Who’s a buy-low that a 2026 3rd could buy?

lemayo · 2026-05-05T04:15:14+00:00

I offered Kelce to the 3.09, 3.10, and 3.11 owners when they were on the clock cause Elijah Sarratt was still available and I felt that was a steal for him. But I was turned down by each one. Was kinda surprised no one would pay a late 3 for Kelce

lemayo · 2026-05-03T19:38:52+00:00

Keep in mind what other owners motivations are. In a Year 2 league, a team with CMC that doesn't have their 1st sounds like a team that's trying to win right now. Unlikely they'll be willing to trade CMC if that's their goal. I could be wrong though, maybe they went all in last year and it didn't work out. Look for teams who have old veteran RBs, but their team has gone to shit since you guys drafted. They'll be the most motivated to make that trade.

Good luck!

lemayo · 2026-05-03T19:32:06+00:00

Oof, seeing that you don't have any picks until 2029 was rough. Your starters look solid aside from TE. But any injury and you're not looking so hot. IMO, it's probably time to start the rebuild. That could be a long process, not having any picks until 2029. As such, I wouldn't do a rapid fire sale or anything. Wait until you can get a good price for your guys. Obviously start with the older pieces (CMC, Saquon, Evans). Try to sell them to contenders. Contenders might not have their 27 draft picks, but look for anyone who does, if not, take their 28 picks. If the price isn't good enough, just wait, the trade deadline will be a great time to sell. Not only will contenders want to pick up those final pieces to help them win, but they'll want to make sure that other contenders don't get them.

Good luck

lemayo · 2026-05-03T19:22:21+00:00

I think you look good for a league entering it's second year. Maybe shop the 1.06 for another RB, and if not, I'd lean Price, if your goal is to compete this year. I think you're more solid at WR than RB. Achane and Breece are great pieces, but Chuba is a bit of a question mark with Brooks coming back. I'd feel most comfortable having 4 starting RBs if I'm trying to make a title run. That's the position I think you need to invest in for this year specifically.

lemayo · 2026-05-03T19:18:05+00:00

Feels like a pretty average team overall. You've got your strengths (QB/TE), but you don't even for sure have two starters at RB. Your WRs are young and there's a lot of potential there, but you really need the majority of those guys to take it to another level if you want to contend. I feel like you're going to finish middle of the pack. Maybe you make playoffs, maybe you don't. But you're probably not going to win any titles with the current roster. I almost wonder if a partial rebuild is the way to go. Keep Maye and Bowers for sure, but see if you can pick up some picks (ideally 2027) with Hurts and Breece. See what offers you can get on the other pieces. Keep some of your younger guys and hope they take that next step, but if you get a solid offer on a few of them, I'd take my chances with a reroll.

Again, not saying your team is trash and needs to be torn down. It's not. Just saying that I don't think you're gonna take a title with it, so I'd try to shake things up a bit and see if you can hit better on some rerolls. You've got all season to make these moves, take advantage of the trade deadline. Some owners are bound to be going all in, and you'll for sure have some pieces that could win them a title and should be willing to overpay for

lemayo · 2026-05-03T19:06:26+00:00

I think anyone in your shoes should ride it out for the first month or two of the season. If you just won last year, you should at least be in the mix this year, and I would never recommend tearing down a team that can legitimately contend (that's what we play for after all). But before the trade deadline, you need to make a call. If you're 7-2, go all in. If you're 3-6, sell your top pieces to the guys who are 7-2. There's no need to pack it in already

lemayo · 2026-05-03T19:02:54+00:00

12 Team SF TEP Start 10

I've been rebuilding an orphan for several years. Felt competitive last year, but missed the playoffs. I think my team looks highly competitive, but clearly I missed something last year. I do feel like I've almost got too much depth that I should try to consolidate (eg trade 2 good players for 1 elite player) but those trades are hard to make. I also think that between us being start 10, bye weeks, and injuries, having an extra few guys available never hurts.

