Thoughts on tanking and future draft picks

[tsuthar]

In my keeper league, we're having a discussion on teams that suck trading away their best players for next year's draft picks. The trades are not one-sided, but rather pretty fair.

We have a couple owners who think it's unfair, as teams who sell out their players are tanking and will give easy wins to opponents. As commish, I'm looking at the big picture, and thinking that the team is making its franchise better with more picks next year.

We're having calls to eliminate future draft pick trades all together.

What do other people think/do?

[flotsamnjetsam]

In my keeper league, we're having a discussion on teams that suck trading away their best players for next year's draft picks. The trades are not one-sided, but rather pretty fair.

We have a couple owners who think it's unfair, as teams who sell out their players are tanking and will give easy wins to opponents. As commish, I'm looking at the big picture, and thinking that the team is making its franchise better with more picks next year.

We're having calls to eliminate future draft pick trades all together.

What do other people think/do?

As long as the trades "are not one-sided, but rather pretty fair", like you said, & noone is suspected of cheating/colluding to make 1 team better...I think the owners that are complaining are out of line. Eliminate trading of future draft picks in a keeper league? That's crazy. IMO, that's one of the best parts of keeper/dynasty leagues. Eliminating trading of future draft picks would never fly in any of my keeper/dynasty leagues. Good luck!

[WaCougMBS]

In my keeper league, we're having a discussion on teams that suck trading away their best players for next year's draft picks. The trades are not one-sided, but rather pretty fair.

We have a couple owners who think it's unfair, as teams who sell out their players are tanking and will give easy wins to opponents. As commish, I'm looking at the big picture, and thinking that the team is making its franchise better with more picks next year.

We're having calls to eliminate future draft pick trades all together.

What do other people think/do?

As long as the trades "are not one-sided, but rather pretty fair", like you said, & noone is suspected of cheating/colluding to make 1 team better...I think the owners that are complaining are out of line. Eliminate trading of future draft picks in a keeper league? That's crazy. IMO, that's one of the best parts of keeper/dynasty leagues. Eliminating trading of future draft picks would never fly in any of my keeper/dynasty leagues. Good luck!

Agreed on all counts - not a whole lot else I can add

[spodog]

I think the way you handle this really varies based upon the type of league you are in.

If this is a FREE league or a very low cost league where the pain to an Owner who starts tanking about now is very low, then you really shouldn't allow trades for future year draft picks at all.

In our long running league, we DO allow these types of trades, but they come at a cost.

Every single LOSS by an owner costs the owner $ which goes into the prize pool. This is true all year long, right down to the last week of the regular season. This fee is roughly 6% of the entry fee that each owner paid to get into the league in the first place.

So an owner who is currently sitting on a 1-7 record who trades away all his top tier players for future year draft picks and ends up losing another 5 games ends up paying about 170% of the league entry fee vs. a team that finishes with a .650 winning percentage.

Likewise, each WIN nets an owner a weekly cash prize (half the $ it costs the LOSER), so there is a fair amount of $ pain associated with just tanking.

[Dan Lambskin]

i dont have issue with it, everyone has the same chance to make a trade for a certain player who might or might not be on the block. one thing you can do is have an earlier trade deadline so that a lot of teams are still "in it"

[suhgamer]

Trades are fairly close, then it shouldn't matter.

This is the time of season (for most leagues) where the deadline has either come and gone or is almost upon them. If it's a keeper/dynasty it just reflects the NFL even more. There are teams pushing into the playoffs that would be buyers and teams that are already eliminated or close to that are sellers.

Sellers then just sell off veterans looking for youth and upside along with picks. The buyers are looking for veterans to help bolster their roster, but with the sacrifice of the youth.

It makes complete sense.

[mariners100]

To eliminate teams tanking we are having the "losers" bracket determine the draft order next year. The winner of the "losers" bracket will get #1 pick... 2nd place gets #2, etc. if a team wants to still tank they will end up with pick #4.

I would think twice about inviting someone back for next year if they are tanking it. IMO

[ABA316]

If it's a keeper you can't prevent people from building for the future. Period.

That said if the owner doing so is trading in such a way that they can't fill a starting lineup with players that have at least some expectation of playing (such as no IR or non-actives) then they should be made to add players to do so. You can't do much more than make them field a full roster however so wins from a team doing this is just the nature of the beast but has to be allowed.

[Matthias]

In my keeper league, we're having a discussion on teams that suck trading away their best players for next year's draft picks. The trades are not one-sided, but rather pretty fair.

I would never allow the trading of draft picks. In all keeper leagues, you're going to run into some sort of "win now" versus "win next year" mentality, but allowing the trading of draft picks almost forces it in order to win, unless you have serious pain associated with losing now as Spodog does.

Say you start the season and Team A announces that he's not really interested in this season; he drafted Tom Brady with his first pick and he's really slammed at his job and will be through the spring. So he's willing to sell off his team for next year's draft picks. Now Team B has a pretty good team this year and doesn't care much about next. So he trades away all of his prime draft picks to Team A. So, in this year, every team playing against Team B is effectively playing against Team A and Team B and next year, every team playing against Team A is playing against Team A and Team B. At that point, you've almost forced people, if they want to win it all, to do this kind of trade so that they can win it in at least some year instead of encouraging everyone to be competitive in every year. It's just bad stuff.

As I mentioned, keeper leagues are always going to be like this a little bit, but that's why people are careful and consider how many and what restrictions they put on keepers. Then there's a limit on how much one team can concentrate their power for next year.

I agree with your league; you should ban the trading of players this year for draft picks next year. If, during next year's draft, owners want to swap picks for the same draft for whatever reason (say someone's 1st and 5th for someone else's 2nd and 3rd) then that's perfectly fine.

[TomBrooklyn]

If, during next year's draft, owners want to swap picks for the same draft for whatever reason (say someone's 1st and 5th for someone else's 2nd and 3rd) then that's perfectly fine.

As a related aside, how do you work a draft pick trade on an automated draft system like ESPN has, which doesn't make any provision (I don't think) for trading draft picks.