ghostguy123 said:
I dont like it in terms of value at all for this years draft, but its not a huge price to pay to make sure you go get the guy you wanted. I just dont like the value for you, and I also dont like Bell any more than Lacy/Bernard/Ball. Maybe one of them didnt make it to pick 5, but maybe you coulda just waited to see if Bell fell to 5, and if not then try and deal up for him if he was picked at 3 or 4.
In my experience, it's much more difficult to trade for a player made at a pick than it is to trade for the pick itself. People form an attachment to a player once they select him. I've never been able to successfully pull off a trade for a player just after they were drafted.
Chad Parsons said:
That's a huge overpay IMO Stick in the middle of the first and take BPA or even move down this year. A future 1st to trade up within a tier? Without a draft class like 2011 or 2012, that seems like a big-time value drain.
Firstly and probably most importantly, I didn't have Bell in the same tier as the rest of the guys left, and certainly not the WRs. I don't like any of the WRs this year, and with my team loaded at WR on top of that I saw an enormous difference between getting Bell and getting stuck with one of them.
Secondly, I think the tiering is extremely overused and is often, IMHO, a mistake in rookie drafts. This is something that I've been meaning to make a topic out of. It's an extension of a concept forced into a place where it doesn't fit as well. It works somewhat ok in regular drafts because you can be reasonably sure that most of the guys within the same tier are going to put up similar production. That is not the case in a rookie draft where the careers of guys within the same tier are going to vary
wildly.
Some guys in the tier may go on and become a top 5-10 FF stud. Some are going to go on to become middling FF role players. Some are going to go on to become completely useless busts. How much more sleep at night do you think the Shonn Greene owner gets out of knowing that he got someone in the same tier as Shady McCoy instead of actually having Shady McCoy himself?
Last year I owned 1.04 through a trade from the year before and at 1.03 Doug Martin and David Wilson were still sitting on the board. Most had them in the same tier and would be happy to just sit at 1.04 and grab whichever one fell. I liked Martin more and wanted him, so I traded Stevie Johnson (my WR4) and 1.04 to move up to 1.03. I'm sure a lot of people saw the poor value in doing that, but having Martin instead of Wilson ended up being a LOT more valuable to me than having Stevie Johnson sitting on the bench. Martin is worth twenty Stevie Johnsons now. As far as this year's trade goes, I just went back and looked through the 1.10-1.12 picks made in that league's rookie drafts for the last 5 years and I found one guy out of all of them that would be a starter for me. That's 6.6%. I'm not going to miss out on a shot to get a guy that I believe can be a 21 year old workhorse running back over a 6% chance that I'm going to luck into a good player with next year's late 1st round pick.
When you have a tier of guys that you rank similarly in rookie drafts, if you like one even a
little more it is worth it to give away a semi-useful piece to get them. Fantasy football championships aren't won with pieces and depth.
People make the mistake of associating "I like this guy with a little less" with "this guy is going to give me a few less fantasy points". The reality is more along the lines of "this guy has a better chance of being completely useless to me". I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if the Chargers liked Peyton Manning a little bit more than Ryan Leaf, but were perfectly happy to not have to give anything up when they could still get a similar player without giving anything away. They didn't get a couple less yards and a few less TDs every year, they got a bunch of wasted money instead of one of the greatest players and franchise-changers in NFL history.
Obviously that is an extreme example, but don't assume that having 3 players in a tier means they're going to end up being 3 similar players. Man up, pick the one you think is going to be best, and go get him if you believe in him. Pieces and value in a rookie draft are great for building a paper champion that gets an 'A' draft grade in your post-draft writeup, but little else.
As far as this particular trade is concerned, the other risk involved is that I'm making the assumption that next year's pick will be a late one. Anything can happen in FF and there's no guarantee on that front but I'm pretty confident in my team. I'll be starting Matt Ryan, Doug Martin, DeMarco Murray, Calvin Johnson, Demaryius Thomas, Le'Veon Bell, and Rob Gronkowski with Jonathan Stewart and Larry Fitzgerald as the first two off the bench. Last six finishes have been 3rd, 1st, 2nd, 1st, 1st, 2nd.