Dynasty Compass | The Island of Broken Toys

Injuries derail seasons — but for dynasty managers, they can also open a window of opportunity. In this episode, Jeff Blaylock explores The Island of Broken Toys: a place where productive but injured players lose short-term value but retain long-term potential.

Jeff outlines how to identify real broken-toy opportunities, calculate appropriate trade discounts, and avoid the emotional traps that make other managers sell too low. He also breaks down Adam Hutchison’s injury research, explains which positions are most likely to bounce back, and offers guidance for fitting these moves into your team’s strategic direction.

Timestamps:
00:00 – Introduction
01:14 – What makes a player a “broken toy”
02:22 – Why strategy comes first
03:15 – Dynasty vs. redraft
04:37 – Tank Dell example
06:06 – Injury risk and recovery data
09:59 – Why the market exists
11:22 – Buyers and sellers by compass direction
14:32 – Types of sellers
16:21 – Trade discount guidelines
20:12 – Red flags and risk management
25:00 – Scarcity and strategy
26:25 – Closing thoughts and Episode 16 preview

Links Mentioned:

• Adam Hutchison’s injury research at Footballguys: https://www.footballguys.com/article/2025-fantasy-performance-reinjury-rate-by-position
• Ep. 14 – Trade Deadline Strategies: https://youtu.be/0GXTgti19A0
• Ep. 12 – The Currency of Dynasty: https://youtu.be/oMxqBhyDTh0
• Ep. 4 – 5 Kinds of Players on Your Roster: https://youtu.be/PghAw0zqNKY
• Subscribe for weekly Dynasty Compass episodes:
  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHINXdOZ9QQ-YOM6phMh_gw
• Listen on Apple Podcasts:
  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dynasty-compass/id1831101084
• Follow Jeff on Twitter/X:
  https://twitter.com/jeffblaylock

Transcript

Injuries are a harsh reality in fantasy football as in real football. Star players get hurt. Up-and-coming rookies get sidelined. The blue medical tent is the first stop on the way to a stint on injured reserve for some. For others, it's the end of the season. They were all expected to produce and now they're all on the bench.

But they also represent opportunities for savvy dynasty managers, who may be able to pick them up at a discount. We're taking a trip to the beautiful white sand beaches and crystal blue waters of the Island of Broken Toys in this episode of Dynasty Compass.

Welcome to Dynasty Compass. I am your host, Jeff Blaylock, the Other Jeff B from Footballguys, where I do dynasty and regular-season content, dynasty rankings, and a weekly column with my colleague Josh Falsing, Dynasty Waivers of the Future, where we look into our crystal footballs and find next week's dynasty darlings today. Thank you so much for joining me.

Today we visit the Island of Broken Toys, the place where injured players go to rest, recover, and rehabilitate. Regardless of how they got there, we are talking about productive players who are out for a prolonged period of time. That's why they are broken toys. 

Perhaps they are on IR, which means they're missing a minimum of four weeks. Maybe that IR stint is season long. Or perhaps they came out of training camp on the PUP list and they're still there. Whatever their status is, they're not scoring fantasy points. They're not in lineups. They're not helping anyone win a fantasy title, at least probably not this year, but they might return to their highly productive ways next season, possibly even by the end of this season.

So there's an opportunity if you have the patience to wait and the conviction that they'll return to somewhere near 100 percent of their prior production. The opportunity is there to acquire these broken toys at a discount.

But we shouldn't make these kinds of moves in a vacuum. Remember, as I've said before, and I'll say again, the biggest mistake that dynasty managers make is they make moves without a strategy in place. Acquiring or sending away a broken toy is the kind of move that should not be made without a strategy. 

We need to understand if this broken toy that we're either acquiring or holding onto, how does he fit into our future plans? If we're acquiring him, can we do it without sacrificing either our present, if we are trying to contend, or our future? Can I trade him away if I have him for enough value to make it worthwhile for me to do so? These are the kinds of questions that should be answered before you make the trade or before you move on and leave them on the shelf.

Now broken toys are a unique strategic question for dynasty managers. In redraft leagues, we simply drop them or we never draft them in the first place. Now, if we have an IR spot in a redraft league, and there is some hope of a return, then we might keep that player until that spot is needed for someone else. 