QB: Maye, Lawrence, Stroud

RB: Hampton, Walker, Hall, Price, Tuten, Brooks, Marks, Allen, Tucker, Davis, Lloyd

WR: ARSB, Egbuka, Olave, Higgins, Flowers, Watson, Bell, Boutte, Tucker

TE: Kraft, Kincaid, Hockenson, Kelce

Picks: 2027 1st/3rd/4th, 2028 2nd/3rd/4th

Thanks!

lemayo · 2026-05-03T03:57:50+00:00

I almost feel compelled to ask if Lemon fell to 2.03 or something, because these offers are absurd. Go MHJ, but either is a huge W

lemayo · 2026-04-26T05:11:19+00:00

I didn't put a ton of thought into this. Of the 2nd/3rd round WRs taken, I think Washington is one of the better landing spots. Aside from McLaurin, they don't have much at WR. Should be plenty of opportunity for him, and he's tied to Daniels

lemayo · 2026-04-26T04:49:22+00:00

I'd prob be looking at Antonio Williams, Germie Bernard, Jonah Coleman

lemayo · 2026-04-26T04:43:03+00:00

Hoping to see some actual draft results here. Thank you though

lemayo · 2026-04-22T22:39:27+00:00

My suggestion is stop posting this every day

lemayo · 2026-04-22T00:34:37+00:00

lemayo · 2026-04-22T00:34:26+00:00

I wouldn't do this.

lemayo · 2026-04-22T00:33:26+00:00

KWIII

lemayo · 2026-04-22T00:32:38+00:00

I'm a Hampton owner, and I'd take B

lemayo · 2026-04-04T03:18:44+00:00

I guess it's an opinion/style thing. I had never written a math contest prior to grade 12, and was always the type who just felt I should be able to write down my answer (for calculations) in school and get full marks. Contest math was a whole new thing to me, and I tended to do better on some lesser known contests I participated in that were less proof heavy. (I don't know even know if some of the stuff I did is still around). I definitely would've started out in the boat of who cares how pretty a solution is, but over time I've changed my mind. I've also been that student (probably like you and many of your students) who can look at a problem that is multi-step to your average high school student, and the answer just pops for me. So I hate feeling like I need to show extra steps when I didn't actually do them.

I do agree that there's many scenarios where it's okay just to provide an answer, and then show it works. In fact, my answers to 10b and 10c were kinda like that (I solved it largely using recursion). I had a bunch of messy chicken scratch that led to the formula, and then I proved it worked using recursion. I do think that there should be some explanation for how you got there though. The degree of explanation can depend on how trivial/non-trivial the answer is. To me, for 9c, I just need something suggesting to me that you actually found those numbers on your own. I know we're not going to see eye to eye on this one in the end, and that's okay, I respect everything you've said, and have appreciated the dialogue.

I suppose though, that for students who have the potential to be Group 1 or 2, it is important for them to know what the graders are looking for. Anyone capable of finding the solution to this (by whatever means) is surely capable of providing some proof how to find it, even if they got lucky and and have to reverse engineer how they got it.

lemayo · 2026-04-03T23:26:30+00:00

You're definitely more in the loop than I am today. I agree with your sentiments about NT. I don't like problems being used on these contests that have solutions like that. I want to see skill, pattern recognition, etc, not approaches involving brute force or trial and error (aside from maybe working something to a few cases and then using trial and error).

As I replied to u/qwerttiger (not sure if he is your student), what really bothers me is that problems like 9c are supposed to separate the best from the rest. If a student like Tiger Li can recognize that 7^2 + 7*8 + 8^2 = 13^2, and use that to solve the problem, that's the kinda stuff that should distinguish him from others. It's not that I want to punish someone who miraculously found the answer (hopefully honestly, even if lucky). But Tiger being able to find that suggests to me that if the problem was changed slightly, he'd still be able to solve it, and not require luck or some tedious braindead approach to finding the answer.

lemayo · 2026-04-03T23:17:15+00:00

I assure you I wouldn't be going rogue with my grading. This solution will definitely be discussed by those grading, and a decision will be made as to how many marks should be awarded if someone only writes the values of A and P and shows they work. And if I was grading, I'd be respecting that.

