Something people often say about trades is that it’s not about winning the trade. The idea behind this is that trades should help both teams. Though that’s true, a trade can help a team while they still lose the trade. However, if you’re in a win-later team, things are a bit different and you can afford to lose trades there. Rebuilding is about winning trades.

To clarify, what I mean by winning and losing trades is with regards to player value. Of course, this is very subjective and varies per league, but there is usually somewhat of a consensus range. For example, I think most would agree the Cardinals won the DeAndre Hopkins trade.

The Mistake

Too often, people decide to rebuild and instantly trade all their veterans for any young players and picks they can get their hands on. Though that’s not a bad idea, I’ve seen rebuilders sell away their veterans too cheaply out of fear they’ll suddenly expire on their lineup. This makes sense because rebuilders devalue older vets and overvalue younger players and picks. However, I often see players losing value when doing this.

You’ll often see win-now teams losing trades. This is more reasonable as win-now teams are on a time crunch to get the best players they can so they are understandably willing to lose value to lock up a championship, just like what the Rams did. However, losing trades is counterproductive to rebuilding teams. Also, rebuilding teams don’t need to rush as much as they can take a year or two to rebuild.

Rationale

People rebuild because their team is bad. If you lose value, even if you’re getting younger, you’re making your bad team worse. You want to keep gaining value so that when you’re ready to compete, you either have studs that help you compete, or you have valuable pieces that you can trade away for players that will help you to compete. You want to have the most value possible by the time you compete so that you can use that value to acquire pieces to dominate the competition.

Don’t be Afraid of Age

There have been a couple of times I’ve traded younger WRs for older RBs. Though this may sound counterintuitive, I did it because I was getting good value for it and I knew I’d be able to flip them easily. I then turned those older RBs into more young WRs. In general, find out what teams want and take advantage of that.

Wrap-Up

In a rebuild, yes you do want to get younger players or draft picks who are likely to increase in value and offer longevity. However, you want to make sure you’re also increasing the value of your team. This is why rebuilding is about winning trades.

To help you with this, feel free to check out my article on my favourite trade in dynasty here.

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