LIMITED RESOURCES
At its very best, fantasy football is a game of resource management. You want to draft everyone, but have a limited number of picks. You want to add everyone, but have a limited number of roster spots. You want to use everyone, but have a limited number of starting spots. At the same time, all of your competition is laboring under the same constraints. The man or woman who manages to best utilize their limited resources will walk away the champion.
Dynasty leagues are like this, only more so. You want to dominate now, but you want to dominate in the future, too. With limited roster spots and limited rookie picks, owners must be flexible and willing to give up one type of resource to acquire another. The owners who are best able to manage their tradeoffs win.
The problem, of course, is that managing tradeoffs is hard, and we’re fundamentally bad at it. As I like to say, we have faulty mental software. Our instincts are unreliable. This is partly what this “Dynasty, in Theory” column is about- developing good practices to overcome our bad instincts.
DETAILED Analysis
Sometimes these processes are difficult. Sometimes these processes are detailed. Sometimes these processes are practically impossible.
Sometimes, however, these processes are easy.
Intricate methods and in-depth evaluations and the like are very important. They certainly have a place in dynasty, and that place should probably be larger than it currently is. Sometimes, though, a long and drawn-out methodology is unnecessary when a simple rule-of-thumb would suffice. When it’s time for a little less conversation and a little more action, it helps to have quick-and-dirty tools to help make decisions a bit more manageable. This is one such tool.
When faced with a decision between two courses of action, and all of your analysis says they’re pretty comparable in value… do whichever one is harder.
SIMPLIFIED DECISIONS
That’s it. It’s a simple trick. When you have two equally good choices, choose the harder one. I apply this rule of thumb to every manner of decision that I face in my dynasty leagues. Deciding who to start? Choosing sides in a trade? Selecting who to draft? If all options seem equal, I choose whichever is hardest.
This seems like a pretty dumb rule. If you’ve been reading me for any length of time, you probably have an idea of the depth of analysis I usually engage in. Isn’t it wasteful to, at the end of that process, basically throw it away and rely on hunches and bad feelings?
It would be, except in this case, there’s some sound reasoning behind the trick. It’s not a coin flip. Remember, we have faulty mental software, and I am certainly no exception. My brain is fundamentally biased in several consistent and predictable ways. Those biases are all unconscious, lurking below the surface of my awareness, sabotaging my instincts.
Some people, aware of their biases, make a concerted effort to see them and account for them. These efforts fail. We all suffer from something called the bias blind spot, and even being aware of our own biases does not enable us to see them in action. If one choice seems hard or unappealing despite my analysis that says it’s equally good, this is a giant red flag telling me I am biased against that course of action. And if, while biased against it, I rate it as equal to the other choices, that must mean it is in fact the superior course of action.
HARD CHOICES
I will let you in on a little secret about fantasy writers and analysts. Many owners will seek us out for advice, which we are happy to dispense. These owners then think that, because giving advice is easy, running our own teams must be equally easy.
In truth, what makes giving advice easy is merely emotional distance. When we’re not invested in the outcomes, we can see both sides through lenses untainted by bias. When we look at our own teams, we are as insecure and unsure as any other owner. I know this because I have had plenty of fantasy experts ask me for advice. I know this because I have asked other fantasy experts for advice.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about fantasy experts who seek advice is that they already know the answer to the question before they ask it. One consequence of publishing my rankings online is that people already know how I feel about players before they ever ask me. My status as the internet’s foremost Percy Harvin supporter is well known. When other owners ask me whether they should trade for Percy Harvin, they already know what I’m going to say.
In truth, they’re not asking me because they want to know. They’re asking me because they want confirmation of what they already know. It’s an interesting phenomenon, asking friends a question whose answer you already know. The problem is that the right answer is the hard answer. They want confirmation and reassurance. They want to make it less hard.
That’s the benefit that emotional distance can provide. When we are too heavily invested, all of our entanglements make two courses of action seem equivalent. When we have perspective, one rises up as clearly superior. And the one that rises up is always the harder of the two.
PUT INto PRACTICE
What does my “do the hard thing” rule look like in the real world? Here are a few dynasty tricks which I believe in theory, but which are often hard to apply in practice.
