LittleWyvern.com

We held our 2010 fantasy football draft in our dynasty auction league this past sunday, and the approach I have taken to this season is not without a bit of controversy. The “auction” part of our league means that our draft occurs as a live auction instead of as a standard round-robin snake selection. Each team starts with $200 to fill out their 19-player roster, with a minimum player price of $1. The strategy lies in deciding how much to spend on which players at which positions. The “dynasty” part of our league means that each team keeps a few players from the previous year’s roster, and their cost in last year’s auction is subtracted from this year’s budget. There is an escalating keeper penalty so each player’s cost rises every season, ensuring that no player is kept for (realistically) more than two or (very rarely) three years. Obviously this adds another level of strategy where an owner must decide between keeping a great but expensive player or a less good but cheap player. It also adds incentive for owners to try to grab speculative future talent at a cheap price now in hopes that they become great later on.

At any rate, I took an extreme approach to this season and kept five players (the maximum alllowed) for $186 (also, the maximum possible). Because I still needed to draft the other 14 players on my roster (19 total less the 5 I kept), I needed to have a minimum remaining budget of $14. My team from last season ended up loaded with very expensive but elite talent, and I decided to be a bit bold and simply keep as much of it as I could. My thinking is that I want as many of the best guys as possible, and then I would just fill out the rest of my team with whatever was left over.

My five keepers were: Frank Gore, Steven Jackson, Tom Brady, Wes Welker, and Kevin Kolb.

I actually really like the plan… most everyone else in our league, not so much. At any rate, the draft was boring for me, but ultimately pretty successful. Because my maximum bid was also the minimum bid, I basically had to wait around until the end of the auction and hope to sneak a few players through. When it was all said and done I was pretty happy with my team. Predictably, our league quickly voted mine as the “worst team after the auction.”

Whatever.

The question mark for my team was clearly Wes Welker. Last year he put up insanely good numbers… right up until he tore both his ACL and MCL during the final game of the regular season. During the off-season he had total reconstructive surgery on both his knee and his shoulder and by all human estimation was supposed to miss at least half of this season too. Then, for reasons that nobody on Earth can explain, he showed up to preseason looking basically healthy. He isn’t 100%, but for someone who should barely be able to walk he is now universally believed to be ready for the season opener. Still, there are a lot of question marks surrounding Welker. His recovery is pretty much the fastest in medical history so there isn’t a lot of precedent for what is taking place. Will he be ok? Will he re-injure himself? Nobody knows. I was willing to take that risk, though.

In the days following the draft I was approached by Vince, one of the dude’s in our league. He made a bunch of dumb trade offers, but after repeatedly turning him down I eventually made him a counter offer of my own: Wes Welker for both Steve Smith (Panthers) and Percy Harvin (Vikings).

Minnesota’s #1 receiver, Sidney Rice, had surprise surgery yesterday and will miss most of the season, meaning that Percy Harvin suddenly becomes Brett Favre’s new primary receiving weapon. I sent the trade offer to Vince with some hope that he might not have been following the news and would quickly accept the trade as a no-brainer. Sadly, he did not.

Now that Percy is the #1 in Minnesota, you want a peice?

Ugh. Alright, well let the games begin.

I get ragged on a lot by other people in my leagues because I am a maniac when it comes to making roster moves. For me, the real fun in fantasy sports is in making trades and scavenging for free agents. I like the strategy and analysis so much more than watching the actual games. Really, the games are merely a way to keep score on how my analysis has been. On Sundays I spend most of my time watching gamecasts on my laptop, even though the actual game is in bright HD on the television right in front of me. I look down FAR more than I look up. The game is incidental to the strategy.

While I am well known for making roster moves I have also developed a notorious reputation for having “delusional” and “ridiculously over-inflated” valuations of the players on my team. I am generally thought to be extremely difficult to trade with, but oddly… I also usually end up making the most trades. The process is fun for me because depending on who I am trying to work a deal with I usually need to take a different approach. The case with Vince was a bit interesting because it was probably the only time that I have ever been able to simply convince the other person to switch to my line of thinking.

What follows is the email exchange following his initial refusal of my offer.

Vince:
I don’t see why everyone undervalues harvin so much. He was the #14 WR last year in our league. He gets catches, they run the ball with him and he returns punts and kicks which we get points for.

Now with rice out I probably wouldn’t give you him and Steve smith for welker, welker isn’t that valuable.

Harvin only is at $7 and smith is at $19. Both easily keepable for next year, where welker is on the questionable side at $35.

