Chronicles of a Dynasty Takeover (1 Viewer)

I recently threw my hat into the ring to take over one of several open dynasty teams in a league I have been avoiding for years.

Why have I been avoiding this league, do you ask? Simply because it is more complex a league than I wanted to deal with.

In summary, it's an IDP contract dynasty league with a salary cap, progressive salary increases based on performance, salary cap penalties when players are cut that last as long as 5 years, and a rookie salary slot chart that assigns salaries based on draft slot the player was taken.

I have a fair amount of experience playing in leagues that are contract IDP style dynasty with annual cash allocation where cash stays in a bank account, can be traded and carries over from year to year. There are strategies for working within this kind of league that I use, and they center around maximizing the economy of my team in order to build a lasting winner. I talk a little bit about that approach here

This league differs in that there is no cash to work with. Teams are limited by their salary caps in terms of bidding for players, so everyone is on equal footing there at all times. Bad contracts can really kill you in this league, and trading is tougher because you have one less dimension (cash) to work with plus teams making deals have to weigh both short and long term salary implications of what they are doing. The whole thing makes my head spin, but I after several successful seasons in the other kind of league (playoffs in 3 of 4 of my 16 team contract dynast IDP leagues, missing the 4th on a tie breaker) I thought it was time to give this a try.

This is the team as it sat at the end of last season. I got this team by lottery, having the second pick amongst the three open teams. One of the teams was clearly the strongest and one team clearly inferior and a big challenge. I got the one in the middle that had a 6-7 record last season, but one of the higher point scorers in the league. A nice place to start IMO.

Being a new guy in the league I had to deal with typical bad trade offers by people looking to take advantage of someone they were not sure knew what they were doing. Offers like:

• Chesapeake Bay Pirates (Footballjoe) offers Smith, Steve CAR WR;Peppers, Julius CHI DE;Burnett, Kevin OAK LB
• Canton Busts (Caveman Nick) for Bryant, Dez DAL WR;Kuechly, Luke CAR LB

and

• Chesapeake Bay Pirates (Footballjoe) offers Clemons, Chris SEA DE;Burnett, Kevin OAK LB
• Canton Busts (Caveman Nick) for Kuechly, Luke CAR LB

Salaries are not represented here, but Kuechly has a desirable salary slot and a 7 year contract, and is not someone you trade away unless you are getting a coup.

I also stuck my toe in the trade waters on the rumor that Demarcus Ware was getting moved to DE and tried to swipe him for a 5th round rookie pick. I got turned down, of course.

LB was a strength for this team in that I had Kuechly, Bishop, Greenway, Justin Durant, Jameel McClain, and Rolando McClain (Pre Flakout and pre draft, so I figured I had Ray-Ray's replacement between the two). It had good RB, WR, QB and TE situations as well, but was weak at DL and DB. Db is easier to address of course.

One of the big problems I had with the team was that it was tight against the salary cap. I don't like it when my team lacks flexibility, so I started looking at how I could solve this issue without giving up too much of my current talent, especially looking at what is considered to be a somewhat 'weak' draft class. The next few posts will get into that, including my thoughts on the draft class as a whole and how I thought things might work with the salary slotting.

I'll try to get into this over the next few days and then upkeep it through season one. Right now I am still dealing with my first rookie draft in this league.

My team is the Canton Busts.

Love the team name! All the years spent trying to come up with great names, and I miss that one!

I also stuck my toe in the trade waters on the rumor that Demarcus Ware was getting moved to DE and tried to swipe him for a 5th round rookie pick. I got turned down, of course.

Not being familiar with all of the intricacies of this league aside, this seems like you were trying your own brand of grand larceny here.

CokeZero said:

Love the team name! All the years spent trying to come up with great names, and I miss that one!

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Thanks

EDIT: I run the Canton Yellowjackets in another league. I live in a town named Canton (not Ohio), so it works for me.

BuckeyeChaos said:

I also stuck my toe in the trade waters on the rumor that Demarcus Ware was getting moved to DE and tried to swipe him for a 5th round rookie pick. I got turned down, of course.

Not being familiar with all of the intricacies of this league aside, this seems like you were trying your own brand of grand larceny here.

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Fair enough. I never said I was a saint or running a dynasty league charity that other teams could benefit from

From a purely FF perspective, Ware was the 59th ranked LB last season in this league and borderline unstartable except on a bye week. He'll also be 31 before the season starts. If the move to DE was not made it would have been an utter waste to trade for him. That kind of production can be had on the WW for bye week coverage. I was working on the rumor and trying to work before it got out too loudly. Still a risk, just a small one.

