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Interested in taking the next step and playing in a dynasty fantasy football league? Jackson Sparks provides general guidelines and strategies on how to find success in dynasty.
If you're interested in taking the next step to play in a dynasty fantasy football league, there's a good chance you have already played in plenty of redraft or seasonal fantasy football formats for several years. That said, we're operating under the assumption that everyone knows how fantasy football works and the general scoring rules of traditional leagues.
In this dynasty guide, we'll dive into strategies, tips, and a general overview of how to compete and win against your league mates in dynasty formats for years to come. Making the decision to play dynasty means you'll have access to your team all year long and can make moves throughout the calendar year, so if you fall asleep at the wheel, your team could get behind the curve.
There are no better bragging rights than winning multiple fantasy titles with the same core team, so let's dive into it!
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What is Dynasty Fantasy Football?
Unlike redraft leagues, you'll keep as many players as you want year-over-year in pure dynasty formats. After a lengthy start-up draft with the entire pool of NFL players available, each draft moving forward will be made up of exclusively rookies who have yet to play an NFL snap.
Needless to say, there will be a ton of attention and value paid toward young players who have a lot left in the tank. One of the best parts about dynasty leagues is that if one of your elite assets suffers a season-ending injury, he will still have a trade market from teams who aren't real contenders in that particular season or you can simply stash them in the Injured Reserve slot for next year's campaign.
Ultimately, the concept of a dynasty isn't complex. You keep all the players you want and can keep them for their entire careers if you choose to do so. Each year starts a new season, but your roster will see players emerge and hit their prime, as well as aging veterans lose a step along with most of their perceived dynasty and trade value.
Dynasty Formats
Just like season-long leagues, understanding the format of the dynasty league is key well before the start-up draft begins. There are obvious scoring rules to pay attention to like standard, half-PPR, or PPR, but a lot of dynasty leagues see variance in roster requirements and positional importance.
Superflex or two-QB formats have become increasingly popular in dynasties, as it makes sense for signal-callers to be the most important position, just like the real NFL. Quarterbacks have the longest careers, so having a young stud QB like Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen, or Jalen Hurts is a huge advantage over opponents. In those types of leagues, having two bottom-of-the-barrel quarterbacks will set you up for failure, so the first round of the start-up draft is usually littered with the position.
There are also leagues that feature tight end premium scoring, meaning tight ends get an added bonus to their fantasy production on each reception in order to catch the shallow position up to the rest of the offensive skill players. Players like Travis Kelce and George Kittle always carry a ton of value, but tight end premium leagues bring mid-level tight ends like Pat Freiermuth or Dalton Schultz up the rankings.
Ultimately, the possibilities are endless for scoring rules and formats, but defenses and kickers are usually not featured in dynasty leagues. Just make sure you read the fine print before drafting, as you could suffer the consequences for years to come if you fail to understand the format.
The Start-Up Draft
When you enter the start-up draft, you don't necessarily want to be locked into one draft strategy. However, at some point during the draft, it's smart to pick a direction for your team. If the rest of your league mates are obsessed with youth and are staying away from proven assets in their late-20s or early 30s, you can take advantage. For example, there were plenty of people who wanted nothing to do with aging veterans like Derrick Henry, Davante Adams, or Travis Kelce early in dynasty drafts just two years ago. If those three guys slipped down boards because everyone was fascinated with young assets like Javonte Williams, Rashod Bateman, or Kyle Pitts, the team who drafted the veteran trio of RB/WR/TE clearly has the advantage, even two seasons after the latter trio were rookies.
Ultimately, there are three strategies in start-up drafts: win now, win later, and a combination of the two.
Win-Now
You'll notice one or two of your league mates taking older players in the thick of their prime early in the start-up draft. These guys are punting the future with the chance to win the championship right away, often resulting in a cash prize. A lot of the time, these owners will trade future rookie picks to position themselves to have more early picks in the start-up draft. With other owners opting to build for the future, they see Year 1 as an opportunity to possess a significant fantasy advantage early.
Win-Later
This is essentially the polar opposite of going for it all in Year 1. This strategy often involves shipping away early start-up picks for future picks and/or more picks in the middle part of the start-up draft. These owners miss out on the creme of the crop at the top, but it's all part of the plan. A lot of valuable young players will still fall to them. This can be risky, as many could bust, but when it pays off, it pays off huge. The fantasy managers who opted to "win now" will often see a sharp decline that is hard to recover from. This strategy can set your team up for half a decade of contention.
