TOPIC: Fantasy Football 2020

Part of the issue is that we have all had to do a hard evaluation on our players and admitting that we were wrong in our valuation is hard. Take this year's roster for me for example. I was compleatly wrong on TY Hilton to the point where I dropped him in disgust to keep a second kicker because I could see value in trading a kicker or if someone is suddenly sick. TY was so bad that he wasn't even worth that. Drake is also clearly not worth RB1 value and I am questioning him at RB2 value.

Ertz this year is not TE1 value. Especially not with Dallas Goedart about to be back.

Lieth Maclaine/Tony McCormick wrote: Part of the issue is that we have all had to do a hard evaluation on our players and admitting that we were wrong in our valuation is hard. Take this year's roster for me for example. I was compleatly wrong on TY Hilton to the point where I dropped him in disgust to keep a second kicker because I could see value in trading a kicker or if someone is suddenly sick. TY was so bad that he wasn't even worth that. Drake is also clearly not worth RB1 value and I am questioning him at RB2 value.

Ertz this year is not TE1 value. Especially not with Dallas Goedart about to be back.

exactly this, what we thought we knew early in the season isn't what we actually know now. For instance I would much rather have James Robinson and Miles Gaskin than Drake. The former of the players were pickups week 1 and 2 and Drake was a 30 dollar "steal" during the draft. This year is the weirdest of years.

I agree with several of the prior comments.

It is the strangest year I've seen - probably remincent of the strike year from many years ago.

Erntz is a good athlete, I don't think the problem is him. The Eagles are just broken - not sure what is wrong there beyond them not having real receivers. If he were playing for a good team, he would likely be performing better. Good news for him is it is his contract year and he'll likely walk end of season. Were I to guess, I'd say he will play for Dallas next year if they can come up with the money.

Trades are tough to pull off. It takes both parties being realistic about the value of what you have versus what you think you have.I drafted Hilton in another league, paid something like $10 for him. I released him as well but it was hard to do because I paid $10 for him. The reality was he was performing worse than waiver wire players so, objectively, he had to go (and I hated watching him play this year.)

In sales training classes, I teach a course on how to recognize and convey value. There's a concept best known in gambling as "chasing losses." The value something has is not determined by what it's original investment was. Whatever you initially invested is gone. Real value is what something can do for you in the future. It's how Vegas stays in business. You start gambling by betting $100 with the objective to make money. You're down $1,000 and you decide to bet another $500 in order to get your $1,000 back. The reality is you lost $1000. That money is gone. That decision to bet another $500 was irrational. The same is true in Fantasy Football. I paid $6 for Green but he's being dropped. I paid $16 for Gurley and traded him away for a backup QB since he wasn't good enough to be in my top 4 this year . I actually tried to pick up Lindsay to replace Green this week but Mike beat me to him this week (good pick up). Lindsay would just be a filler for a couple weeks unless Gordon gets injured but that is still better than nothing from green.

There is an element of guessing what will happen when teams change (big players returning, OC's being fired, etc.) For example - I would guess the Texans will improve when/if they ever fire O'Brien (should have been fired 2 years ago - too much talent to be as predictable as they are.) I traded for Thomas because of how Thomas performs when healthy - he's been injured so far this year but has been very consistent for 3 years under the same OC and coach as well as most of the same players. In our trade, both sides won. I have enough depth at RB to lose an RB1, Tony has enough depth at WR to lose a WR1 and could use an upgrade at QB. Both of us should see an increase in points overall.

Fred

One other trade note - I strongly recommend using trades to make up for bye weeks. Spending waiver dollars for fill-in players when other teams have players post-bye they aren't starting is a good opportunity for everyone. If you have a second kicker and need a backup qb for a bye week, that can be a win for both sides. Similar cases can be made for TE's, etc.

With all the chaos of Covid, etc impacting players we needed to sign to fill in gaps - waiver dollars are at a premium. Remember, it is only week 6. We have 10 more weeks to go.

