To preface my discussion of trade evaluation I’ll start by saying that I follow the philosophy of “if it’s not collusion, then the deal should stand.” I’m also of the notion that the league commissioner should have the only say on whether or not deals go through. A commissioner that’s truly acting in the best interest of his league will be the only one in the league capable of looking at trades with an unbiased eye. Individual team owners will typically examine trades from the viewpoint of how it impacts their team. This is why leagues with veto or trade votes have a tendency to not have many trades. Vetoes come from owners that see other teams getting stronger, not because they see collusion or an unbalanced trade.

The rule I use to examine trades is “does the deal benefit both teams?” I’m not looking for a perfectly equal trade. I’m not looking to see if one team gets too strong or unbalanced from the rest of the league. I just want to see that both owners involved attempted to improve their teams. I do this by examining the rosters of both teams and primarily looking to see if they improved their regular starting lineup. Without getting into too much detail, I’ll illustrate a trade that, on the surface, looked lopsided, but after review truly benefited both teams at the time.

My league had a trade in week 3 where Kellen Winslow was traded for Isaac Bruce and Chris Perry. On the surface it would appear that the team getting Winslow (A 4th round pick) appears to be suckering the team that gets Bruce (9th round pick) and Perry (11th Round Pick). However I allowed the trade to go through because the starting lineups of both teams appeared to improve. At the time of the trade, the team moving Winslow had glaring issues at both WR #2 and RB#2. Bruce would be an instant start at WR #2 and Perry would likely start over Edge at RB #2. This team had also grabbed Rosario from free agency. He looked like he may have potential after two games. This and the early demise of the Cleveland offense may have lead him to believe he could get by without Winslow to improve his overall starting lineup. The team trading Bruce and Perry was trading depth to get a starter so naturally his team was improved. So despite a lopsided looking trade that did cause owners in my league to complain; this trade was approved.

To me, deals like this are the epitome of why all trades should be allowed unless collusion is involved. At this point in the season, the team that has gotten the most bang for their buck is the Bruce/Perry recipient. Isaac Bruce has been a serviceable #2 WR and has contributed weekly. The team that traded for Winslow acquired Shiancoe shortly after that and has been starting him over Winslow. He’ll have to find another tight end this week as Winslow’s mouth has been more explosive than his play this season. Only hindsight can determine if a deal was fair or not. There’s just no way to know what deals would be fair and which ones aren’t. The unknown aspect of trading is part of the NFL and should be part of fantasy football as well. I’m not sure what the Falcons got for Brett Favre but I’m fairly certain it wasn’t enough to make the deal seem fair in hindsight. No one complained at the time when Randy Moss was traded for a 4th-round pick. In all my years of doing this, I’ve questioned 2 trades and rejected one. Focus on looking for collusion, not on preventing bad trades.

Now that we know what to look for in a good deal, what do we look for in the bad ones. Well, I’m looking for exactly the opposite. I’m looking for the deal where only one team benefits and one team clearly doesn’t. Typically what happens here is that one team will acquire a player who is better than their current starters while giving up multiple players that are not substantially better than what that team currently has. I had this in my league several years ago where one team gave up a decent WR for an average QB, and an average RB. On the basis of total points, because one team got two players, the deal looked viable on the surface. However on closer examination, the QB would have been the third on his roster and was the worst of the three. The RB would not have cracked his starting lineup as well. The WR he gave up was a starter for him. In addition, these two teams had a habit of making a trade at the trade deadline that was just even enough to pass as a legitimate trade, but seemed to help one team more than the other. Finally they made a deal that was obviously collusion and they were removed from the league the following season as the owner of the team getting the backup players didn’t have a legitimate reason for making this deal.

This brings up another point in reviewing trades. The commissioner should always ask each owner what they expect to gain from the trade if he suspects that the trade is unfair. On one occasion I got a response I didn’t expect that completely changed my perspective on the deal. A player in our league with a strong team dealt one of his better RB’s to a weaker team for a RB that, at the time wasn’t performing as well. On the surface there seemed to be no justification for this, but the owner explained to me that he was trading his better RB because he had all but clinched a playoff spot and the RB he traded for had a better playoff schedule. It’s important to see what your owners are thinking before jumping to conclusions.

The perspective of looking at so many trades from the commissioner’s standpoint has given my some insight on how to get my own deals done. When looking to make a trade the first thing I do is look at my team and examine where I have depth. Where do I have players who could start for other teams? Once I identify my strengths, I look at the other teams in the league to identify their weaknesses. Obviously I’m looking for a match of my depth to their lack of starters at the same position. What I don’t do is target a player I want and try to throw a package together to get him. I see a lot of teams try to do that and it rarely ever works. Why, because you are only examining the trade from your team’s perspective. If you trading partner has any savvy at all he’s not going to take a bunch of your dead weight for a top player, but I see so many trade proposals in other leagues that are just that.

After identifying potential teams that I match up with, I examine their team for players I’d like to acquire. Sometimes there are none and the deal ends here. Usually what I’m looking for are players that I feel have not shown their potential. For example I’ve got a team in my league that needs help at defense and RB, areas I happen to be strong in. He’s got a fairly deep WR corps that includes Braylon Edwards. I’m considering using my depth to go after Edwards because he’s a great talent and I feel he can’t perform any worse this year. The motivation for the Edwards owner is that he gets a starting RB and DST and loses a player that has contributed marginally for him thus far. I’m not sure we’ll pull it off, but we are close enough that we are talking. He may be fielding other offers as well.

Hopefully this trade discussion will give you some insight as to how you want to handle trades in your league. I certainly don’t mean to imply that leagues with trade voting or vetoes are bad leagues. The key in those leagues, as it is any league, is having knowledgeable owners. My job evaluating trades in my league is so much easier because I have 13 other owners that really take this seriously and though there are differences in skill level, all of them are good at this game. This usually prevents me from even seeing a lopsided deal.

One other quick point to keep trades from sinking your league is to have a trade deadline. It should be set to where most teams still have a mathematically shot at making the playoffs. Ours is week 9 as we play a 13-week regular season. When you play in leagues with friends and family, it’s just too tempting for teams out of contention to deal someone to their buddy to give him a little boost. Having a trade deadline can prevent some of that because the majority of the league still has the potential to make the playoffs and any good owner will fight until he’s eliminated.

Time for one quick question this week…

Q) I received a trade (Peyton Manning and Chad Johnson for Muhsin Muhammad and Jamal Lewis) that I felt to be questionable in my league. When I questioned the owners on the deal I discovered that one owner had sold his team to a player with considerably less experience. I denied the trade. Was this the right thing to do?

A) On the surface the deal shouldn’t have been denied as given the rosters of those two teams, it did appear to be mutually beneficial. The bigger issue to me is that a team changed ownership without your approval. I always like to look to the NFL for answers and the NFL just doesn’t allow anyone to walk in and buy a team. There is an approval process and we have the same process in my league. I want to be sure I get an owner who is on par with the rest of the league, not a player that will be taken advantage of. I either interview or get references from other owners anytime we fill a vacant position. In light of the ownership change mid-season I would have frozen the other team and taken control of that team until a suitable replacement could be found. In my league just because the owner has paid his dues, that does not give him the right to sell the team. I’d suggest adding a rule to this effect, but I think you have to act in the best interest of the league regardless of whether you have a rule in place or not.

That concludes another session of the commissioner’s court. Next time we’ll start looking at playoff formats and rules as we’ll be getting close to that time of the year.