As we have been doing with our XN Sports fantasy football League of Champions, we keep you up-to-date about how our fantasy football experts manage their own teams, in the hopes it can help you manage yours. All of this includes previews, recaps, and analysis of the roster moves each owner makes. Until now, that has only been add/drops from the waiver wire. Not anymore.
The ice has been broken on the trade front and it involves two stars. Salvatore Stefanile and his Studfeldsville squad shipped injured tight end Rob Gronkowski to Bryan Knowles’ @Brykno Rhinos in exchange for Falcons’ wide receiver Julio Jones.
Below, both Sal and Bryan offer their thoughts on why they feel this trade was right for their teams and Igor Derysh weighs in with some outsider takeaways for you guys to consider with your own fantasy rosters.
Bryan Knowles: The logic behind this trade is really fairly simple for me — look at my receivers. Â Megatron, Julio Jones, Reggie Wayne, Marques Colston. Â That’s four WR1s — five when you include Malcom Floyd, who is admittedly a rung or two down below that. Â I knew I was loaded at the position, so I was dealing from a position of strength. Â Plus, I’m in last place, so a big splashy move had to be made.
In a league like this, I am at a massive disadvantage for streaming, because I’m simply not as good as our fantasy writers.  Pettigrew/Fleener might be a decent combination in a league where I’m mastering the waiver wire, but in a league like this?  I would rather have a stud, and that’s where Gronkowski came in.  I was actually offered Cook or Cameron for Wayne or Moore, but I’d rather have the receivers in those cases. Gronkowski, however?  With my depth, I would have agreed to a Megatron-Gronkowski trade, but I was able to just give up Jones.  It’s a good move for both clubs — it should make both of us stronger now.
I just wish I had done it on Monday morning instead of Sunday morning. Â Fantasy rule #5: Always know your league’s rules. Â The mistake cost me nearly 30 points — I would still have lost to the Foundation, but I’d be out of last place.
Salvatore Stefanile: Going RB-RB-RB to start a draft means you’re going to be weak at a certain position. In my case, it turned out that my WR depth chart was the weakest link of my team. For some reason, not only did I shun the WR position on my team, but I also drafted three TEs in Gronk, Jordan Cameron and Jared Cook. Too bad we play in a league where you can only start one tight end.
With depth at the TE position, I circled the team I thought was weakest at the position, which turned out to be Bryno Rhinos, as his starting TE was Brandon Pettigrew. After DMing Bryan a feeler offer through Twitter, he came back with a Julio for Gronk offer. With only Jordy Nelson at WR on my team, parting with Gronk was hard to do, but the best decision for my team.
Igor Derysh: We do this league to illustrate some real life examples that may come up in your league. As such, there’s a few things to consider about your own roster in looking at Bryan and Sal’s Jones-Gronk trade.
1. Depth lowers the value of all the players at that position – but only to you. I don’t know about Megatron-Gronk but as Bryan pointed out, he’s stacked at WR. Julio Jones has great value to anyone else in the league but he’s expandable to Bryan because he can be so easily replaced. Turns out that lack of WR depth on every other team is the result of Bryan’s receiver hoarding.
Same with Sal’s plethora of tight ends except in his case the extra depth at a position like tight end forced him to try to move a tight end or two immediately. In a league like the XN League of Champions, every bench spot matters.
Consider where your team is deepest and weakest and that’s the trade you make, not the novelty one to grab a one-week-wonder.
2. Streaming isn’t for everyone. Streaming a certain position is difficult and should only be utilized if you’re weak at a position. It should never be your go-to strategy because of it’s high failure risk. If you can get a top-10 guy at any position, it saves you a lot of the headaches that Bryan doesn’t have to worry about once Gronkowski comes back. Where Bryan is wrong is assuming he has less knowledge than XN’s top fantasy analysts. It’s true that XN’s top experts are among the most accurate on FantasyPros.com, with Sal himself coming in at 16th out of 128 experts over the first two weeks. The beauty of that is, Bryan has access to all of Sal’s, C.D. Carter’s and Rich Hribar’s knowledge since they publish their rankings and streaming picks each week. They’ve already done the work, not use it to school them with it, Bryan.
3. Buy a girl a drink first. You’ll notice that Sal didn’t shoot a quick trade proposal to Bryan first, he approached it with a softer hand. Too often, trade proposals come off as predatory – a vulture trying to seize on a buy-low player. That morning, Julio Jones’ status was up in the air so not only did Sal find the team that’s weakest at TE, he found a top-10 receiver who’s value became questionable for about 20 minutes. It’s true, you should always look for opportunities like that but don’t be too forceful in your approach. You can talk trades without sending any official proposals.
