'mlball77 said:
I think this is an interesting topic: when/how to acquire young prospects.This season, I made a signiciant effort in my league to go after underperforming rookies and second year guys just before the trade deadline. Basically, I sent out offers to teams that owned young players that hadn’t lived up to expectations, and hoped to acquire said players on the cheap if their current owners were growing tired of them. For me, it wasn’t so much about targeting players that I “know” are going to be good down the road, it was taking the minimal risk at some upside players whilst shopping at the bargain bins. –Someone else paid sticker price and saw some sharp depreciation on their asset. I bought it at the new, lower price; hoping to see it bounce back even close to the original valuation. Not sure if I’ll hit on any of the couple/few acquisitions I made, but given the price I paid, it won’t hurt me too badly if I don’t. The trick was/is finding owners that are tired of the underperforming youngsters.ETA: I definitely don't mean to suggest that an owner should target young players that they have little-to-no faith in over the long haul, just because they can be acquired cheap.
People tend to get down on prospects who don't produce immediately, but that doesn't mean you should target every guy who is slow out of the gates. I think one of the important things is to recognize the difference between a justified and unjustified downgrade. Isaiah Pead is a guy who should be ranked a lot lower than he was entering the season. Why? Because he has been beaten out by a less heralded rookie at his same position. It's almost like if Kirk Cousins was playing ahead of RGIII. Obviously that was never going to happen given Washington's obscene investment in Griffin, but purely for the sake of a hypothetical, I think we can agree that if Griffin was getting overshadowed by a less heralded rookie QB on his own team, it would be a very bad omen for his future. On the flipside, there is literally no good reason to downgrade a guy like Michael Floyd or Rueben Randle based on their quiet rookie years. In the case of Floyd, he is stuck behind two great receivers on a team with pitiful QB play. Unless he was Randy Moss, he was never going to produce right away. So your opinion of him should be completely unchanged by his rookie year. It is a similar story with Randle, who was never going to crack the starting lineup as a rookie on a team with two Pro Bowl caliber receivers already in place. It is kind of like the difference between getting an F and getting an incomplete. Blaine Gabbert's rookie year is an example of getting an F. He played and was horrible. Aaron Rodgers's rookie year is an example of getting an incomplete. He wasn't good or bad. He simply didn't play, so there was never a reason to downgrade him for the lack of opportunity. But it's not always that simple. Sometimes people play early and look horrible. Roddy White and Plaxico Burress come to mind. If you judged them on their rookie years, you never would've expected greatness. Same with Drew Brees and Eli Manning. So while I think it's important to draw a distinction between guys who are actually failing and guys who simply aren't getting an opportunity, I also think you have to give all rookies a little bit of wiggle room to suck, especially at WR, QB, and TE. Many good players were not good right away. On some level it's just a judgment call. You can't always look at the stats or performances and determine which crappy rookie QB is going to become Drew Brees and which will become Mark Sanchez. You make a call and go with it. Another important factor is the price. I'll throw out offers for guys like AJ Jenkins, Michael Floyd, and Chris Givens because I think the upside justifies the cost, and not so much because I'm convinced any one of them is going to pan out.