JJ Zacharison had a
podcast where he discusses trading Odunze for the 1.9 in a rookie draft, it's an interesting listen
He makes some good points. The most concerning is that CHI drafted two pass catchers in the top 50 picks. I’m a Odunze believer, but even I can’t wrap my head around that one. The rest I can ignore based on the offense, bad QB play, and seasoned target competition.
I think the part he really emphasized the most was that he likes the player, and really isn't supremely worried about the situation. However he was a potential good sell candidate because of his current start up ADP combined with projecting where that ADP will be next season. The majority seems to have not "dinged" his value at all after this draft. TBH, as an owner, neither have I. But I'm surprised it seems many non-owners haven't as well. So taking a realistic look at his projections for this upcoming year, even if he is featured heavily and improves on last year and balls out, his ADP is very likely to stay the exact same it is now; and that's with pretty much his ceiling/rosiest projection.
IOW, it's much more likely his ADP regresses a bit. Potentially a lot if he's taking a back seat to both DJ Moore and Burden (and maybe even Loveland). You combine this with the fact he explained he desperately needed a RB for this roster and this rookie class was RB rich; circumstances all fit together for him to sell Odunze if there was a buyer in his league willing to match the community value. I believe he said he even felt like he took a slight loss in value in the short term. He got what I believe was the 1.08, and then during the draft saw Judkins falling and was able to then move up one more spot to 1.07 and get him. He said his backup plan was to take Egbuka as more or less an arbitrage/reset the clock; where it would have made the trade minimal risk for him as the worse case scenario was basically a lateral move. He'd get a WR he felt had a similar floor and ceiling in a potentially poor situation where he has to wait it out.
Been listening to/reading JJ pretty much since he started. JJ is very much a value focused dynasty owner. While he may have favorite players, he conducts nearly all of his dynasty transactions (be it draft picks or trades) from a value accrual standpoint. It's just about the odds and the numbers. So it really had little to do with Odunze as a player, more so about his current roster composition, Odunze's current market value, and his projection on where that market value would be next year. Trading him allowed him to fill a roster need, and trusting his projections told him he had very little risk of losing total roster value, with a fairly high chance of actually increasing it. If he wanted to reroll again next year, odds are he would be able to flip Judkins for even more than Odunze.
He's a smart player, and runs into the same problems value focused owners do (I'd count myself in this style of play), which is when it's time to pivot from this to pushing for a championship. Typically this is a drastic change in philosophy and you wind up needing to make a lot of trades and moves which shed overall roster value (since so much of this value is based on projection and age) to buy those vets who may only have a year or two of high production left, but they are guaranteed points rather than "thoughts and prayers" potential future points. His more recent pod with Rich Dotson of dynasty nerds dips into this even more; talking about 'ship pushing strategies like basically you should be going into your rookie draft with few if any picks because those should have been traded for vets and guaranteed points and depth, etc.