EDIT: And really...trying to grab Demarcus Ware on the cheap from a veteran owner is not even remotely on the same level as trying to swipe Kuechly off a 'noob'

Step one in terms of rearranging this team in a manner which I liked was to fix my salary cap issue. I had very little room under the cap, and that meant I was going to struggle in RFA to keep my players as well as get put over the cap during the rookie draft. I had to make some hard choices, but some trades made the choices more palatable.

I dropped: Ray Edwards, Adrian Arrington, Barrett Ruud, AJ Edds and (later, after the flakeout) Rolando McClain. That freed up a little over $1700 in salary cap space, but also created an equal amount of dead money that will progress off the books as the contract years wear down.

I had Chad Greenway for 2 years, but his salary was around $3000. I felt like the easiest way to drop some salary was to find some big chunks and move them along. I figured that I had the 1.08 pick, so getting Arthur Brown was a good bet there (HA!), and that I could afford to move Greenway. I threw out an offer of Greenway for the 1.12 and 2.01 Rookie picks and was rewarded with success. Score! Those 2 picks were worth $1890 in salary cap space and potential to control 2 cheaper yet productive players. I had just saved myself another $1100ish in salary cap space.

I also had Desmond Bishop coming up for RFA, and designated him as my Transition Tag player. This means that if another team bids on him and I choose not to match, they get the player for their bid and I get their second round pick.

What happened next was very interesting and a boon to two teams IMO. Desmond Bishop was on the board during RFA and closed for the mere sum of $400. Had I chosen to match he would have cost me $2822, as that was the amount for LB on a transition tag. Delanie Walker, another one of my RFAs, was also on the bard for about the same money, and the high bidder on Bishop was weak at TE. I offered him Delanie Walker's rights for Zach Brown, who had a salary of only $360 and who was also still on the team's taxi squad, with the caveat that if he accepted I would not match the bid on Desmond Bishop. He agreed, and so I essentially traded Desmond Bishop and Delanie Walker for Zach Brown and the 2.09 pick while he got 2 veteran, productive players at nice, low salaries. Walker closed at $500.

Lastly I traded Fred Jackson to the Spiller owner for 3.09 and 3.13 Rookie Picks. Jackson has maybe a year left, and he wasn't going to be much use to me this season having Marshawn Lynch, Mendenhall and Ryan Matthews. This would allow me to add some pieces in other places that would help keep my team competitive for the future.

I made no moves to pick up any players during RFA, but I finished RFA with several extra draft picks for this "weak" draft. Going in to the draft I held the 1.08. 1.12, 2.01, 2.08, 2.09, 3.08, 3.09, 3.13, 4.08. 4.16, 5.08. 6.08, and 7.08 and over $7,000 in cap space.

I will leave you all wondering why I wanted so many rookie picks in this draft until the next post. Suffice to say that, while on paper it looks like i might have taken some of the strength away from my team, I really needed to do this in order to move the team forward. Had I not made these moves I would have been over the cap and dealing with more dead money than you could shake a stick at.

I have a theory on rookie picks for this league, and the flow of the draft as I have experienced it has solidified my thinking. I'll leave that for next time.

This is great. A league this complex is beyond my level of interest to manage, but not to read about. Keep it up! How many IDPs do you start?

Number of Franchises: 16Number of Roster Spots: 40Number of Weekly Starters: 16Number of Injured Reserve Spots: UnlimitedNumber of Taxi Squad Spots: 15Head-To-Head Matchups: YesNumber of Rosters Each Player can be on: 1Starting Requirements: 7 offensive players, 1 kicker, 8 defensive players (see Weekly Lineups)Salary Cap: $30000

OFFENSE1 QB, 1 RB, 3 WR, 2 TE, 1 PK1 QB, 1 RB, 4 WR, 1 TE, 1 PK1 QB, 2 RB, 3 WR, 1 TE, 1 PK1 QB, 2 RB, 2 WR, 2 TE, 1 PK1 QB, 3 RB, 1 WR, 2 TE, 1 PK1 QB, 3 RB, 2 WR, 1 TE, 1 PKDEFENSE3 DL, 3 LB, 2 DB2 DL, 3 LB, 3 DB

you'll never get a fair offer from the Chesapeake Bay Pirates and it has nothing to do with being a noob

HTH

Shane Falco said:

you'll never get a fair offer from the Chesapeake Bay Pirates and it has nothing to do with being a noob

HTH

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I will show evidence to the contrary in my next update!