I'm thinking someone like quarterback Joe Burrow here. There's a possibility he could return potentially in time for the fantasy playoffs. So if I have him and I have an IR spot on my redraft team, that's probably where he is. But they're no use to us or to anyone else if they're out for the season. And since we draft all new teams every year, there's no reason for us to keep this broken toy, unless there's a chance they might return by the fantasy playoffs. 

But in dynasty, we do want to keep these players. If we can park them on an IR spot or on a bench spot and simply wait for them to recover unless that injury is career ending, they'll be back next season, if not later this season. The longer timeframe of dynasty includes whatever recovery arc a player might have, even if it's more than a full season. That player is ours until we drop them or we trade them away.

And when I'm thinking about someone who is out for a long period of time, potentially multiple seasons, I'm thinking someone like Tank Dell, wide receiver for the Houston Texans. He suffered a dislocated kneecap; a torn ACL; and damage to his MCL, his LCL and his meniscus on a freak play while blocking near the line of scrimmage at the end of the 2024 season. He's had multiple surgeries and he's on a long rehabilitation path. He hasn't practiced, let alone played, and in 2025 he's not expected to return, at all.

But he has been running sprints on the sidelines during practice, and that's an encouraging sign. There's hope he returns for the 2026 seasone. He's only 26 years old and, while he was nothing more than a low-end WR3 over his two seasons, there is potential for more than that. He was the WR12 in 2023, his rookie year, before breaking his fibula, and he ended up finishing WR39. He was the WR44 in 2024 before his knee injury, but that was nearly the entire season. So could his 2023 injury have affected him in 2024? Perhaps.

That's the risk, right? That is one of the risks for trading for a broken toy is they may not return to form, at least not at first, perhaps never, and their re-injury rates can be quite high.

Footballguys' injury expert, Adam Hutchison, has tracked more than 2,000 injuries over the last decade or so and has tracked outcomes and how long players tend to be out and what happens afterwards. Based on his work, I can say that quarterbacks are relatively safe bets as broken toys to return to fairly near, if not better, production later on after their injury recovery. 

But injuries to running backs, wide receivers and tight ends can have very long shadows. I'll run really quickly through some of the injuries that can happen that have a high re-injury rate, plus three or more weeks missed on average, plus a moderate or greater performance decline.

According to Adam's research, for quarterbacks, we're looking almost exclusively at shoulder injuries, including the AC joint. For running backs, we are looking at high ankle sprains. We're looking at knee injuries such as torn ligaments and meniscus and serious sprains. We're even looking at abdominal injuries. Just below that three-week missed threshold, on average, we have hamstring and calf injuries, which may have shorter implications for missed time, but on average have much longer and more severe lingering performance effects.

For wide receivers, we're looking at foot injuries like turf toe and ligament damage, and Shoulder injuries, again, the AC joint sprain. These are players are often up high in the air come crashing down to the ground. If you have a shoulder injury, that's an easy way to reaggravate that. We're also looking at core and abdominal injuries. Wide receivers, of course, have to stretch in all sorts of directions in order to catch balls flung their way. So that's another possibility of an injury that can linger for some time. 

Those foot and core injuries particularly have the highest lingering effects, according to Adam and even the hamstring, which again is a fairly short recovery arc still has a very high reinjury rate and a potentially severe decline in performance for some time after that.

When we get to tight ends, we are looking at similar injuries to the wide receivers: feet, ankles, hamstrings, again, a very high re-injury rate and severe decline. If they hurt those – I'll put a link to Adam's most recent article, which as the time of this recording was before the 2025 season, in the show notes – so our expectation for a broken toy should be a somewhat lower productivity in the first year following a serious injury, or if the injury wasn't quite so serious, later in this season, lower productivity when they return.

There's also a second risk that's out there that has nothing really to do with the player's own return to their full potential. It's that the person who replaced them in the starting lineup in their role for their real football team might have earned a permanent role in the offense because of that performance. So, even if our player comes back at full health, he may now have to compete with his replacement for playing time.

