Cheffing Up Classics
The Bandit leads us into the "Sicko League" and chefs up classic dynasty fantasy football trade offers.
All right, let's make some trades. It's time. We've entered the part of the year known as the "dynasty dead zone" and that's not what we signed up for.
Dynasty is supposed to be 24/7/365, 366 in a leap year. A dead zone? Get the fuck outta here. So how about this: I'm gonna go through my dynasty leagues and walk through my thought process while cheffing up some classics.
Sicko League
Yes... Ha Ha Ha... Yes!
My newest league, the Sicko League, has three core values outlined in its league bible, as written by its commissioners Meester Wick and Tacoma Cole:
- 1) Make a minimum of 25 trades per season
- 2) Participate frequently in the league chat
- 3) You better come with the hot taeks
Before we could begin the auction draft, we had to make a public vow in the league chat that we, as sickos, would abide by these sacred commandments. Twelve sickos took the vow, we drafted, and so far we're off to a banner start: there have been 13 trades since the end of the auction draft, which ended less than three weeks ago.
But it's time to make trade No. 14!
I've only been involved in one of the trades thus far, sending George Kittle for Marquise Brown one day after the auction ended. A rival manager in the league, Jacksonian, noted that I "casually picked up half a first-rounder in startup value" in the Sleeper league chat before saying he was a little bummed that my trading partner, Mr. Incognito, had taken the guys he wanted all auction long.
With that in mind, I'm going to pull up the Sleeper trade matrix, my happy place.
The first thing I'm looking at is everyone's quarterback situation. This is a superflex league with fairly aggressive QB scoring and I'm basically set with Patrick Mahomes and Lamar Jackson unless somebody presents me with a godfather offer. (Like, say, Jalen Hurts and two 2024 1sts for Mahomes.)
My other quarterbacks are Jacoby Brissett, Sam Darnold, and Jake Haener, who if you haven't seen it already, recently posed for his Saints photoshoot:
So yeah, I'm not trading a QB with that sense of humor. As far as Darnold and Brissett, I'm looking at the managers who roster Purdy, Lance, and Howell—but it looks like they're playing for the future or are mostly set at quarterback. Bummer.
Rather than try and chef up a multi-team trade that includes one of these QBs, I'm going to go ahead and move on to my running backs. I currently roster:
- Nick Chubb
- Miles Sanders
- Devin Singletary
- Samaje Perine
- Jerick McKinnon
- Rashaad Penny
- Damien Harris
- Chuba Hubbard
- Zamir White
We only have to start one running back in this league—this league full of sickos—but RBs get a tenth of a point per carry and two bonus points for a 40+ yard rush, so they're definitely worth flexing in our four starting FLEX slots.
Overall, I'm pretty happy with my running back room at the moment. I expect Kareem Hunt won't be back with the Browns, leaving the backfield to Chubb, Jerome Ford, and Demetric Felton(?) in what should be a more pass-first attack in Deshaun Watson's first full-season as Browns quarterback. This bodes well for Chubb's durability over the long haul and he could be one of the few running backs to get 15+ carries on a weekly basis, which is 1.5 points just for toting the rock.
Chubb also has a history of breaking long runs. Although he had only one in 2022, he's had multiple 40+ yard runs every other season since he entered the league in 2018. But I mean, that's just two bonus points per long run and the league leaders typically settle in around four per season. So I'm not really gonna sweat 8 points over the course of a 17 week fantasy season—or less than half a point per week—and will be happy to get the bonus if and when it happens.
But there's a good chance I'll never see that happen, because I drafted Chubb for one reason and one reason alone: Roger Trade Bait.
Roger is the biggest Chubb fan I know. Any time someone brings up a running back in the Sleeper league chat or, say, they post a poll about the best dynasty running backs, Roger is sure to weigh in with Chubb propaganda including his own artisanal memes.
The problem for Roger in this auction, though, was he was broke. Early.
We went toe-to-toe early on in the Josh Allen bidding war, one-upping each other by a dollar, back and forth, at a ridiculously fast, seemingly unending clip, until I decided to bail and left him holding the proverbial bag. He posted "Welp... PIVOT" in the chat, and it was clear at that moment he didn't intend to land Josh Allen but was rather trying to get me to pay the Buffalo Bills fan tax. (Roger is a Jets fan. Condolences.)
So yeah, he blew most of his budget and now I have Chubb. But let's table that and go back to my other running backs.
Miles Sanders was one of the first signings of the new Carolina Panthers regime and he will be coached by Duce Staley, who undoubtedly had some input on the decision and was most recently the RB coach in Detroit, where he made it quite clear he was not the world's biggest D'Andre Swift fan.
Bandit
I'd be perfectly fine entering the 2023 season with Sanders as my starting running back—particularly at this point in the calendar year, still weeks away from training camp—and am confident in my depth at the position.
Devin Singletary, a.k.a. Mr. Available, has yet to miss time during his career and now gets to share a backfield with Dameon Pierce in a new-look Houston Texans offense that should play to Singletary's zone-based strengths. (And now he doesn't have to deal with Josh Allen stealing a bunch of valuable touches.)
Samaje Perine was one of Denver's first free agent signings and proved a capable fill-in for Joe Mixon in Cincinnati—and he projects to do just that for the Broncos with Javonte Williams recovering from multiple ligament tears.
It's easy to project Perine having an Alvin Kamara-lite start to the 2023 season with the Sean Payton Broncos... so let's see who has Javonte in the Sicko league...
One of the tankers. On to the next.
