7 Ways to Stoke the FOMO
Nothing gets the league going like a completed trade. Get one through and the forecast calls for flurries as people start getting antsy, looking at their teams, assessing what they need and wishing they could get a deal done, too. When that first deal goes through, a flurry can quickly become a storm, quickly become a goddamn trade avalanche.
But what if there hasn't been a trade in awhile and the league feels like an utter ghost town? You gotta stoke the FOMO.
1. Nix the Brix
You can't stoke the FOMO if a mofo isn't paying attention. This first step is an easy one: go through your leagues and see who's been recently active and who hasn't. There's a chance people haven't checked in since your rookie draft, or the NFL Draft, or the Super Bowl, or the fantasy playoffs, or wayyyy back when they were out of it—back during the 2022 fantasy regular season.
Chances are you know the types. One such type can be found in my family dynasty league, a guy by the name of Two-Ton Tommy.
Two-Ton Tommy only trades when he deems it necessary. He's not very good at it (for example, he traded the 2023 1.05 for James Cook on January 7, 2023, in an 8-team superflex dynasty league). He's also knee-deep in fantasy baseball, his first love, and probably watching every second of every Yankee game.
He ain't checkin' the app in June, in other words. He hasn't in weeks and won't for months.
Hit the bricks, Two-Ton Tommy!
The last thing you want, when you're trying to chef up a classic, is to talk to a brick wall. Worse yet, if you make the poor life decision to go ahead and bug these types of inactive managers, it will only lead to limbo and, give or take, approximately zero completed trades.
Bandit
Bugging these types of managers includes but is not limited to:
- Tagging "@all" in the main Sleeper chat
- Spamming a group text
- Calling the manager
- DM'ing the manager
- Showing up at their front door
- Bugging them relentlessly at family get-togethers until they push accept
2. Rumors
A few weeks back, a young buck down in the Miami area, a young buck by the name of THC Caleb, was able to trade Alexander Mattison for a 2025 1st based on the rumors Dalvin Cook would be cut by the Vikings.
We dapped up Sir Smokesalot—a.k.a. THC Caleb—in the group chat, as we thought this was a tremendous return at the time, and I still think it's a tremendous return following the Vikings actually cutting Dalvin Cook.
But I'm not getting into player-specific reasoning today, this is a broad overview of how to stoke the goddamn FOMO.
Thankfully for us dynasty sickos, there will always be rumors and thankfully they roll in year-round due to our insatiable appetite for NFL content.
One of the best resources you have as far as stoking rumors is NBC Sports Edge, a.k.a. Rotoworld, a.k.a. the Founding Fathers of NFL fantasy news blurbs. Specifically, you're going to want to head to the Rotoworld NFL Player News Feed, which is the type of endless scroll that's truly a FOMO-stoking gold mine.
As of this writing, Saquon Barkley is the FOMO du jour. Here's the headline from Rotoworld:
When asked whether or not he would consider sitting out the 2023 season, Saquon Barkley said, "that's a card I could play."
So how could you use this to stoke the FOMO?
How to Stoke the Saquon FOMO
I would try to acquire Saquon based on this rumor and the Giants other financial transactions during the 2023 offseason. Barkley is the straw that stirs the Giants drink, and without him Daniel Jones could start to look like his pre-Daboll self as soon as Week 3—or perhaps sooner.
Saquon has said he is not trying to "reset the RB market" with his next contract—but he has thus far refused to sign the franchise tag. Saquon is likely looking for a contract with multiple years and guaranteed money, regardless, so he's financially protected even if he were to get hurt.
What I would do, to stoke the damn FOMO, is bring up this news to your league mates, whether that be posting about Saquon in the group chat, on Sleeper, on the league message board, or whatever it is that you use to communicate with one another... and after a few league mates weigh-in, I'd bring up Le'Veon Bell and his time with the Steelers, and how he sat out, and then how he ended up with the Jets, and the Chiefs, and was out of the league in what felt like the blink of an eye after being one of the most dominant fantasy players in PPR formats.
Le'Veon Bell definitely played a part in changing modern NFL offenses—in that PPR-way we love for fantasy—as he's more of hybrid player: a very good running back that can double as one of his team's top receiving options. When it came time to negotiate his contract with the Steelers, he sat out because he wanted to be paid like the hybrid game-changer he was—and not simply a top running back.
Could a similar thing be brewing with Saquon? Almost certainly.
That's the current bet you have to be willing to take, and you have to choose a side. I'm betting the Giants will make it work with Saquon, but maybe someone in your league is starting to feel skittish about a possible Le'Veon Bell type of situation.
3. *Actual* News
What does the Bandit mean by actual news?
Actual news (n): Information reported by reputable persons that work for a company that employs lawyers because they could be sued for libel
Ian Rapoport and Adam Schefter are the big names in the reputable NFL news world. Reporters who work for Sports Illustrated, say, or other print or long-time publications are also reporting legitimate information. In other words, when they report the news, you can trust it—even if it includes a quote from an unnamed source.
Why do I know this? I worked in publishing for a decade at Time Inc. and Condé Nast as a line editor, copy editor, and fact-checker, which often meant I was tasked with vetting sources in tandem with our legal team. I worked on high-profiles stories dealing with the Trump White House, Wall Street, Hollywood, and pro sports, including the NFL.
