IDP Values: Priced Against the Offense

Individual defensive player leagues have always had a pricing problem. Most tools either ignore defenders or rank them on a separate list that says nothing about what a linebacker is worth next to a running back, which is the question every IDP trade actually asks. We had the same raw material we use for the offense: tens of thousands of real dynasty trades a year that include a defender. So we asked the market directly: when managers give up an offensive player for a defender, what do they want back?

Anchored to the offense

We don't solve the defensive market on its own. In every trade that includes a defender, the offensive players and picks already have values from our main solve, so we hold those fixed and let the defenders be the only unknowns. Each trade becomes one equation, and solving them together recovers what the market pays for every defender on the same scale as the offense. A DL valued at 600 is worth what a 600 receiver is worth, because that is what managers have been exchanging them for.

Before trusting that anchor, we checked whether IDP leagues price the offense differently. They don't. Offense-only trades inside IDP leagues balance under the main board about as well as trades in any other league, with no positional lean, so the offense values carry over cleanly. We also found that Superflex and single-QB leagues price defenders the same way once the quarterback difference is carried by the offense side, so one IDP board serves both dynasty formats.

Where that lands: the most valuable defenders clear around the level of a solid starting receiver or back, not a first-round asset. Defensive linemen sit highest, linebackers next, and defensive backs lowest. A player Sleeper lists at both an offensive and a defensive position is priced as offense.

Dynasty only

Redraft leagues trade defenders rarely, and only for a few weeks in the fall. That isn't enough for any defender to clear our league-diversity floor in any window, so we don't publish redraft IDP values. Dynasty leagues trade defenders year-round, and a couple hundred of them carry values on a given day.

Roster depth is the setting that matters

IDP leagues vary in two ways: how many defenders you start, anywhere from one to a dozen or more, and how they score, from tackle-heavy to big-play. We tested both. Scoring style has no measurable effect on prices. Roster depth does, and it is a clean ladder: the more defenders a league starts, the more its managers pay for them, and the ordering of defenders stays the same across depths. Only the level shifts.

So we treat depth the way we treat TE premium: as tiers, not a dial. Light leagues start one to four defenders, standard leagues five to nine, and heavy leagues ten or more. Because our published IDP board blends trades from all three, in proportion to their share of the market, telling us your tier un-blends it. Light leagues see defenders adjusted down from the blend, heavy leagues see them adjusted up. We publish the effect as multipliers rather than fixed numbers here, since we recalibrate them as trade data accumulates. Connect your league and the tier is read from your roster settings.

Validation

We tested the tier adjustment against trades the fit never saw, holding out whole leagues at a time. A single multiplier per tier captured the full improvement. Solving each tier as its own separate board did worse, because a third of the market is too thin to re-solve on its own. We also checked stability: at matching value levels, defenders move about as much day to day as offensive players do. Thinly traded defenders lower on the board move more, so treat those values as directional.

The Dynasty IDP Rankings board lists every valued defender at each depth tier.

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