And so for these reasons – for the injury potential, the re-injury potential, for the lower productivity, for the chance they may get moved out of the starting lineups – for those reasons, you should not pay or expect to receive full price for a broken toy. So what is full price? That is whatever you would have paid for, or traded the player away for, before they got hurt.

So that brings us to the question of what's the discount? But before we could even get to that question – that's putting the cart a little bit ahead of the horse – let's first of all look at the market for broken toys.

The market for broken toys exists for three main reasons. The first one is, as I've mentioned earlier in the show, broken toys don't score points. So trading them for players who are scoring points helps teams that are contending and battling for playoff spots.

The second reason is that dynasty managers have varying amounts of risk tolerance, which may lead them to be more willing to part with a broken toy, because they want to manage their risk a a little more than having that player on their roster. They'd rather take a surer bet in return and pass that risk off to another manager.

And the third reason, and this is really more of an offseason reason, is something that I'd call "recency bias." It makes some managers see the effects of the brokenness of their broken toy much more clearly than the performance before that. This is especially true if a player were injured early in the season, returned and underperformed, particularly if it happened in a way that cost a manager a playoff game or a chance at a championship.

Now your sellers in this market primarily are going to be your contenders, particularly your win-now teams, which in our compass metaphor is the West. The West is for win-now teams. Those managers are looking for points in their lineups right now. Broken toys don't provide those. They're expendable. They can be traded away.

But a broken toy could also come from a rebuilder, and this may seem counterintuitive because a rebuilder we would normally expect would be a buyer. However, a rebuilder might be willing to part with their broken toy in exchange for multiple assets, particularly draft picks, depending on where they are in the rebuilding process. And that's especially prominent if they also have a lower risk tolerance for the injured player that they have. They might be willing to take multiple shots at getting a Cornerstone in the draft over trying to bank on this player returning.

So your sellers are really looking for one of two things. They're looking for points now, or they're looking for value later.

Now, your buyers are predominantly going to be the rebuilders, which I realize I just a moment ago said they were sellers, but they're often the buyers. They have the opportunity to pick up a star at a discount that would represent a strategic upgrade from an aging veteran that they have on their roster that they could trade away, or a Next Man Up or a Dart Throw they can push farther down their bench.

The other principal buyer here is going to be perennially contending teams. Those would be the teams in the North in our compass metaphor. These are teams that have the assets in place to make their run for a championship now. This is simply adding an additional piece at a discount for future productivity.

So your buyers the South and the North. Who shouldn't be buying a broken toy? Well, it's the West, the win-now teams. Broken toys don't help a win-now team at all, unless they return later in the season or for the fantasy playoffs. We're talking an early enough trade or the injury is early enough in the season, there is a chance that player might be back for the playoffs. There is still the risk of performance loss. It's not the best strategic move for someone in the West, but it could be that kind of shot in the arm boost that you need at the very end of the season that gets you over the top.

The other people that probably should not be buying broken toys are our wait-and-seers who are in the East in our compass metaphor, unless you are sure that broken toy fits into your long-term strategic plans. You know they're not gonna help you this season, and if you are putting them onto your roster and changing directions later, you might end up unloading them next season or during the offseason, potentially at a further discount because they didn't fit into your plans.

So I've been talking about this discount, and you're thinking, well, what is the discount that we are talking about? Now, as with most transactions in dynasty, value is a function of the managers involved, their motivations, their needs, their risk tolerances, and their strategic directions. But you can find discounts from several different kinds of sellers. Now, these are not specific managers in terms of strategy or in terms of what they're trying to do this season. 

This is really more about the mindset of the manager who has the broken toy on their bench or on their IR spot. And, again, we're gonna talk about three here. The first one is what I would call the motivated seller. This is a win-now manager who needs a lineup boost right now, particularly closing in on the trade deadline. They are likely to offer you the biggest discount because they need to move this non-performing asset off of their roster and get a performing one back in return. If that's something you can do for them, there's a very good chance you could get that broken toy at quite a discount.

The second one would be the risk averse seller. I've mentioned that concept a little bit earlier. These are managers who are operating in any strategic direction who would just simply like to push that risk off onto somebody else and not have that be on their bench.

