Fantasy Football Trojan Horse Trade Strategy

I write for The Fantasy Footballers and I'm fairly well-followed on Twitter(@FF_Gouge), but I'm almost always very transparent with my strategies and thoughts on players. I keep very little to myself even when I know a lot of the people I will be playing against in leagues are reading my articles.

This trade strategy is different. I simply never want any of my league mates to know about this strategy because I don't want them to use it and I don't want them to know I do this. As far as I know, I'm not playing or likely to play against anyone in the steemit community, so I'll post this for your benefit.

The Basics

The entire point of this strategy is to manufacture a near-guaranteed win for you between Weeks 8 and Week 11. You've probably noticed that heading into Week 8 in any given league there will be one or two awesome teams that are 6-1 or 5-2 and two or three teams that are just terrible without much of a chance of making the playoffs. Most teams will be sitting at 4-3 or 3-4.

All of these 3-4 or 4-3 teams have a shot at the playoffs, but each win or loss for a team hovering around a .500 win percentage is huge for the playoffs. Guaranteeing yourself even a single win greatly increases your odds to make the playoffs especially if the win is against another team that's also sitting around .500.

It's difficult to pull off a trade that significantly improves your team. Most trades are made to balance rosters out. Team A has an extra RB that they rarely play, but needs a TE. Team B has two good TEs, but needs an RB. These teams make natural trading partners. What we're trying to do is load a team up with players that have a certain bye week and then play them that week. We can't do a lot to improve our team, but we can stack the deck for a matchup down the road.

How's it Done

Look at your team and the bye weeks. You're probably going to have two or three players that all have the same bye week (normally between Weeks 9 and 11). Here's a team that's sitting at 3-2 so let's take a look:

I have a lot of guys with Week 7 byes and a couple guys with Week 10 byes plus New England's defense.

Early bye week players generally don't work in this strategy so we're not really looking at the Week 7 bye week guys although I'd be willing to trade one of them to give me a better chance at a win Week 7. If we're not looking at the Week 7 guys, we're looking at the Week 10 guys.

We have Miles Sanders, Will Fuller, and the NE Defense. Miles Sanders isn't worth much, but we can definitely do something with Fuller, NE, and one of those Week 7 WRs.

The next step is to look at who we're playing Week 10. It's this team:

We have Will Fuller and the NE defense to trade. Depending on who we're trading for, we could also throw in Odell or JuJu. Since we're trading the NE defense, we want to wait until the CHI defenses bye week is done. Ideally, we would be getting players that have already had their bye week, but Chubb is the only trade target with an early-ish bye week and I can absorb his bye better than I can absorb 3 WRs with Week 7 byes.

The Plan

If I win Week 6, my team is sitting at 4-2. I might trade the CHI or NE defense for a TE or another piece, but I don't need to do anything drastic.

If I lose, I'm sitting at 3-3 and will need every win I can get especially with all of my Week 7 bye players. This is where this strategy comes into play.

I'll try to trade Will Fuller, the NE defense, and one of those Week 7 WRs for Nick Chubb and Julio Jones or Keenan Allen. Looking at Week 10 matchups, Odell Beckham Jr. faces Buffalo, D.J. Moore faces Green Bay, and JuJu goes against the Los Angeles Rams.

Of those, Odell is the biggest name I can throw out there with the toughest matchup in Week 10. I can also add Matt Breida as a trade sweetener if I to get the trade done. We're probably looking at trading Odell Beckham Jr, Will Fuller, New England defense, and Matt Breida for Nick Chubb and Julio Jones.

Here's why I call it the Trojan Horse Trade Strategy. My opponent probably won't realize it at the time of the trade, but heading into our Week 10 matchup they will have Will Fuller, Emmanuel Sanders, New England defense, Carlos Hyde, and Kai'imi Fairbairn all on bye. This is how the Week 10 matchup would likely look:

Position	My Team	Week 10 Opponent
QB	Kyler Murray	Matt Ryan
RB1	Nick Chubb	Damien Williams
RB2	Mark Ingram	Joe Mixon
WR1	Julio Jones	Odell Beckham Jr
WR2	JuJu Smith-Schuster	Keenan Allen
WR3	Allen Robinson	Christian Kirk
Flex	Marlon Mack	John Brown
TE	Hunter Henry	Vance McDonald
PK	Greg Zuerlein	?
DEF	Chicago	Minnesota?

I like their QB better, I like my RBs better, WRs are a virtual tie, but my team is much deeper which shows up in the flex spot where I have a big advantage. I don't give up too much value on the trade, but I give myself a near certain win Week 10.

I'm not sure I'll actually do this trade, but at least you can see the process. It would be more ideal if I could send two or more Week 10 studs, for two or more studs that had bye weeks in Weeks 4-6. If you're looking at a trade like that, you can safely trade for 90 cents on the dollar since you effectively gain an extra week of production out of the players you traded for and you gain a win against your opponent.

Warning

Don't force this strategy. I play in 5+ redraft leagues every year and the opportunity for a trade like this only works once every other year or so.

This is probably not a strategy you should use in dynasty leagues. It's high-risk high-reward, which makes sense in seasonal leagues where it's playoffs or bust, but you're going to hurt your team if you try and push a mediocre dynasty team into the playoffs by giving up value. If, however, you can trade two players of similar value, but gain an extra week of production or hurt an opponent you play later in the year, by all means do it.