Fred

Meanwhile, I haven't liked how Brees has been looking this year and Drake hasn't been what I needed in my 3rd RB. Anderson and Crowder can hold down the WR room with Claypool helping while I decided what to do with Gallup. I decided I want to take the unknown of Thomas right now off the table in exchange for Mixon. Cam for Freeman balanced things out nicely. Waiver wire dollars is the reason I am keeping 2 defenses, 2 TE, 2 Kickers, and now 3 QB's on my roster.

Lieth Maclaine/Tony McCormick wrote: Meanwhile, I haven't liked how Brees has been looking this year and Drake hasn't been what I needed in my 3rd RB. Anderson and Crowder can hold down the WR room with Claypool helping while I decided what to do with Gallup. I decided I want to take the unknown of Thomas right now off the table in exchange for Mixon. Cam for Freeman balanced things out nicely. Waiver wire dollars is the reason I am keeping 2 defenses, 2 TE, 2 Kickers, and now 3 QB's on my roster.

The trade made sense. I've got 2 kickers, 2 TE's, and enough RBs and WR's to handle bye weeks. The only position I have to grab is a QB for week 8. Ideally, I'd like to trade a bench player for someone's backup QB for that one week.

More specifically, I'm looking to trade WR Green for someone's backup QB (must be a QB that doesn't have a bye week 8 and is starting (sorry, no Fitzmagic.) After week 10, I will have a kicker to trade as well (that could be part of the QB trade as a "future consideration" where I trade a kicker for a someone that would then be released to waivers.)

With all the Covid disruptions and injuries, I'm trying to not spend much of my remaining waiver dollars in case of emergencies

Fred

Since more people check this than the ESPN forum I thought this might be the best platform to discuss this.

So ESPN made some changes to the waiver system that even the tech guys I spoke to didn't know about. So after 4 calls to tech support at ESPN, speaking to a supervisor and then finally getting an answer here is what I've got.

So.... ONLY your first priority for the waiver pickup on the FIRST pickup day (Wednesday) takes into account inverse record, after that it is based on their own waiver system, which places people based on players picked up in some way. The consensus is that our system hasn't been the available for a while, and when they had to change the systems for last week's Tuesday game everyone has now defaulted to their way of doing things.

So what does this mean for you?

Well if you really want a player, he had better be the #1 priority waiver pickup, or if you tie with someone else you might not get them even if you have the worse record. This week a kick Koo was picked up by a team that shouldn't haven been picked up. So I can manually change this, or I can let it stand. I will let everyone vote to find out how we wish to proceed.

It also bears the question, do we want to change platforms? There are many good fantasy football websites out there, and if we move it will mean probably some different rules than we are used to, as well as getting used to different formats.

So discuss all, and let me know what we want to do.

All of my other leagues are on Yahoo, so a platform change there would be awesome for me.

As to the waivers, I noticed something was up last week, but it as minor (picking up a kicker) so I didn’t dig into it.

A note on Yahoo, I am in my other league there. As near as I can tell, you can’t set a minimum waiver bid (meaning you can bid $0.) It means you play the waiver a bit differently since you can spend all your waiver money and still pick players nobody else wants. For this season, it has worked really well with the much higher number of transactions needed due to Covid changes.

I have only tried the NFL site one once, it was ok as well,

My preference is Yahoo.

Fred

No opinion since this is my only league. I need to get in more leagues.

As for the waiver, I also have no opinion. I noticed the odd priority on waivers since it was listing me first I don't think it mattered in me picking up Claypool.

Fred K wrote: A note on Yahoo, I am in my other league there. As near as I can tell, you can’t set a minimum waiver bid (meaning you can bid $0.) It means you play the waiver a bit differently since you can spend all your waiver money and still pick players nobody else wants. For this season, it has worked really well with the much higher number of transactions needed due to Covid changes.

I have only tried the NFL site one once, it was ok as well,

My preference is Yahoo.

Fred

I love the zero dollar bid feature. Let’s you pickup long shots while saving your money when you need it for a key injury.