At this point I’d probably do smith/driver (only $10, with the best QB throwing to him) or harvin/driver. But there is too much keeper (and current) value in smith and harvin to give them both up.

Holler back.

Me:
no thanks to smith/driver.

If you want a breakdown of my point of view, then I’ll give it to you. Fair warning: most people don’t appreciate it when I do this sort of thing. It’s only my opinion, though, so don’t take it too personally.

Wes Welker
——————-
Last season he finished as the # 7 overall player, and # 2 WR, despite missing three full games (he got hurt after one play in week 17). With the games missed he averaged 18.8 points per game, and the difference between him and Andre Johnson (who started all 16 games) at the end of the season was only 18 points (less than one game). If you remove the three games which he was hurt Welker averaged 22.9 points per game, second best of all players in the entire league behind only Chris Johnson (and clearly ahead of Andre Johnson’s 19.9, and Moss/Austin’s 18.1). He obviously had major surgery, but according to everyone everywhere he looks great and is fully expected to start in Week 1. Even if he isn’t up to top form for a few weeks after that, look at the numbers he put up last season when he wasn’t even on the field for three games. Plus, Tom Brady is now a full season removed from his own knee surgery, Randy Moss is entering a contract year, and the Patriots are one of the most pass-happy teams in the league. If he hadn’t been hurt, Welker would have been a clear first round pick and no-doubt top-5 WR with our league’s rules. I’d have had a raging boner all off-season to have had him at $35. Honestly, I’m a little frustrated with all the noobs who think that $35 is so questionable. If you are completely terrified of any risk, then yeah… 35 is too much I guess. Of course, Sidney Rice didn’t have reconstructive surgery and now he’s worthless for the year, so it isn’t as if you can predict anything anyways. I mean, you paid $42 for Calvin Johnson this year, and last season he finished as the #23 wideout : 103 points (8 ppg) less than Welker despite missing even fewer games than Wes (Megatron is a whole other story though). Welker’s upside is as the #1 WR (or even overall player) in the league, and barring injury I see his downside as no worse than a strong WR2. And I think it goes without saying that I’m not intimidated by injury risk.

Steve Smith
——————
Steve Smith is good, but he isn’t the stud he used to be. Last season he finished as the #22 WR, and #57 overall player. He only missed one game, but finished the season with 95 less points than Welker: a full 50% worse than Wes for the season. His PPG finished at 12.8 (or 13.6 accounting for week 17), literally a full replacement-level player less than Welker. I could have started Welker and then given you Smith plus a whole extra roster flex slot, and I’d still have come out ahead. Then Steve Smith went and broke his arm… twice. This season he returns to be the # 1 WR on a team that has no #2 or #3 and is on perhaps the most run-heavy offense in the league. Oh, plus he has rookie Matt Moore throwing to him, which is arguably better than Delhomme but not at all arguably close to Brady. While Welker is a major red-zone target on an extremely pass friendly offense, Smith is the deep threat on a team that runs more than just about everyone else. For me, his upside is limited while his potential downside is significant. He could still end up being really good, but it’s not at all a guarantee (or, in my mind, probable).

Percy Harvin
——————-
I like him, and tried to trade you for him last season. Getting to play full-time is an obvious improvement. The only real knocks on him is having an injured old man as his QB and the frustration of him being a game-time decision every week due to his migraines. I owned him in my redraft league last year so we both know how that goes. He’s good, but not elite. I value him as about on the level of Steve Smith now. Solid WR2 with some upside but legitimate risk.

Donald Driver
——————-
At best he is the third or fourth option on his team. He’s a WR3/4 without much upside… you can have him.

Anyways, the 2010 season hasn’t even started yet so I am not at all concerned about value going into 2011. There’s no way to know what is going to happen between now and then, and I am not going to make my team worse this year for some random opinion (yours, or even mine) about who will or won’t be good value in the future. It doesn’t matter to me at all. I kept $186 worth of players, so clearly value isn’t a high priority for me at the moment.

Vince’s next email to me was an official offer of Welker for Smith and Harvin.

Most of what I wrote to him was true, and halfway through the email I had basically talked myself out of doing the trade too. In the end I think that I came out ahead in the deal, but it was fairly close. Welker could be the league’s top receiver, but the odds are that he is merely good instead of great. Both Smith and Harvin have a decent chance at being top-10 receivers in our league this season, and both will be much cheaper than Welker in 2011. Anything can happen during the actual season of course, but for the moment at least, my team is better today than it was yesterday.