Dynasty Startup Draft Strategy

The draft is always the most entertaining part of your fantasy football season, and, in a dynasty league, that draft will set you up for years to come. Gage Bridgford (@GbridgfordNFL) helps construct your strategy for putting together your perfect dynasty roster during your next startup draft.

Redraft fantasy was long considered the only way to play fantasy football. You would meet up with your work buddies or friends from growing up every year right before the season started to draft the next lineup that you were hoping would bring you to a championship. While the majority of fantasy managers still play in redraft leagues, other formats have started to emerge with Dynasty leagues being one of the leading names in this new pack. Drafting for redraft is short-sighted with a focus on just this season. In Dynasty, the focus is more on the future. 

You can still draft for immediate success, but you could leave yourself hamstrung for years to come afterward. If you had done a startup draft last year and targeted immediate success players that were nearing the ends of their careers, you may have had a strong year, but, due to retirements or getting bumped down the depth chart, your once strong cupboard could be bare while your league mates have an up-and-coming roster that focuses on being competitive for the next three or four years. 

We’re going to be spending today looking at the differences in these two primary draft strategies along with how you should be trying to build your team during your startup drafts this Summer ahead of the 2021-22 season. One quick thing to note before we get into this. We’re operating under the assumption that rookies are not involved in your startup drafts and that you’re doing a separate rookie draft. While not all leagues operate this way, it is an easier way to plan your drafts when you’re not accounting for rookies in the startup. 

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Know Your League

When I was in college, I played in an 18-team redraft league that featured individual defensive players (IDP) and a largely standard roster otherwise. Teams were a little thin, but it wasn’t all that difficult. After the first week, I was stunned to see that Joe Flacco had scored over 70 points in Week 1 despite throwing just one touchdown and adding basically no running work. What I had failed to check was the scoring format in my league which gave quarterbacks one point per passing attempt. So, this goes without saying, but you need to know how your league’s scoring format is set up. 

The second major thing you need to pay attention to before your drafts is your league’s format. Is it a Superflex league where quarterbacks are treated like rare pieces of gold? How many players do you start at each position? How many flex spots do you have? Each of these factors is going to dramatically alter the way you attack the draft.

If it’s a Superflex league, there is a strong chance you need to draft at least one quarterback in the first round to avoid the rest of your league taking all of the top-end options. If you’re starting three running backs, you pretty much have to draft one in the first round with how difficult it is to find consistent running back play.

Finally, if you’re playing with people you know, pay attention to the way they value players and certain positions. If you’re playing with your buddy that lives down the street and you know he is a big fan of a certain player, you can make a safe assumption that he’s going to end up overdrafting him. Take that into account and watch for values to fall down the board. There is a lot of luck involved in winning fantasy football, but knowing the league you’re in better than anyone else makes you require a little less luck. 

Prioritize Youth Without Ignoring Value

As I said back at the beginning, you can into a startup draft focused on players that are ready to compete right now while ignoring their age. That might get you a championship, but, if you’re exclusively drafting players in that lane, you’re going to end up having to rebuild very early into your league’s start. So, heading into your startup, you need to make sure that you’re prioritizing youth to set your team up for long-term success, but the key is finding the balance of not ignoring older players at a value without making them the majority of your roster.

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Using startup ADPs from last season, courtesy of Fantasy Football Calculator, there was value scattered throughout the board at all positions. Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers was 36 heading into the season, but fantasy managers were scared off of him following a couple of meh years stats-wise along with the drafting of Jordan Love. Rodgers went off the board as QB8 on average, and he was QB3 by the end of the year. While opponents drafted players like Patrick Mahomes of the Kansas City Chiefs early on, you could have set yourself up with Rodgers for the next few seasons and added young stars in A.J. Brown, Terry McLaurin and Austin Ekeler. 

The benefits of getting a youthful player like Mahomes are absolutely necessary to take into account. Barring major injuries, you have a starter at QB locked in for the next 15 years. It would be like drafting Drew Brees in your 2001 rookie draft. Outside of a few injuries over the last few seasons, you had one of the most consistent quarterbacks at the position for 20 years. Youth should always be the priority in your startups, but it’s important to pay attention to older players at a value when it’s staring you in the face. 

