“Hey, Daniel Jones is too good to be my QB3.”
So began the thought process that would lead to what many would call “ruin”, but what I would call “fun”. Things kicked off with my attempts to buy low on Kyler Murray which maybe turned into my success in buying low on CMC.
That first round pick sent to me was pick 1.06, which was used on Jaxon Smith-Njigba. As such, we might evaluate this trade, using KeepTradeCut’s crowd-sourced dynasty trade calculator as such:
We’re off to a bad start. My desire to get a trade done allowed me to have my desire to extract value out of Daniel Jones into a willingness to trade away Trevor Lawrence, one of the most valuable pieces in Superflex Dynasty. I definitely bought low on Kyler Murray though, so who knows! Maybe this will work out just fine for me.
Nic can speak to how long I pestered him to make this Jerry Jeudy thing happen. I originally approached him about some sort of Lamb-for-Jeudy swap, but he’s a tough customer, and I am a dumb Broncos homer. Negotiations kicked back up around the draft, when I got into psycho trade down mode, and he relented. That first round pick was the one I had previously acquired, so Jaxon Smith-Njigba landed elsewhere after all.
Perhaps this value assessment has shift somewhat since Jeudy got hurt, something about which I am not salty at all. Okay, so that’s loss number two.
The league overall has won from my efforts. However, I went into the draft with two particular players in mind, and they were both still on the board at my original pick of 10th overall. However, so was Zay Flowers, Zach Charbonnet, and Jonathan Mingo – Players I’d be happy to have but did not want to draft. Trade down again!
Broncos homer strikes again! The 2023 picks involved in this trade turned into Zay Flowers, Zach Evans, Zach Charbonnet, and Hendon Hooker, so this trade looks like this:
Passing on Zay Flowers here was probably the real dumb move. The most valuable piece of the trade by a decent margin, the guy is going to be the WR1 for a prolific offense helmed by an MVP. Oh well, I had my sights elsewhere, but when I came back on the clock in the second round, both the players I wanted to draft were on the board, and a Seattle running back was there. Hey, Seahawks fan Reggie has two back-to-back picks coming up! Let’s send him an offer…
Okay, so 6 2023 picks involved here. Let’s plug the players these turned into in the ‘old calculator…
Who says red is a bad colour anyways? I think it’s pretty.
I went into the draft prepared to take Devon Achane and Marvin Mims and 1.06 and 1.10 respectively, and am quite pleased with my getting them at 2.05 and 2.06 instead. Time will tell how dumb I am for thinking that. Oh well, that’s the draft in the books!
At this point, Reggie messages me asking about Kyler Murray. He’s down bad at QB, and is looking for a buy low candidate. Say, you know who I have at QB after all this trading? That’s right, Daniel Jones! A few insane messages later, and…
This trade calculator can’t do three team trades, so let’s just do the parts I sent out and got back….
Woof. Okay, this one may be indefensible, but I am happy to have maybe the Bears’ RB1 on my roster, and Russ is DEFINITELY gonna have a bounceback year this year, right? Right?
Okay, so what does this look like in the end? This trade calculator can’t do more than 7 items, so I’m gonna need to stitch it together. Remember, this is a total of in and out, so I’m not counting Kennan Allen, since I didn’t have him at the beginning of this whole insane spree. Same goes for Jaxon Smith-Njigba, but I did have the pick that became Zay Flowers. Okay, let’s see here…
Well, that’s embarrassing. This method of evaluation also fails to capture the opportunity cost of passing up Jaxon Smith-Njigba or Zay Flowers to turn those picks into other players, but this is a very damning look at what I went into the offseason with against what I came out with.
That said, even if I put (way) too many eggs into the “Russell Wilson Bounceback” season basket, I came away with the best RB in fantasy, a QB who could return to a top 5 kind of QB, and a host of high upside RB picks. We shall see!