909: Mailbag 9/13/24

JJ Zachariason (0:02)

This is The Late-Round Podcast with your host, JJ Zachariason.

What's up, everyone? It's JJ Zachariason. In this episode, 909 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, sponsored by Underdog Fantasy. Thanks for tuning in. Before getting into the questions this week, I want to send another reminder about a new Underdog Fantasy offer. If you sign up on Underdog Fantasy with promo code LATEROUND and then you make a deposit, you'll get a deposit bonus and a link. Underdog will email you a link to my rest of season rankings. Underdog is the best and easiest place to play fantasy sports. There's a lot to play. There's a lot to do on their platform. So check it out. underdogfantasy.com and make sure you use promo code LATEROUND when you sign up. The first mailbag question this week is from Patreon. It's from Jacob. It says, how do you go about buying the players that you mentioned on your 15 Transactions episode? Meaning, how do you come up with trades to get the players you mentioned as buys? I feel like it's necessary to talk about trading at least once on this show per year. This is that one time. People go about trading in fantasy football the wrong way. They think about players that they want to target instead of thinking about taking advantage of the teams in their league. Like, yeah, I do the 50 Transactions episode. I give buy and sell recommendations because it's hopefully good information to have. Maybe you have one of those players on your team, and then you know not to panic if they're a buy. Maybe you have one of those players who are sells and you can sell high. You can try to trade them away. But when it comes to targeting players, yes, I'll see what's going on with the team in my league who has a certain player who I call out as a buy. But I don't always make a trade offer with that team because the number one thing to focus on when making a trade in fantasy football is team needs, that's it. Like earlier this week, I said go buy a Mari Cooper. Okay, great. Your team needs wide receiver help. Go ahead, get a Mari Cooper. You go and you look at the team that has a Mari Cooper, and you realize that they need wide receiver help too. If you're unable to give that team what it needs, it's going to be difficult getting a deal done. It's going to be hard getting a Mari Cooper off of their team. What works better is when that team has a lot of good wide receivers, and maybe they lack at running back, but maybe you have a ton of running backs, or maybe that team just needs some depth, so you can do a two-for-one deal. So you can create trades around that, around needs. So when I say that you need to take advantage of teams in your league, I mean you need to focus on their needs, and you also need to take advantage when they're vulnerable. After week one in my more active leagues, I'll look at the bottom of the league standings and try to trade with those teams. Because people panic way too much after week one. And I know that those league managers, they're way more vulnerable and they're ready to make a move versus a team that's in first place. I tweeted about this earlier in the week, but I also think that people need to stop the same position for same position trades. Like B. John Robinson for Breece Hall. Why? Why are we making that trade? The result of that trade is that there's going to be a clear loser. One of those two running backs will win out. They'll outscore the other one. And maybe you're cool with that. That's fine. But when players are in the same tier like that, we know there's plenty of variance. And we know that fantasy football is about probabilities, not certainties. It's just silly to me to have so much conviction with one player or another. In that example. Now, sometimes you will. Sometimes a deal like that, it can be done. But most of the time, you're just swapping coin flips. To me, trades are about making both teams better when the deal is struck. Yes, there could be a loser when it's all said and done. But both teams can absolutely win when different positions are involved and when you're filling needs for both rosters. Look, I could go on and on and on about this topic. Because in my opinion, it's one of the most misunderstood topics in this game. People need to think more creatively about their deals. That could be giving away more players on your bench in order to improve your starting lineup. Or it's actually just giving their trade partners what those teams need. There's a lot to trading that's just not discussed enough.