If the Sicko League were diagnosed, it would be classified with Wide Receiver Derangement Syndrome, seeing as half the league is completely obsessed with rostering first-, second-, or third-year wide receivers that have their whole big, bright future ahead of them.
I knew this going into the auction, so I pivoted to avoid the sickness. But I still made out alright, at least after my trade for Hollywood Brown. Here's how the rest of my WR room shakes out:
- Terry McLaurin
- Christian Kirk
- Mike Williams
- Curtis Samuel
- Marquez Valdes-Scantling
- Mecole Hardman
- Hunter Renfrow
Uninspiring to say the least—at least in the eyes of these WR degenerates. The Trevor Lawrence manager is preparing for, in his words, a "soft tank" this season, and the Justin Herbert manager already rosters Keenan Allen.
The rest of my wide receivers are built for stacking or are potential FLEX fill-ins, so it's looking like I'm better off... cheffing an offer centered around one of my RBs. In May. More than three months before the season starts. Ugh.
Tight end isn't even worth getting into as I roster Mark Andrews and Isaiah Likely to pair with Lamar Jackson, and then have Gerald Everett and Mike Gesicki as potential sleepers if they can rise to Schultzian or Budget Gronkian levels, respectively.
Sigh. Alright. I am failing to chef up classics. This is bullshit.
Alright, fuck it.
I'm going to try and trade Mahomes. In a three-way trade between myself, Kevdawg Supreme, and Roger.
First things first: I want to send Mahomes to Kevdawg Supreme, Chubb to Roger, and I want to get back Hurts and two 2024 firsts. Given what I know about these fine gentleman, I think it'll be easier to get two firsts from Kevdawg than one from Roger, and thankfully Kevdawg already has a first from another manager in the league, a manager—a true sicko—who goes by the name of Cookie Monster.
Here's what the bones of this trade look like, so far, at least from my point of view:
Kevdawg already rosters Travis Kelce, so giving him the Mahomes stack would create such a strong advantage over the rest of the league that the Hurts plus two 2024 1sts package is warranted... but I know it'll still be too much to get that sweet, sweet "A Trade Has Been Completed" Sicko Sleeper notification.
That's where Roger comes in. Roger's stacked at running back, with Austin Ekeler, Saquon Barkley, and Jahmyr Gibbs, but I'm not sure who he values the most out of the three.
It's clear he wants to compete, so I'm going to look back into the draft results to see how much of his auction budget he allocated to each:
- Austin Ekeler: $80
- Saquon Barkley: $80
- Jahmyr Gibbs: $141
OK, so Gibbs is off the table. Kevdawg rosters Goff but it's clear from the auction results that Roger wants to keep Gibbs around for the long haul, so Saquon or Ekeler would be easier to work into the deal.
Based on previous leagues I've been in with Roger, I think he's more of an Ekeler guy than a Saquon guy, so I'll add Saquon to the offer heading back to Kevdawg Supreme.
It'd be nice if Roger would agree to a Saquon for Chubb swap, and he might, but seeing as I got Chubb for $46 auction dollars, I'm thinking Roger is going to want a bit more on top—just in case he remembers forking over almost double that for Saquon less than a month ago.
Roger's pretty thin at running back, overall, despite being top heavy at the position. Since I'm giving up Mahomes in the offer, I'm now less interested in McKinnon and can send him Roger's way, plus a second-round pick to sweeten things. That should be enough.
As far as Kevdawg's side of the equation, he'd be loving life if he could get Mahomes and Saquon for Hurts and two firsts. Not so fast.
I desperately need some receiving depth, and Kevdawg's got some duplicity on his roster that I might be able to take advantage of. His projected starting lineup would have Christian McCaffrey and Deebo Samuel, and he also has Calvin Ridley and Zay Jones.
Jones seems like a nice fallback option if Ridley doesn't return to form, so I'm going to focus on Deebo, who I know is a polarizing fantasy option—and since Kevdawg would be getting Saquon in this deal, it might make sense to shed the perceived Deebo risk as well as diversify the number of teams in his starting roster.
It also helps that CMC and Deebo sort of limit one another's upside, so Deebo should be easier to acquire on my end.
I thought about asking Kevdawg for Romeo Doubs, as well, but it starts to get a little dicey when your trade partners are giving up more than 3-4 assets in a deal, and that's compounded further in a multi-team trade.
Overall, I felt a little nauseous about sending the offer, which is typically a pretty good sign that it's a balanced trade and will be enticing enough to my trade partners, and sure enough both took a look at the trade DM after it was sent and they didn't immediately reject it: a good sign!
Did I give Kevdawg a call? I did. We talked about some other things and briefly discussed the trade. Did I nudge Roger, first with a Chubb GIF in the trade DM and then in the league chat? Also yes.
But guess what?
We got ourselves a trade! Let's fucking gooooooooo!
As is tradition, whenever a trade process you need to drop some Doofy Elmos in the league chat.
And not a trade calculator in sight! Damn, it feels good.
I'm going to have to do this again, in my next post and show, and go through my other leagues while talking about the virtues of stoking the FOMO and how to go about the trade process when you don't have a history with the other managers in your league, or you only know a few of the managers, or one of the other managers is your sworn enemy—or maybe you don't know any of the other managers at all!
Hopefully my process was a little insightful as to how I think about forming a trade. Please let me know if you have any feedback!
Until next time! Time for the Bandit to celebrate finally rostering Jalen Hurts in a dynasty league! Yeeeeeeeehaw!