Regifting

Around this time of year in fantasy football gifts start to rain down from the heavens, falling in our laps.  Short term injuries, one bad game, strange bounces of the ball, gameplan decisions.... Things like this can lead fantasy owners to drop good players in favor of the flavor of the day.

Don't let this happen to you.

However, I'm not here to tell you not to drop good players.  I'm writing today to implore you not to not pick up good players. 

Err, what I'm saying is this: When a player with value gets dropped by someone else, find a way to scoop them up.  You can use that value later.

In one of my leagues Aaron Hernandez and Jeremy Maclin were both dropped a couple of weeks ago.  I grabbed them both, even though this left me with three tight ends and an injured WR that I wouldn't use.  I figured that those guys would have more value in a potential trade than your Daryl Richardson's and Andre Roberts' of the world.

And I was right.  I ran into an issue where I had Doug Martin, DeMarco Murray, and Darren McFadden all on a bye week.  My other RB's were upside plays like Andre Brown and Ben Tate and I wasn't about to start those guys.  So, I packaged one of my other Tight Ends (Brandon Pettigrew) with Maclin and made a deal for two RB's who were getting significant playing time.  Truth be told, they were both pretty bad even though they were getting a fair number of carries, so I was really selling Maclin and Pettigrew at a loss.  The fact was that I needed a couple of RB's who would get touches so I had to make a deal.  Besides, Maclin was like playing with house money anyway and Hernandez and Kyle Rudolph (my #3 TE) would be a fantastic combo at TE going forward.  I wasn't losing anything.

It turned out that one of the RB's played well and the other didn't, but Brown and Tate predictably combined for exactly zero points.  It was lucky that I had quality inventory to spend on a couple of middle-of-the-road fill in options.

The crazy thing is that my trading partner had Arian Foster and wasn't at all interested in Tate.  Strange, that.  I was hoping to expand the deal.  But it goes to show that you always need to be playing the angles. 

Pick up quality players and don't be afraid to do some regifting.