is going to get you even near a "proven stud." And if this strategy is a good idea and you're an otherwise competent owner, you should not be drafting in the top 5-6 that much.

If you have people tossing you Brandon Marshall for 1.10 or Randall Cobb for 1.07, then yeah, this strategy is great. But if not, and you decide you're better off drafting a player, well then all this "strategy" really boils down to is "Trade your 1st round picks if you can get a veteran that you like better than the rookie you'll get at your 1st round pick." That's an analysis that a good owner should be doing all the time, regardless.

[mjreardon]

If you search Calvin Johnson in 2010 on these very forums, he's being bought and sold for much less than a 1st rounder.

Don't be so naive.

Calvin was the 18th overall play drafted according to MFL ADP data from 2010. That was good for the #5 WR overall. I very much doubt you could have traded a 1st round pick for him, nevermind "much less than a 1st rounder."

Just to flesh it out further, here's Calvin's ADP according to thousands of leagues drafted on MFL for his entire career:

2007 - WR20
2008 - WR17
2009 - WR4
2010 - WR5
2011 - WR2
2012 - WR1
2013 - WR1

And keep in mind that these results are primarily from redraft leagues, so the years where his ADP is lowest (his first two years), it's very likely that he was thought off a lot higher in dynasty leagues as a #1 overall pick who was just starting out and had to play with the Lions.

Maybe you could've pried him away from a finicky owner after his rookie season with a top 1-3 1st round pick, but after 2008, the window was long gone.

[mjreardon]

And this of course is to say nothing of the hindsight required to say "you could just trade your 1st, let someone else draft Calvin, and then buy him back the year before he blows up!" If you truly think Calvin's 2nd and 3rd year were so bad (as you describe) it doesn't really make sense to think that you would've then gone out and traded your 1st round pick for him, especially since, according to this strategy, you trade your 1st round picks for "proven studs."

[BuckeyeNation]

...Anyone who thinks they could have traded a single 1st round pick for Calvin Johnson at any point in his career is delusional.

lol I love the whole "why take the risk on rookies? you can just trade one single 1st rounder for the AJ Green's and Julio Jones's of the world" philosophy.

If you wait until these young players show any promise you are going to have to pay WAY more than a single 1st rounder for them.

Whatever moron is in your league and traded David Wilson going into this season for a single draft pick should be banished from fantasy football.

In most leagues people were giving up 2-3 1st rounders for a player like Wilson going into the year.

Trading away your draft picks caps the upside of your fantasy squad, without risk there are no returns

What are you talking about, not being able to get and AJG or Julio for a 1st? During the 2013 season I bought AJG for a 2014 1st.....Plus another 2014 1st.....Plus another 2014 1st....Plus 2 2013 1st round player in Patterson and Tavon. Sooooo, 1 1st; 5 1sts; It's all the same right? Why argue the semantics of it? LOL

[DonBrazi]

Seems like we're getting off topic here. The main point, as I saw it, was that it's safer and likely better to buy proven guys than rookies. Who cares about specific examples? In general, rookies will bust more often than guys who have shown something in the NFL. Of course, you can't buy AJG for one 1st round pick. But you can surely get Mark Ingram for one. Or T-Rich. Or... But that's not the thing. I take the OP's message as saying that rookie picks are over-valued come draft time. If you get good value (at the time), more often than not, you're probably going to get better value in the long-run with that investment. Probably. More often than not. Etc. NOT always... But think of fantasy as a game of odds and probabilities.

[49ersFaithful80]

Seems like we're getting off topic here. The main point, as I saw it, was that it's safer and likely better to buy proven guys than rookies. Who cares about specific examples? In general, rookies will bust more often than guys who have shown something in the NFL. Of course, you can't buy AJG for one 1st round pick. But you can surely get Mark Ingram for one. Or T-Rich. Or... But that's not the thing. I take the OP's message as saying that rookie picks are over-valued come draft time. If you get good value (at the time), more often than not, you're probably going to get better value in the long-run with that investment. Probably. More often than not. Etc. NOT always... But think of fantasy as a game of odds and probabilities.

Dude, both of those players you named carry a ton of risk, they've been busts up to this point. These are the type of players your getting for a single 1st rounder. I'll stick with the pick every time.

Any players that have actually proven something are going to cost you a bevy of picks unless they are really old.

Stupid philosophy, do the scouting and build through the draft. Thats how you do it.

