Farmville, VA – You know it’s true. Unless your name is Enright, Franssen, Marcot, or Rothfus (with a nod to Lindsay for winning Kelce this year), you don’t really know what to do with RFA. Because of the incredibly weak nature of the RFA bidding through two years, I’ve decided to use the results from the 2015 & 2016 RFA seasons to lay the foundation for bidding and provide tips and insights on how to do RFA right. It is my sincere hope that next year you don’t suck at this. Read and learn, Noobs.
GOALS
There are only two possible goals for RFA: 1) Get a player to help your team. 2) Bid up your opponent so that even if they keep the player, it negatively affects their cap standing so that you put yourselves in a better position to acquire UFAs later in the summer and into the season.
UNDERSTANDING CHALLENGES TO REACHING YOUR GOALS
Listen, you’re going to be hard pressed to actually pry away an RFA player, making Goal 1 very difficult to achieve. There are two good reasons for this.
First of all, owners want to retain players that show how awesome they are at drafting and are loathe to let that sweet draft pick go to another team. They are willing to pay out the nose to do this because it makes them feel cool. This year, Marcot forked over a combined $111 for Bell and Hopkins. Just watch and see how much OBJ goes for in RFA next year and how long it takes Ryan to match.
Second, draft picks are rarely worth what established veterans are worth. For example, in 2015 Hammond let Russell Wilson walk for the 1.08. Wilson went on to score the 4th most points in the league, whereas Kevin White has yet to score a point in the Immersion. Even if White lights it up going forward, this is a big win for Marcot. The shoe is on the other foot in 2016 – I’m willing to bet big bucks that Lindsay’s shiny new TE Travis Kelce out-scores Marcot’s 3rd round draft pick this year.
Both of these examples let us to two major strategy points:
STRATEGY POINT #1: Your draft picks aren’t worth holding onto
Honestly, your draft picks have held very little value the last two years in particular. Go check out the 2015 draft results. Outside of Gurley and Cooper (who we knew were studs prior to the draft) and David Johnson in the first round, it looks pretty grim. Second round? There’s potential, but questions remain. Looking at that draft, who would you rather have over Andrew Luck, Luke Kuechly, Levonte David, Alshon Jeffrey, or Bobby Wagner? Not many, right?
I think the prevailing wisdom has been owners in the top half of the draft shouldn’t bid in RFA and surrender high draft picks. But, outside of the “sure things”, EVERYONE should be bidding. In the 2016 RFA period, only Jeremy – who held the 1.01 – gets a pass for not bidding on Nuk. The next best player this year is Laquon “4.64 40” Treadwell and it only goes downhill from there. Give me Hopkins, the league’s 15th overall scorer (4th best WR) every day over the 2016 1.02, let alone the 1.08 or 1.12. With this in mind, it’s pretty obvious that there should’ve been 10 guys bidding on nearly every RFA available. At MOST there were five (Keenan Allen, with you slobs offering me 2nd rounders at best).
In summary, freaking BID on the players in RFAs that have already proven themselves. You don’t have nearly as much to lose as you think, especially because you probably suck at drafting too (that’s another article).
STRATEGY POINT #2: Bid like you mean it
Remember Goal #2 of RFA? You want your opponents to commit as much cap as humanly possible to one player. That will hamstring them for the rest of the offseason. Since we now all know that your draft pick is not tempting to the original owner, we can place really high bids on available RFAs and really put the screws to our opponents.
2016 Case Study I: Le’Veon Bell
Bell was on the board for a minimum bid of of $24 – a 1st rounder. Bell is better than all of your running backs as the RB1 on most ffl ranking sites. So 10 of us (12 – Jeremy at 1.01 – Marcot = 10) should be bidding. We know that top RBs cost around $40, so we also know that we have to go well over $40 if Marcot is to even consider parting with the league’s best RB.
The winning bid was Enright at $61. A brilliantly high bid that forced Marcot to really sit down and work out the cap ramifications of paying such a steep price. I bid $50 because though I had no intention of paying that much for a running back, I knew that I could screw Marcot over by at least $26 over the minimum bid of $24. Rothfus bid $24. What a wasted bid. Of COURSE Marcot will match $24 and it put the screws to Marcot to the tune of $0.27. Whoopty friggin’ do! If Rothfus hadn’t made reasonable bids later and excelled during the 2015 RFA window, he would have to be stripped from a name of prominence to start this article for such nonsense. Enright, though. He forced Marcot to eat $37 to keep his player. Like a boss.
Case Study Conclusion: Enright and I knew what we were doing in RFA. Jepson and Marcot are exempted. The other 8 of you are dopes.
2016 Case Study II: Fat Eddie Lacy
This is where the cream really rose. High end head games, here. No one wanted Fat Eddie for a first rounder. That’s way too expensive. But, knowing what we now know, $40 will be paid for a potential RB1 every time by the original owner. Thus, I bid $40, fully soaking Rothfus for $17 over the initial bid of $23. Enright bid $61 on Le’Veon Bell…again…during the Lacy window. No one else bid.