Trick #1- Trade non-core players for future firsts.
This one seems like a no-brainer. Getting back to the theme of limited resources, dynasty teams are always aging and losing value, and rookie picks are the primary source of fresh talent to renew the roster. If you can convert marginal talents or fading stars into future first rounders, it’s like discovering the fountain of youth.
The problem, of course, comes when it comes time to put this into practice. If you have Rashad Jennings or Darren Sproles as your RB2, you’re loving life right now. They’re providing a difference-making advantage on a weekly basis. If someone offers you a first-round draft pick for them, all you will see is the massive hole it will blow in your starting lineup.
Of course, this same fear caused owners to balk at trading Toby Gerhart or Ben Tate for future firsts this past offseason. It caused owners to hold Steven Jackson all through last year. Often, those apparently rock-solid RB2s are not. And even if they are, they don’t hold the long-term value of future firsts, the true currency of dynasty. If someone offers a future first for a player who you are currently starting, and the deal seems reasonable but it’s difficult to pull the trigger, that’s a sign that you should pull the trigger.
Trick #2- Trade late firsts for future firsts and a little bit extra.
This is another no-brainer. In deals like this, there are two potential ways for you to profit- that future first can wind up high in the round (in which case you traded a late first for an early first, which is a huge gain), or else that “little bit extra” can wind up hitting. As an example trade from this genre, last year I traded pick 1.10 for a future first and pick 2.05. The future first wound up being 1.05. The second-rounder could have been Keenan Allen, or Knile Davis, or Zach Ertz, (it wound up being Justin Hunter, which was still a quality return).
The problem is, in practice, there is usually someone sitting on the clock at 1.10 who sounds pretty appealing. Players fall in the draft. If someone who you had rated 5th falls to you at 10th, it’s easy to think that your “late first” is really equivalent in value to a “mid first”.
This is a toxic line of thought. It ignores the fact that players always fall. When the future first rounder is on the clock, someone will have fallen to you at that pick, too. When the second rounder you gained is on the clock, someone probably will have fallen to you there, too. In the long run these “late first for future first and bonus” trades are among the most profitable you can possibly make. In the short run, though, they are hard.
In fact, it’s no coincidence that the trades that are most profitable are also the trades that are hardest. If we all suffer from the same buggy mental software, then it stands to reason that your league mates will be biased in the same ways that you are. Something that is hard for you would be hard for them. Something that is easy for you would be easy for them.
These two examples are hardly the only ones. We've all had times where we were faced with a choice that was difficult, but still probably the best for our team. Sometimes we are able to realize it at the time and go forward with it. Other times, we take the path of least resistence and it is only with the benefit of hindsight that we see our error.
If it’s hard for you to trade current production for future value, then it must be easy for your leaguemates to trade future value for current production. And the fact that it’s easy means they’re more willing to overpay. When both sides reach a point that seems fair to both parties, whichever party is swallowing the bitterer pill most likely just made a handsome profit.
THE ROAD NOT TAKEN
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
-Robert Frost
I’m willing to wager you have all read this before. This is one of the most famous poems by one of the most famous American poets. It’s also one of the most misunderstood and misquoted.
Many take Frost’s final stanza at face value, believing that he truly took the road less traveled by. The second and third stanzas reveal that claim to be a lie; by his own admission, both paths were equally worn. It is only afterwards, when the road is long behind him and he is speaking of it with wistful nostalgia that he lies and attaches a greater significance to his choice.
In truth, Frost is describing a crossroads of two equally appealing choices, and a random decision between them. In such situations, when our journey leads us to a crossroads and all of our powers of analysis cannot differentiate between them, we need something to nudge us forward into action. In this space, I try to equip you with useful, fantasy-tested knowledge. I advocate researched and proven solutions. Perhaps it is a jarring departure to see me suggesting that, at the end of all that, you just go with whatever makes you most uncomfortable. While “gut feeling” and “discomfort” hardly qualify as compelling analysis, they are enough to get our feet moving forward again.
Convincing explanations and justifications? Those we leave to our future selves.
