THE TRADE THAT NEVER WAS · REVISED MODEL
Better lineups.
A fairer replay.
What if Dez Bryant had gone to Le’Viathan, and Frank Gore to Slob on my Cobb? This time, the weekly projections choose the starters—including the flex. Nobody starts simply because they were traded for.
The revised replay gives both teams the strongest projected legal RB/WR/TE lineup from their reconstructed weekly roster. Gore sits when stronger options exist. Dez can enter at receiver or flex. Bench players earn a start through their pregame projection, never their eventual score.
Against the recorded season, Le’Viathan gains 29.00 points and Slob gains 4.50. Both still lose a net win. But the cleaner comparison is trade versus no trade under the same lineup rules: both teams score less with the trade.
LE’VIATHAN
- Regular-season points
- +29.00
- Seed
- 1 → 1
- Final finish
- 3rd → 3rd
SLOB ON MY COBB
- Regular-season points
- +4.50
- Seed
- 8 → 11
- Final finish
- 9th → 12th
The points move.
The wins don’t always follow.
Five Le’Viathan results flip versus the recorded season; Slob’s Week 12 result flips. Choose a team and week to inspect every change, the legal slot assignments, and the projections behind them.
All 13 weeks, side by side
SEPARATE THE TRADE FROM BETTER LINEUP CHOICES
Optimistic about decisions.
Honest about the outcome.
The main charts compare the new trade replay with the actual season. This control applies the same projection optimizer without reversing the veto. It prevents routine lineup improvements from being credited to the trade.
Gore projects for 7.41; Gordon projects for 9.16. Gordon keeps the flex spot and Gore sits. Slob scores 112.36, up from 106.66 in the forced-start version.
Better projections do not guarantee better actual scores. Le’Viathan’s no-trade optimizer starts Benjamin in Week 2; the trade optimizer prefers Dez. Benjamin scores more, but that result is never used to choose the lineup.
Optimized teams: Le’Viathan and Slob from Week 2; Sharper from Week 5, when the canceled Stewart deal begins to affect its roster. All other teams keep their real lineups. This is a conditional reconstruction, not certainty about managers’ choices.
A new road to the trophy.
WhatsASuperTeam wins in both projection-based scenarios. The trade changes the route and several finishing positions, but it does not change the champion relative to the optimized no-trade control.
With the trade, Le’Viathan loses its semifinal 96.44–99.42 to Lacocainanoesbuena, then beats Sharper 140.98–102.18 for third. Slob loses 59.64–104.70 in Week 14 and 65.80–95.56 in Week 15, finishing twelfth. These results use the revised seeds, not the original matchups.
Consolation bracket and placement games
Who rises. Who falls.
Final finishing position, including consolation games. Recorded season versus the revised trade replay. This comparison includes both the trade and projection-based lineup choices.
One trade. Explicit rules.
The counterfactual
Start in Week 2. Send Dez to Le’Viathan and Gore to Slob, keep both all season, and sit them when out or on bye. Keep the historical weekly player pool plus the retained players from the canceled deals. Preserve actual QB, kicker and defense decisions.
Maximize the legal weekly projection
Correct ownership first. Evaluate every legal combination of 3 WR, 2 RB, 1 TE and 1 WR/RB/TE flex. Choose the combination with the highest sum of archived weekly projections, using available starters and bench players. Break projection ties by retaining more actual starters. Only then add up actual points. Dez or Gore can sit; swapping positions can retain a stronger starter. A removed player may also be unavailable because their later trade was canceled, so read multi-player changes together.
Undo the later related deals
Cancel the October 7 Dez–Jonathan Stewart deal and the October 16 Gore/Travis Benjamin–A.J. Green deal. Stewart stays with Sharper’s Sleepers, Green with Slob, and Benjamin with Le’Viathan.
Keep the real constraints
Standard non-PPR scoring. QB, 3 WR, 2 RB, TE, a WR/RB/TE flex, K and DEF. Six championship teams, Weeks 14–16, two first-round byes and no reseeding. Seed ties use regular-season points for.
Injuries, byes and limits of this reconstruction
Dez sits Weeks 4–7. Gore sits Week 10. Slob has no available second running back in Week 10, so that slot scores zero; no waiver pickup is invented. Dion Lewis was officially inactive in Week 10, and is excluded despite a positive archived projection. Travis Benjamin was also inactive that week. Zero projections are treated as unavailable; archived bye labels are not used. Green’s Week 11 injury happened during the game and his zero remains.
Le’Viathan has a first-round bye in both scenarios. Slob is eliminated in Week 15 of the replay and has no Week 16 game. Current team and bye labels shown in Yahoo’s archive are not used as historical evidence. The model infers decisions from Yahoo’s archived projections; it does not reconstruct every news update or lineup-lock timestamp. On actual bye weeks with empty lineups, it selects rostered QB/K/DEF by projection if a new matchup requires a score. It preserves weekly roster pools rather than inventing waiver pickups, drops or additional trades; changed bench-capacity decisions could affect later weeks. The comparison is a sensitivity analysis, not a claim that managers would follow projections perfectly.
Sources and underlying results
- Yahoo 2016 league archive and standings
- Roster and scoring settings
- Transaction log
- Le’Viathan weekly roster · Slob weekly roster · Sharper weekly roster (change the week to inspect other weeks)
- Yahoo weekly schedules
- New England Patriots: Week 10 inactive list
- NFL gamebook: Benjamin inactive, Week 10
Scores, projections, schedules and recorded trades come from the archived league. The revised replay is recomputed from saved weekly roster evidence. All added bench players are selected by projection. The no-trade control uses the same optimization policy. Download the full lineup audit · Download the archived roster evidence.