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Trading Future Year Draft Picks in Fantasy Football

Trading draft picks is a mainstay of any good Fantasy Football provider. Some sites even allow trading future year picks in dynasty and keeper leagues, and that makes the game even more challenging.

When you trade current-year picks, you're trading specific draft spots; a round and pick, such as round 3, pick 5. But when you trade future-year picks, you don't know which pick you'll receive. You're trading rounds that belong (or belonged) to another team, and that team's performance the year before will determine how early in the round they pick.

The chart on this page shows who owns whose picks for each of the next four years.

Potential Points and Your Draft Seeding

With DataForce Fantasy Football, the draft order of subsequent years in keeper and dynasty leagues is based first on playoff standings, and then by potential points from week 1 through 13. The first pick each round goes to the toilet bowl team with the fewest potential points the year before; the second pick to the toilet bowl team with the second fewest potential points the year before; and so on, through eight rounds, for each of the eight teams in the toilet bowl. (Note that two teams originally seeded into the regular playoffs will lose in the first round and be moved to the toilet bowl, making eight teams there.)

The four teams in the final two rounds of the regular playoffs then get their turn: the 4th-place finisher will get pick #9, the 3rd-place finisher pick #10, the 2nd-place finisher pick #11, and the superbowl winner pick #12.

But what are potential points? Without getting too complicated, it's simply a measurement of how much each team was capable of scoring each week. It is the number of points the optimal lineup would have scored. There are rules in place to prevent tanking your score so as to prevent lowering your potential points calculation in hopes of getting a better draft position in the coming year, but for the most part, Potential Points accurately measures the strength of each fantasy team, so that the worst teams get the best picks.

Trading with Other Fantasy Teams

With the potential points calculation uppermost in your mind, you can judge the value of future year picks. For example, if you trade for the second-round pick of a team that is likely to finish last in potential points, you're probably going to get the first pick in round #2; that is, the 13th pick overall.

DataForce Fantasy Football allows you to trade the current year plus two years in the future for Dynasty leagues, and one year in the future for Keeper leagues.

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