And then, finally, the third discount offerer would be what I would like to call the "scorned lover" seller. These are managers who are not happy that their toy broke while they were playing with it, especially if that toy happened to break in the fantasy playoffs or very late in the season and it costs them an opportunity to get to the playoffs. That is an irrational, it's an emotional – and we talked earlier in another show about managing emotionally versus strategically – it's an emotional reaction to a situation, but it is an opportunity to get that player to discount. If the scorned lover is angry enough or disappointed enough in that player, they might be willing to let them go to just get that memory off their bench.

So, finally, we're getting to the meat of this. What kind of discount should we be looking for? Of course, it's up to the individual managers who are making the deal, but here's what I would consider to be a general guideline to at least see if you are in the ballpark as you're negotiating one of these transactions. You should expect what I would call one half of a performance level down for a Cornerstone or a Set and Forget starter.

And so, what, is a one-half performance level? Well, let's say a quarterback – let's say Joe Burrow – was operating as a high-end QB1. So he was in the top three or four quarterbacks in fantasy scoring before the injury. He should be priced at around a lower-end QB1, so 9, 10, 11, 12, or, if they are older, an older player, the an upper-end QB2, which should be almost a full performance level down.

If we're talking about a Developing Talent, so this would be a younger player for whom the injury has temporarily derailed their development process because they're not getting playing time. That's going to be between three quarters and one and a half. levels down.

And that may have to be assessed based on their fantasy draft capital if there's someone who has not played at all. If we were looking at acquiring JJ McCarthy in the 2024 season, he was injured in training camp and he did not play at all in the 2024 season. So we don't have anything to assess his performance on, so we'd have to assess it on draft capital. I would say that discount's going to be closer to three quarters of a level if they had a fantasy-relevant offensive role prior to the injury. A full level, if we have a very limited sample size of production, and more than that, if they have never played at all, and when we're talking about draft capital instead of fantasy performance, a full level would be one round. If you, if they were round one pick, you would value them as a round two pick.

When we get to Next Man Up level of the bench, probably not someone you really need to be acquiring, but if you do, we're looking at a two level down discount for this type of a player. So someone who has been a WR4 in fantasy scoring should be viewed as a WR6. And dart throws should only be acquired off the waiver wire only for free. You could have them as an add-in for a trade for something else, but there isn't really any reason to take a risk on a player who even at their full health is probably not going to get into your starting lineup anyway.

Now if you can't get this discount, if you can't get any discount, but it certainly, if you can't get, anything like what we're talking about here, then don't make the move. Don't trade the player. Don't trade for the broken toy if you can't get this discount.

This season, 2025, Joe Burrow, Malik Nabers and Tucker, Kraft  were all top three fantasy performers at their positions before they went down. And they may all come back at that level, but they may not. They may not next year or in year two, and perhaps not ever. So anyone who is looking to sell them at a full price can keep them.

It's a function in part of how much you believe they will return at 100 percent or better. Only you know what you believe. Only you know your risk tolerance. Only you know how to value the assets you're sending in return. But I think, as a general rule, if you're not getting a discount, don't get the player.

So as we talk about broken toys, risk comes into this quite a bit and an understanding of what risk you are taking on if you want to bring a broken toy onto your roster. So, there are a number of red flags that I would look at that either require a much steeper discount or I don't want any part of the broken toy in a transaction.

One of those is, how old are they? I don't mean to be ageist, but there is a reality that at certain ages, the recovery from injuries takes longer and produces less production. So this would be 27 and older for running back, 29 and older for wide receiver and tight end, and 32 and over at quarterback.

A second red flag would be a history of soft tissue injuries or recurring injuries, especially if we were talking about concussions or repeated same limb injuries or hamstring injuries.

Another red flag is the potential to lose their offensive role when they return. Perhaps their replacement has seized the role going forward – who was the backup running back is now the RB1. Perhaps an RB1 who was injured, who was a three-down back, has now lost that third-down role to someone else. In PPR formats, that third-down role can be particularly productive. And so an RB1 who loses that is no longer a fantasy RB1. They've lost some of that production, that opportunity.