Productive Struggle
A "productive struggle" means you aren't necessarily going to be a contender right out of the gate, but you aren't a guaranteed bottom-dweller either. You're likely a decent team with young players waiting in the wings ready to break out. However, as the season progresses, you might adopt one of the above strategies. If you're a piece or two away from contending, you might look to sell rookie draft picks in order to acquire said pieces. If you're near the bottom of the league, you may sell off valuable pieces that you don't expect to hold value for very long. No matter how your first season is playing out, you're being productive and flexible with your team management. This strategy can lead you to purgatory where you're never good enough to win a title but never bad enough to get a top rookie draft pick, so it's important to be proactive.
Transactions and Trades
While the waiver wire is usually ultra-thin in dynasty leagues, it's still important to at least take a look at the waiver wire every week. When a starting running back or backup running back gets banged up, you always want to be in the market for the back who will be next on the depth chart. Stashing a ton of handcuffs is a principle from redraft leagues that should be carried over into dynasty. When the NFL season is underway, you should treat the waiver wire similarly to season-long leagues, but be sure not to drop young players who have yet to break out too early.
Dynasty trades are going to look vastly different from traditional league trades. For instance, let's say you're a contending team with a ton of in-prime assets, but you need another piece or two to become the league favorite. At that point, you might look to mortgage the future and find a trade partner who is in "win-later" or rebuilding mode, selling one of your younger assets for their aging veteran. Oftentimes, fantasy managers who aren't in contention will overpay for your young player with promise, while selling low on their veteran since that aging player likely won't be productive by the time that team is ready to compete.
On the other hand, you might have a team that is in rebuild mode. In this case, you should look to acquire young players at discounts. During the 2022 season, Breece Hall and Javonte Williams both tore their ACLs. For contenders, this is crippling and they'll likely see if they can make a move to replace the production at RB. If you have a ball carrier like Austin Ekeler or Dalvin Cook who are past the RB age-apex, you could look to work out a trade where you ship one of them away from Hall or Williams. Since you aren't a contender anyway, it doesn't matter that Hall or Williams won't score a fantasy point for the rest of the season. By making these savvy moves, you're setting yourself up for future success.
Obviously, some of these moves can come back to bite you. Surely, fantasy managers with Tom Brady on their roster looked to sell him in his late-30s while he was a New England Patriot. He played until age 45 and was a high-end QB during his first two seasons in Tampa Bay, but he's a clear outlier. There are plenty of running back, wide receiver, and tight end age outliers too, but in general, each position has an average age where production starts to fall off (as shown above with running backs).
Draft Picks and Rookies
While most fantasy football managers aren't professional scouts and many don't follow college football as much as they do the NFL, there are plenty of resources for research when the time comes for a rookie draft. If you know nothing else, trust real NFL draft capital when making decisions in rookie drafts.
For example, while you might love a player's landing spot like Tyler Allgeier (fifth-round pick) from a season ago since Cordarrelle Patterson is getting up in age and the starting running back spot was open, that doesn't mean you should take him over a player like Kenneth Walker (second-round pick). While it appeared Allgeier had an easier path to fantasy production because Rashaad Penny was in Walker's way, you must trust the draft capital. The NFL draft told us teams valued Walker an entire three-rounds ahead of Allgeier, so we can generally assume he's the superior player and Seattle will give him a shot to be the starting running back in the near future.
When players are selected on the third day of the NFL Draft, the incentive for their franchises to give them a fair shake and utilize them is far lower. Remember when James Robinson broke out as a rookie and made the Pro Bowl despite being an undrafted player? Well, Travis Etienne was a first-round selection for the Jaguars one year later. What about Michael Carter's impressive rookie year as a day 3 pick? Breece Hall was immediately drafted to replace him. Ultimately, the Jaguars and Jets didn't have a lot of money tied up on rostering those backs and didn't use valuable draft capital to select them, so they are often replaced sooner than fantasy managers expect.
Of course, there are countless players throughout the history of the NFL who were superstars despite being taken in the fourth round or later, and those players should be considered in rookie drafts. However, those shots should be taken later in the second or third round. In Round 1, focus on players who were selected in the first two days of the real NFL draft. There are lengthy articles written about the correlation between draft capital and its relation to fantasy football success, but this is just a general starting point for attacking rookie drafts.
It's worth noting rookie draft picks are always more valuable the closer you get to draft season, as fantasy managers always have a "fear of missing out" on the shiny new rookies.
Conclusion
There are a ton of nuances to dynasty leagues and a ton of topics can be covered in long articles and deep dives, but hopefully, this was a good first start for managers looking to get into dynasty leagues this offseason. As always, follow along with RotoBaller's seasonal rankings to make start-or-sit decisions in dynasty leagues, as once the season begins, you'll be back to making those head-scratching calls.
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