Making the Case
Be Careful Making Trade Offers Post-Week 1
Once Week 1 passes, a lot of us immediately think about putting out trade offers…
But that might not be such a good idea…
Here’s my case against making trade offers post-Week 1.
No Leverage
One of the most important factors in crafting a successful trade is being able to exploit leverage. When your opponent has a clear positional weakness, or mounting frustration with a player, they’re more likely to overpay (or undersell). The problem is, there’s almost no leverage to exploit post-Week 1. Injuries haven’t compiled. Underperformance & win-loss records haven’t built up enough pressure to force anyone into making drastic moves. People just aren’t generally ready to panic yet.
No Panic
Outside of an absolute dud, most people are not going to panic over 1 bad performance. 2 or 3 bad performances, maybe. You can target players who had complete duds Week 1, but most people aren’t going to sell below market value after 1 semi-bad game. Have patience, let the bad weeks stack up, attrition set in, and then capitalize when the panic meter has risen.
Potentially Sabotaging Future Negotiations
This is probably the most important factor in why you should be careful sending out trade offers post-Week 1. If you send out an offer post-Week 1 that gets rejected, you could be sabotaging a deal that might’ve been accepted in another week or two.
Now, if two weeks later, you go & offer the same deal that’s already been rejected once, your trade partner is less likely to accept it than they would’ve been if it were their first time seeing it.
We are biased to want more than offers we previously rejected, & we (at least somewhat) tether our future valuations to the original offer which we received & rejected. This is described as the “anchoring bias.”
& that subconsciously influences our decision-making process.
Nobody’s immune to these biases, you & your trade partners included.
This doesn’t mean you should NEVER send out trade offers post-Week 1, because there are certain instances where a team gets hit hard Week 1 and does have a clear & glaring weakness that you can leverage & exploit. Or a good player puts up a complete goose egg (0 points). But if you don’t have a CLEAR avenue to exploiting leverage, exercise patience. You don’t want to accidentally sabotage any future negotiations.