Maybe the offensive scheme has shifted. Instead of three wide receiver sets, the team is now playing more 12 and 13 personnel with some of the injuries at wide receiver. The Los Angeles Rams have shifted suddenly very heavily into multiple tight end personnel sets, which is actually reducing the workload for players such as Puka Nacua. 

Now, Puka's not hurt right now, but if Puka were to become injured and become a broken toy and become available, there's a possibility that when he returns, he's not the one wide receiver that's out there on the field with the tight ends because he's not currently that wide receiver with the tight ends.

Maybe even a new coaching staff or a new offensive coordinator shifts the relative importance or positions or roles or maybe it's like what Dan Campbell did this weekend in Detroit. The head coach just simply seizes control of the offensive play calling, and that changes up the roles of the players who are available. If we're talking about an injured player, going back into that situation, their role may be quite different. Even if there's no reduction in their ability to perform, the opportunity may change.

Another red flag is going to be playing styles that expose the players to more injuries. So a running back who seeks contact, someone like Cam Skattebo of the New York Giants, or a quarterback who either doesn't slide when they run, or the offensive scheme has them running a lot more than they probably should. That's someone like Jackson Dart. Sorry to keep picking on the Giants, but he's the example that comes to mind. He just was evaluated for a fourth time for concussion, counting the preseason, in this season. 

If you have a wide receiver who likes to hurtle defenders, that means they get way up in the air, they could come down very hard. If they've had shoulder injuries in the past, it's a great way to reaggravate those. So watch for playing styles that could expose a player to more injuries that would increase their re-injury rate, that would lower their value.

As we move from productive starters to Developing Talents or more of a role player, if the offensive role was never more than potential, or was never more than occasional sets. For whatever reasons they never developed into an offensive threat, you would be looking for some kind of a change in scheme or a change in scenery or a different team for that potential to develop. But at this point, it's just potential. Potential doesn't necessarily pan out. Even if they're at full health, they may not evolve into the kind of player you're looking for.

Another red flag would be an injured player who is entering free agency while they are on the injured reserve list for the NFL. Risk-averse coaches and GMs in the real world may not want to take chances on this player, and there's a potential that they would remain free agents once the season starts and perhaps hope to catch on somewhere. But that is further time that the player is theoretically healthy but it's still not producing. And while there's hope that they would produce once they caught on, hope is not a strategy.

So those are some things to be on the lookout for. Look for those red flags and make sure that you can get that discount before you acquire a broken toy, a player who's been previously productive but is on long-term IR. They can be important sources of value for your dynasty teams. You have to acquire them at the discount. You cannot play pay full price because the inherent risk of re-injury, the inherent risk of lower production and performance, the inherent risk of potentially being replaced and their role in the offense. All of those things mean that paying full price is paying too much. You probably will not get that value back.

There's also something else to keep in mind. While broken toys are indeed a terrific source of value for savvy dynasty managers, there are a lot more non-broken toys and sellers of them than there are broken toys and sellers of those. If there's a tight supply, the price may be up a little higher because of that because there's few sellers, because there's little supply to the point that the discount goes away out of scarcity. If that's the case, leave that broken toy on the bench that he's on.

And, as with any trade, a broken toy needs to fit your long-term strategy. I'll say it again. The biggest mistake dynasty managers make is making moves without having a strategy in place. Acquiring a broken toy with no strategy could leave you stuck holding, well, a broken toy that can't be fixed.

Thank you so much for joining me today. That is our show on the Island of Broken Toys. I hope it was a good visit to a nice vacation spot, and perhaps you'll leave your vacation with more than a t-shirt. Perhaps you'll leave with a newfound strategy or a refined strategy for acquiring broken toys for value onto your dynasty rosters. 

If you like the show today, please like, please subscribe, please review, please share on social media, share me with your friends. That's what I really love to, to be able to be a guide to navigating these complex dynasty terrains, using our compass metaphor and some of the strategies that have worked for me over the years, which I am trying to relay to you in hopes that it makes you a smarter, more winning dynasty manager.

So next week we're going to look at something that I call the strategic suck. I've talked about win-now teams in great detail. These would be the lose-now teams. Some of them are just bad teams, but some of them are bad for strategic reasons. They suck on purpose. So we are headed South and talking the endgame for a lost season next week on Dynasty Compass.​