Case Study II Conclusion: I know what I’m doing in RFA. The other 9 of you are wimps and/or ironic.
2016 Case Study III: D Hop
Here we have arguably the best dynasty WR in the league available in RFA. He’s QB-proof and is far younger than Antonio or Julio. So what should you do? Bid him up! Now this is a player that I really wanted. That meant that I
had to go for Goal #1 rather than just hitting Marcot with Goal #2. So I bid $50. Why? Because that would make him the highest paid WR in the league AND I had to try and out-bid Enright (who actually bid $47, which would also have made Nuk the highest paid WR). Rothfus bid $35, potentially soaking Marcot for $11 if no one else had bid, which is great. Hammond bid $24 – another complete waste of time and effort.
Case Study III Conclusion: Two of us wanted Nuk, Rothfus made a Goal #2 bid, and the other 7 of you were making weak sauce in the kitchen.
Case Study I & III Fallout: Because of the massive RFA soaking that Enright and I did with Bell and Nuk, Lindsay was able to swoop in and steal Kelce from Marcot with a modest bid. He was the only one of us to correctly gauge the situation and swipe a player ripe for picking. What a beast.
SUMMARY
Remember this article next year when the RFA period comes around. You’ve sucked hard at this for two years and now have a chance to get it together. In 2016 remember that your goals are 1) to get the player and/or 2) to force your foes to eat cap space to keep their guy. To do this, you have to 1) realize that your picks are worth less than you think they are and 2) bid like a champ. Good luck.
© 2016, Adam Franssen. All rights reserved.
I think the new rules for RFA definitely shifted the process so that it’s less helpful for owners who have RFAs. Before, you could dictate what draft pick you’d require in order to give up your player. Now the advantage goes to the bidders, who can bid your LB up to $14 because you know a 2nd rounder isn’t worth it.
As for Russell Wilson, it could be argued that I lost that for one season. But this isn’t a redraft league. I’m grateful to not be paying $38.50 for a QB. And yes, he had the 4th most points in the league, but 6 out of 10 of the top scoring players were QBs. By not paying him I “won” cap space. This year he costs the same amount as Antonio Brown, and I’d rather have Brown, especially given that I can approach Wilson numbers with my cheaper QB, if he stays healthy.
I enjoyed this article, even if it was propaganda designed to build up the author. The premise is somewhat flawed in that it compares 2 seasons with 2 very different sets of rules. Even so, I like that some people are out there trying to contribute to the common life of our league. That’s why Franssen was ranked pretty highly in the Owner Rankings.
Honestly, the rule change hasn’t changed the approach one should take in RFA. The goals are exactly the same and so are the strategies of bidding high and often.
Your complaint about LB bidding this year vs last is valid – I got hit on K. Allen, too. However, Marcot’s bid on Luck in 2015 and Enright’s bid on Bell in 2016 were both perfect examples of correct RFA strategy despite the bids taking place in different rule environments.
Also, this article isn’t about how awesome I and several others happen to be at RFA – that’s just a vehicle, like a MacGuffin. Rather, it’s about making the league a more awesome place.
I get your point, but it sort of makes sense … you’re more apt to draft QBs, RBs, WRs in the 1st round, and thus, you pay that in RFA to get one. LBs would go R2 and beyond, thus you give that … etc. Then we just need to realize that, for a good LB, expect to pay $14.
Fair enough, I suck. I traded my 1st round pick for a retiring player (next time I will be googling the hands of any WR I am considering trading for or drafting – have you seen Calvin Johnson’s hands?!)
The main reason to keep a first round pick is to do exactly what you outline here.
Wait, I couldn’t find terrible pictures of Megatron’s hands. Share?
Enjoy- http://detroit.cbslocal.com/2016/06/10/calvin-johnson-posts-disgusting-photo-from-finger-surgery-nsfw-photo/
Had those pics leaked to me right before I put Megatron on the trade block.
Enjoyed the article. It does seem like the RFA period is, at the very least, misunderstood. Granted, we all long to build a team like Hammond’s, that’s like nearly half a full roster of players that are still under rookie contracts and thus, holdout proof, but the fact of the matter is that (at least for me), most draft picks are a waste and I’d rather trade them for known commodities (as I’ve done in the past). However, with some of the studs coming through RFA, I’ve been forced to save my picks in order to bid.
Another way to look at it is, would any of you trade your R1 straight up for Bell or Hopkins for instance? If the answer is yes (and it should be), then you should’ve bid during RFA.
Personally, however, I didnt bid on Lacy because I dont want him for $40 even if you gave him to me for free, let alone risk a R1 that my $40 offer would not be matched … just my personal opinion.