The trade block is the market your trades happen in. Each team is labeled Win now, In between or Rebuilding from how strong it is now and its age and picks, with the positions it has too many or too few startable players at.
How strong a team is now comes from its max PF (the points its best possible lineup scored each week, so luck and lineup calls don’t count) and its starting lineup’s trade value. Max PF counts for more as the season goes on: about a third after three games, half after six, at most 70%. Before the first game it’s lineup value alone. A team’s record only moves a team from the middle: winning while scoring like a top-half team makes a contender, and so does a winning-half record with a top-third points for (the points it actually scored, so good lineup calls count); losing while scoring like a bottom-half team makes a rebuilder.
- League map: every team placed by its starting lineup’s value (across, win now) against its picks plus players 24 and under (up, later), colored by its Trade Block label (which also weighs record and production, so a dot can sit in a different corner than its color suggests), with the league’s medians splitting it into Deep now and later, Strong now, Strong later and Thin on both. Tap a team for its scouting report.
- A team with a top-third record is never labeled Rebuilding, even when its roster and production rank low: it reads In between, and its playoff odds decide whether it buys or sells.
- Spare starters and Short of starters list the teams with more or fewer startable players than slots, position by position.
- Look for a team with a surplus where you are short.
- Each team’s depth reads like “QB 3 starters / 2 slots”: its starter-quality players at the position against the lineup slots to fill. Trade market by position counts the teams short and the teams with a spare; more short than spare is a sellers’ market.
- Rebuilders buy youth and picks; contenders pay for production now.
- Best trade partners for you: the teams whose needs and surplus fit yours, each with a starting trade (“Start with: …”) that opens in the Trade Calculator.
- Trade deadline plan: the countdown to your league’s deadline, whether you should buy or sell, and who: productive players on rebuilding teams at your short positions, or your aging producers with the contenders who need them.
- Trade calendar: when this league’s teams out of the playoff race have started selling in past seasons (their first veteran sale for picks or younger players, from week 3 on), how far into the season the playoff teams had made most of their buys, and this season’s teams likeliest to sell next: games out of a playoff spot, a rebuild, and how often they sold the seasons they were out of it. It shows once the league has two past seasons and four such sales; until then only who is likeliest to sell. The calendar is part of Pro; the rest of the Trade Block stays on Free.