Before Your Trade Deadline

Start with your seats, not a player you like

Most trade talk starts from a name. A better starting point is your lineup: which starting seats sit below your league's middle team at that same seat? Your WR2 might be fine in a vacuum and still be the weakest WR2 in a twelve-team league. Those seats are where an upgrade changes your weekly total; a deeper bench at a position you already lead mostly doesn't.

Then look at byes. A player who fills a week where you have no one at a position is worth more to you than his season line suggests, and a player whose bye lands on your existing hole is worth less.

Measure the change, then measure the error

A trade is worth what it does to the lineup you would actually start — before and after, including who leaves it. A player on bye this week should count at what he projects to score in the games he plays, not at zero, or every bye-week player looks like a downgrade.

The step almost nobody takes: compare that change with how far off the projections typically are. If a trade moves your lineup by less than the projections' usual miss, the honest reading is that the numbers can't tell the two lineups apart. That isn't a reason to refuse the deal; it is a reason not to pay extra for it. We cover how that error is measured in Fantasy Projections Explained.

Look for the deal both sides can say yes to

A trade only happens if the other manager accepts it. The easiest pitch to send is a one-for-one swap where both teams' best lineups project higher afterwards — you fill a weak seat from their surplus, they fill theirs from yours. It is also the easiest offer to explain, because you can show them their own side of the math.

How the Blitzen league page lays this out

Everything above is what the league page draws for ESPN and Sleeper leagues.

• Trade targets, on the Managers tab, lists your starting seats that sit below your league's middle team at that seat. Under each come the players on other rosters who would enter your highest-projected lineup (the one our projections pick, not the one you set), ordered by how much each adds per game he plays. Each row shows that lineup's projection before and after, the seat he takes and who leaves, what his current team's lineup projects to lose, his bye week and any of your bye-week holes he fills. Below them: one-for-one swaps where both teams' highest-projected lineups project higher.
• The error stays on screen. In a PPR league each change carries the ± our projections are measured to miss by, and says whether the change is bigger than that or inside it. Half-PPR and Standard leagues show no ±, because that error has not been measured for them.
• Head to head puts any two teams in your league side by side, seat by seat: each player's projection is a dot with its measured ±, and each seat says whether the two are further apart than that or inside it. No winner is called. The projections don't know who wins your Sunday, and the page doesn't pretend to.

What it needs from you

• Sleeper: connect your league by its id. Sleeper is read from its public API in your browser when you open the page.
• ESPN: the ESPN Link Chrome extension reads your own league in your browser and hands it to your open Blitzen tab. Trade targets need this week's rosters; from Monday night's kickoff until a lineup for the new week is synced, the section says so instead of pricing last week's lineups.
• A free Blitzen account — the league page is behind sign-in.

Know your deadline

There is no universal date. ESPN, Yahoo and Sleeper all let a league set its own, and many leagues close trading somewhere around Weeks 11–13, a few weeks before the fantasy playoffs. Check your league's settings, then do the homework before the deadline, not after it.

Projections are estimates with a measured error, not predictions of what will happen. Blitzen is an analytics and research tool; it shows what the numbers say and how sure they are, and does not tell anyone what to trade or bet. Sports betting carries real financial risk — wager only what you can afford to lose, and only where it is legal. Must be 21+. If gambling stops being fun, help is available: call 1-800-GAMBLER.