When a professional, actual news reporter has a source, you can rest assured a legal team has signed off on that information before it was published and, more importantly, you can use it to stoke the FOMO.
In this new Twitter era, though, where people can pay for a blue checkmark and self-select themselves as a journalist, and claim they have sources, there's a lot of information that should not be trusted and frankly it devalues the strength of the overall media landscape.
For example, this is bullshit:
There's a good chance if you see a blue-checkmark from an account that works for a blog or is independent, they aren't actually a journalist even though they have selected that professional categorization for themselves on Twitter. An actual journalist isn't going to do this. This is an insecure move done by a poseur.
Said poseur probably thinks that "sources said" is a bullshit phrase and has convinced themselves that "if others are saying it, then they should do it too."
Whatever, I'm venting because this shit pisses me off to no end. Anyway, the opposite holds true for actual news in relation to rumors.
How to Use Actual News to Stoke the FOMO
Once actual news is published from a reputable source, I'm looking to use that information to trade away a player versus acquire them. In the Mattison scenario, as soon as Dalvin Cook was cut, Mattison's value soared. The value was there when it was just a rumor, when there was uncertainty. If someone wants to trade for Mattison now, they're going to have to do so at a premium, thanks to the certainty that Dalvin Cook is now gone.
But there's still a lot of uncertainty in the Minnesota backfield! What if they bring in Leonard Fournette or Ezekiel Elliott? What if this new Vikings regime favors Ty Chandler and DeWayne McBride—players they drafted—over Mattison, who was a Dalvin Cook replacement for the Mike Zimmer Vikings and may not fit into the current team's pass-first plans this season and beyond.
So yeah, to recap: Trade for players based on rumors, if you believe them; trade away players based on news, if you can get a premium.
4. Blockers // Shoot Yer Shot
Alright! Those were the big three, time for some rapid-fire.
Blockers! A fun teen movie about trying to lose your virginity on prom night.
The trade block! Not the best way to go about stoking the FOMO.
Basically, the trade block is too passive. If you're going to use it, make sure you're also letting the league know what you're looking for in return, or some general guidelines rather than just slapping the trade-block button and hoping an offer magically arrives in your inbox.
I'm in a league where some guy refreshes his trade block every few weeks—but when he refreshes it, he simply puts the same guys back on the block. It's as if he's nudging the league to say, Hey, these guys are still on the block, and guess what, I'm going to keep doing this until you assholes send me some offers. But hey! That's a passive move! Don't be that guy.
Instead, shoot your shot.
Shoutout to my old rap-blogging buddy and current superstar Shea Serrano for popularizing the phrase.
Basically, if you want to stoke the FOMO, the single best way to go about doing so is to take the time to construct a balanced trade offer and send it to an active manager. Best case scenario is they accept it. Worst case scenario is radio silence (but at least you know they're brick!), but hopefully you'll land somewhere in between and get some feedback based on how they view a player or what they're looking to do (or not do) with their team in the league at that time.
5. Spamalot
Don't do this.
Alright, I have done this in a league where I don't know anyone. It's hosted on My Fantasy League and is a two-copy 36-team eliminator dynasty league and therefore I have at least 17 potential trade partners (and as many as 35!) versus only 11 trade partners in a standard 12-team dynasty league.
In a 12-teamer, don't send the same offer to the 11 other managers. I promise you there's no way every other team would be interested in that offer—unless you're basically giving something away.
Instead, take two minutes, or five minutes, or however long it takes you to assess who might be interested in an offer you're willing to send to multiple league mates, then send it to those select few.
6. Auto-Reject
One of my favorite things to do is send a trade that a manager wants to reject immediately. You have to be careful how you go about doing this, though, depending on the manager's temperament.
If they're hot-tempered, you probably want to send a DM alongside the trade that says something like, "I know you're not going to accept this, but I just wanted to let you know that I'm interested in these players."
Basically, an auto-reject offer is anything that seems severely weighted in your favor. That could be something like, say, offering Jonathan Taylor for Tyreek Hill, Nick Chubb, and George Kittle.
Maybe you're interested in those three players but you're not sure who your trading partner values most out of the three and you're trying to narrow that list down to two.
It's even better if you can add two or three players that play the same position so you can get the manager to rank them for you, by asking them who they prefer out of the bunch.
These types of questions will let you know what the manager's thinking of their team and how they're going to go about playing this season and beyond.
7. Just Fucken Hang Out
It's summertime, baby! Just fucken hang out.
One of the best things to remember about dynasty and fantasy football, in general, is we got into it because it's a game we love and it's really fucken fun to play.
That being said, everyone is built differently and cannot look at the app daily, for hours, and stress about their teams, and discuss trades while also leading functional lives. I know maybe one person who's capable of doing this (Hi, Tacoma). The rest of us? Not so much.
So, how do you stoke the FOMO by simply hanging out?
You hit up the chat, share what you're doing and just talk about life stuff, things you're watching on TV, stuff you're grilling up on the deck, the Jurassic Park-like heron stalking frogs in the creek in your backyard, whatever. Just talk with the league in the chat. Be a bud with your buds. Hang out!
A lot of people are in fantasy football for the community aspect, the friendships. When the league chat goes dark and becomes a ghost town and your dynasty league starts to feel like more of a redraft managed league, that's not what we really signed up for now, is it?
So hang out! See how people are doing. Be active.
And before you know it? Trades are just around the corner.