[jlasaf2007]

Seems like we're getting off topic here. The main point, as I saw it, was that it's safer and likely better to buy proven guys than rookies. Who cares about specific examples? In general, rookies will bust more often than guys who have shown something in the NFL. Of course, you can't buy AJG for one 1st round pick. But you can surely get Mark Ingram for one. Or T-Rich. Or... But that's not the thing. I take the OP's message as saying that rookie picks are over-valued come draft time. If you get good value (at the time), more often than not, you're probably going to get better value in the long-run with that investment. Probably. More often than not. Etc. NOT always... But think of fantasy as a game of odds and probabilities.

I'd like to see some data to back up the point in bold.

Here's the other thing: EVERY GUY WHO "SHOWS SOMETHING" IN THE NFL WAS ONCE A ROOKIE!

What you are essentially saying is, "The rookies who go on to show something in the NFL pan out more than the future rookies who haven't played a snap yet."

Of course if you take the top rookies from 2013, hand-pick the best 5 out of them now, and then compare them to the top from 2014, you'll get a lower "bust" rate. But here's the problem; how do you plan on acquiring Lacy, Bell, Gio, Patterson, or Keenan now? If you traded away your 2013 picks, you missed your chance to draft one of these guys. Now you're going to try and trade away a 2014 1st to get one of them? Good luck with that. You're probably going to have to give up more than that to get any of them. Now you've paid more for a guy you could've gotten for ONLY a 1st round pick a year ago.

Buy low, sell high. Picks are something that everyone gets for free every year, and they have the best chance of getting you a great player for the lowest price. If you are on the clock and can get a "proven" player that you like more than the potential of any player left on the board, then by all means pull the trigger. However, I don't think it's a strategy that, year after year, will always yield the best results.

[KMA]

Solid take

[DonBrazi]

Dude, both of those players you named carry a ton of risk, they've been busts up to this point. These are the type of players your getting for a single 1st rounder. I'll stick with the pick every time.

Any players that have actually proven something are going to cost you a bevy of picks unless they are really old.

Stupid philosophy, do the scouting and build through the draft. Thats how you do it.

My point, if you would pay attention, is the opposite of what you think it is. I'm saying with a 1st round pick, you can draft a guy like AJG and Calvin OR guys like T-Rich, Ingram, etc. and more often than not, they turn out to be worth LESS than a 1st round pick in future years. It's fairly seldom that you can only draft a guy like AJG or Calvin, etc (those whose value goes up relative to a 1st round pick). My argument is that picks are more often than not, not worth what we could get for them on the open market in terms of 'proven' players.

Hence, a request like this is legitimate:

I'd like to see some data to back up the point in bold.

What you are essentially saying is, "The rookies who go on to show something in the NFL pan out more than the future rookies who haven't played a snap yet."

However, I have no such data. But I am sure that you can ask any expert what he/she thinks the odds of a 1st round pick panning out are and take that as legitimate evidence, as opposed to proof.

And yes, that ('the rookies who go on...') is what I am saying. The larger point though (here's where you should really pay attention!) is NOT about picks or NFL players or anything along those lines. It's about dynasty players. The reason I agree with the OP in the first place (look at my first post on this topic) is because dynasty owners perpetually over-value draft picks. That's what, in my mind, he's suggesting that someone should take advantage of. And that IS a sustainable (year after year) strategy.

If you want to disagree, that's fine. But the only thing that I'm saying that you could really disagree with (or that is possibly controversial) is the bust rate of 1st round picks. Are you suggesting that more often than not, you can draft a better player than you could have traded the pick for?

[DonBrazi]

Quickly.. and apologies for the double posting.

I think you can liken it to investing in the stock market. One strategy is to only buy IPOs in the hopes of finding the next Amazon. Another strategy is to buy into existing companies with a proven track record of success.

If (that's a big if, I will admit), you want to play it safe, the odds suggest that you should buy into existing companies (and that's not just in terms of success rates...that's also in terms of long-term wealth creation). IPOs fall on their face way more often than the stock of established firms.

I am NOT suggesting that nobody could get rich by investing purely in IPOs. It's certainly possible. But the odds are against such a strategy. Maybe I've read too much Warren Buffet (who's a huge proponent of the 'stupid' strategy the OP laid out), I dunno. But I will say that if everyone agreed with it, it would no longer work. So maybe it's best that you guys disagree..