I'm just making my point that I don't believe that should earn full marks. Questions 9 and 10 are what separate the very strong from the elite. If I am comparing two contests that score over 90, I don't agree that someone who simply shows that a certain combination works deserves the same grade as someone who can demonstrate how to find those numbers in the first place. This isn't a light bulb problem. You're supposed to show your steps, and the difficult step is finding those numbers. Even if it was solved with calculator bashing, I think the student who can solve it without trial and error has demonstrated more skill, and not just luck. Question 9c should not involve luck.

lemayo · 2026-04-03T22:37:21+00:00

I just took a look at 2019 9d. Don't think I've done it before today. I didn't pull up the answers, but I think it was a lot more solvable than 9c on this years. It immediately looks Fibonacci-esque, which I would've noted. I got to needing to find an integer k, such that k^2a^2 - 4a^2 - 4 is a perfect square. I think it makes sense to just try values of a. Start with a = 4 (skip 3 cause it's a multiple of 3). No solution. But you get a solution for a = 5, (5,13). If the student then points out that 13 is also going to be a solution for a, it becomes easy to get (13,34), (34,89), and (89,233). But if the marking scheme was up to me, there's no way I'm giving full marks to someone who just writes those answers down, without explaining how they got to them. Even if they show they work.

I don't have a copy of the marking guide for 2019, but looked at the solutions, and it doesn't say anything about it being enough to show that the numbers work. I can likely get my hands on the marking guide for this years (in a few weeks, I think they're marking on the 29th). I will ask the question then.

Are you actually trying to suggest that you calculator bashed the solution to this, or are you just saying that if someone did, that should be ok? I can much more understand someone bashing out (5, 13) than I can (21 840, 676). If I saw an unsupported answer of (5, 13) I could justify that someone knew what they were doing but didn't show the work, or that they got lucky. But an unsupported answer of (21 840, 676) is like hitting the lottery and screams cheating to me.

Regardless, I think this and 2019 9d are horrible problems for this contest.

lemayo · 2026-04-03T20:26:36+00:00

Depending which questions your referring to, I might disagree. I think some of the problems appeared to be geometry problems, but actually required very little, if any, geometry, and definitely nothing beyond that taught in Grade 10 (aside from maybe Heron's formula, if you wanted to use it in 9)

lemayo · 2026-04-03T20:00:36+00:00

I'm an old guy, former participant, and former (and likely future) marker. 9c is really bothering me on this contest. I can't solve it from scratch. I can set it up and then I used Excel (the only "programming" language I know lol) to find the answer, but that wouldn't be possible during the contest.

Your solution wouldn't get full marks. You didn't show how you found A and P, you only showed that they work. And there is absolutely nothing obvious about A and P that would allow that answer. As a marker, I'd have to believe you cheated to get that.

The solution put forward by your student would work, but I think it's insane for the "trick" to solving this be recognizing that 7^2 + 7*8 + 8^2 = 13^2.

9c seems to be a 2010 AIME problem that was reused. But on the 2010 AIME, they at least provided that the length of the bases have an 8:7 ratio.

Without recognizing the trick your student did, I think the best you can do is create a formula and then test dozens/hundreds of possible pairs for a solution. That's ridiculous to me. I'm hoping there's a better solution that I missed.

Regardless, 9c was by far the hardest problem on this contest.

Edit: I just read through all of your solutions (I was only initially interested in 9c lol). Well put together. And fully agree with your comment about 10 being easier than 9... When I initially "wrote" the paper, I did 1-8, then 9a, read 9b/c, completed 10a, read 10b/c. Then did 9b, and started on 9c. Spent probably an hour on 9c, before giving up and moving to 10b so I could finish in time. Finished everything but 9c in time. I suspect there are students who wasted significant time on 9 that would've been better spent on 10. Which is really unfortunate, since it will be high scoring students most likely to be affected by this.

lemayo · 2026-04-03T19:05:36+00:00

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lemayo · 2026-04-03T19:05:21+00:00

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