House of Zig
Everything you need to know about grading a trade — how value swing works, the best-player bonus, the quantity discount, and PPG Added & Wins Added.
Trade Calculator answers: "Who's actually winning this trade?" Build a deal between 2–3 teams and it grades every side using the same VORP engine that powers the rest of the site — then layers on trade-specific adjustments that a raw value comparison can't capture: who landed the true headline piece in the deal, and who's padding their side with extra bodies instead of real value.
Value swing is the core number for each team: what they received (after adjustments) minus what they gave up. The bar shows each side's share of the total adjusted value on the table, compared against an even split — the further above or below fair share a team lands, the stronger the grade.
🔥 Great Trade — 12+ points above fair share
✅ Good Value — 6 to 12 points above fair share
🙂 Slight Edge — 3 to 6 points above fair share
⚖️ Fair Trade — within 3 points either way
😕 Slight Loss — 3 to 6 points below fair share
⚠️ Bad Value — 6 to 12 points below fair share
🚨 Lopsided Loss — 12+ points below fair share
Tap View Details to see the full breakdown per team — grade, value swing, who gave what to whom, and the PPG/Wins Added banner for each side.
The team that lands the single best asset in the entire trade gets a value boost. The size of that boost depends on how much better that player is than the best thing the other side actually received in return — not just any other player in the trade, specifically what they got back.
That raw boost is then tapered by how much value the landing team gave up to get it. Pay with real quality and the bonus shrinks toward nothing — you paid a fair price, not stole a star. Give up scraps for the same player and the bonus stays close to full size, because that's exactly the "got the best guy in the deal for free" scenario the bonus is built to reward.
Teams that receive more players than they give up can trigger a discount — but it's not a blanket cut on the whole return. Whatever number of players you gave away, that same number of your best received players count as the even swap and stay at full value. Only the extra bodies beyond that get discounted, and each additional extra body loses a little more.
Because the discount is applied per player instead of to the whole pile, adding another genuinely valuable piece to a trade can never make your total value go down — it always helps, just less than a full-value swap would.
PPG Added and Wins Added answer a different question than value swing: not "who has the fairer deal on paper," but "how many real points and wins does this trade actually swing for you." The baseline is points above a replacement-level player at that position — since you'd start a replacement in that slot either way, only the points above that baseline change your actual score.
PPG Added — points per game gained (or lost), built from each player's points above replacement, summed across everyone given and received
Wins Added — that PPG swing converted into an estimated season-long win total, using a normal win-probability model
Unlike value swing, this baseline has no positional scarcity weighting and none of the best-player bonus or quantity discount applied to it — it's a literal sum of production, not a market-adjusted price. That means PPG Added and Wins Added can disagree with value swing, and that's expected, not a bug: value swing judges a trade through a scarcity-and-market lens, PPG/Wins Added judges it through a literal on-field-production lens. A team can be "losing" the trade on value while still gaining more real points per game, especially in deals that swap across positions with different scarcity premiums.
Any team sitting meaningfully below fair share gets its own suggestion — the three closest-value unused players on the leading side's board, with a one-click + button that adds the pick straight into the trade, correctly routed to the trailing team. In a 3 team trade, every losing side gets paired with whichever team is furthest ahead, not just the single worst matchup.
VORP answers: "How many fantasy points is this player worth compared to a replacement-level starter in your league?" It puts every position on a common scale so you can compare a RB directly against a WR, TE, or QB. A player's raw point projection is adjusted for how scarce their position is, how many roster slots it occupies, and how deep the position runs in your league.
Position scarcity — positions that are harder to replace at a starter level earn a premium over raw point projections alone
Roster demand — positions that fill more starting slots are weighted accordingly, reflecting how many players you actually need to roster at each spot
Your league settings — team count, scoring format, lineup construction, and format type all directly shape every VORP value
VORP is consistent across the entire site — values in Trade Calculator match the Football Machine, Mock Draft, and Keeper Edge exactly.
Configure your league format:
Scoring — Standard, Half PPR, Full PPR
League Size — 8–14 teams (more teams raises the replacement baseline)
Pass TD Points — 4 or 6
TE Premium — +1 point per TE reception
Roster Construction — Set your starting lineup slots (QB, RB, WR, TE, Flex, Superflex) and bench size. These directly shape every VORP value: more flex slots lower the replacement baseline for all positions, Superflex pulls elite QBs into the flex pool and raises their value significantly, and dedicated slot counts determine how many players at each position are considered starters vs. replacements.
These settings affect every player's VORP, value swing, and PPG/Wins Added. Set them to match your actual league — the same settings used in Football Machine, Mock Draft, and Keeper Edge will keep values consistent across tools.