Levi Farmer recently made his first appearance on the premium podcast side of UTHDynasty.com’s content and now shares his acumen with written content. Find Levi on twitter @LeviFarmerNFL.
These dynasty trades were made in a 12-team, 30 roster spot startup draft in the 2016 offseason (July).
Dynasty Trade: The Approach
The key beginning is having a league with Blind Bid waivers versus first-come first-serve. I am in a lot of older leagues where league mates are very stubborn on changing bylaws. Getting the league to switch to Blind Bid has been one of the easier pushes to make a change. If you have Blind Bid waivers and are not set up to be able to trade the dollars, it is an easy change because it does not change the scoring or any integral part of the league.
I was at a point in this startup draft where my tiers are deep and did not have a singular target player. I focused on trying to trade back 5-10 picks in Round 18. I sent over offers to a few different teams trying to get a late round rookie pick. Of the seven offers I sent, five were declined with no comment, two of them came back with similar comments of the owners not wanting to move any rookie picks and wanted to give me a bump later in the 30-round draft for a bump now. I am usually not inclined to make a move up later in draft for a move up now, I would rather stack rookie picks. With these owners not wanting to move rookie picks, I moved on to my next strategy of trying to add some blind bid dollars to my bank. For less than a round move back in the 2nd half of a startup, I always start by offering my pick for their coming pick plus 20% of their blind bid money. In this case, we have $1000 per year. After one counter we settled on this for both of my moves:
The Trades
Gave 18.02
Received 18.09, $150 (15% of annual cap)
—
Gave 19.11
Received 20.11, $200 (20% of annual cap)
Takeaway
I still got my guys in the same tier and walked away with 35% more than anyone else has in Blind Bid money to start the year out. This will come into play for key free agents who will eventually turn into flip assets for rookie picks or upgraded rookie picks most of the time. Use this strategy not only in a startup, but also when you are making roster cut downs or when trying to get a throw in from another team during a trade.
2016 Blind Bid Account: $1350 (35% more than next highest owner)