Draft for Talent, Trade for Need

At the end of the day, you’re going to win by having the players possible on your roster. You’re not going to win by outsmarting your opponents or getting “cute” with your draft selections. Instead, focus on drafting players that you see legitimate value at their position while avoiding the media hype machine for certain players. If you go into your draft convinced that you’re going to draft with a specific strategy, you’re going to get burned. Always adapt as the board is constantly changing. 

Using the board of ADPs from above, you could have started your draft with studs at running back in Nick Chubb, Aaron Jones, and David Montgomery with stud wide receivers in Allen Robinson, Terry McLaurin, and Keenan Allen available at your next pick. In Dynasty, the focus needs to be on adding the most talent to your roster because you can always make a trade for a player at a position of need later on.

Let’s say you started the draft with those three running backs while grabbing McLaurin and Allen with your next two picks. Outside of the rookie running backs, there wasn’t a lot of promising talent available at the running back position remaining, but there are still plenty of wideouts available to round things out. 

Damien Harris and Ronald Jones II are a couple of depth guys you could be looking at as the draft rolls on to round out your running back room. While those guys weren’t the best fantasy options last season, they were solid spot starters in the event one of your top three missed any time. However, now that you’ve rounded out your room, you can make a trade with one of those top pieces for a player at another position such as quarterback or wide receiver that you didn’t target early in the draft. Your strength is someone else’s weakness.

Single QB Strategy

Now that we’ve discussed a lot of the basics, let’s wrap all of this up by getting into the nitty and the gritty. In single-quarterback formats, you’re going to wait on the position. A few quarterbacks are going to be drafted early, but the majority of them are going to slide which is where the value lies.

Utilizing last season’s ADPs you can quickly see where the value on the board was for someone that waited at QB. With three quarterbacks, in Lamar Jackson, Deshaun Watson and Mahomes off the board in the first four rounds, you could have prioritized Josh Allen of the Buffalo Bills in the fifth round while grabbing Tyreek Hill, Aaron Jones, Austin Ekeler, and Stefon Diggs to give yourself a strong base at key positions before you ever grabbed a quarterback. This would have given you two of the top three wide receivers along with two running backs that finished in the top 10 on a point per game basis along with the guy that ended up as the QB1.

Let’s say you want to wait a little longer at quarterback. You really want to target running backs and wide receivers, or you grab a tight end that has slipped a little. Looking at current ADPs over at RotoViz, Matthew Stafford of the Los Angeles Rams can be had in the 12th round of single-quarterback drafts right now. Has he been banged up the last two seasons? Yes. However, he played in all 16 games in 2020, and the eight games he missed in 2019 were the first games he had missed since his second year in the league back in 2010. Stafford is also just 33 years old. While Stafford doesn’t give you the long-term option at quarterback that you get with a guy like Mahomes, Allen, or even Justin Herbert, he’s more than capable of being your starter for a couple of seasons as a bridge quarterback.

Quarterbacks score more points than any other position, but, in single-quarterback leagues, your focus is on every other position. There are always more available, and, unless you’re playing in an extremely deep league, you’ll be able to roster at least two starting-caliber players. Once you get into 16-team leagues, you might need to put more value into the position, but, until you get to that point. Enjoy the benefits of a deep rotation of skill players while your opponents are scrambling when injuries and bye weeks ramp up.

Superflex Strategy

You read everything I wrote up there right? Cool. Now forget pretty much all of it. In Superflex, quarterbacks reign supreme. While you’ll see five quarterbacks off of the board in the first five rounds in single-quarterback leagues, you’ll watch six of the first seven picks of the draft be quarterbacks in Superflex formats with a total of eight going in the first round of 12-team leagues. While waiting on quarterback is easier in single-quarterback leagues, you’re not afforded the same luxury in Superflex because of your ability to start that extra player, who, barring injury, is almost guaranteed points.

While Stafford is available in the 12th round of single-quarterback formats, he’s going in the fifth round of Superflex while Ben Roethlisberger and Kyle Trask are around in the later rounds. You have to grab at least one quarterback early, but the way you determine that strategy is different based on where you’re picking. If you’re picking in the first three spots, going with quarterback or trading back should be your primary goals. Assuming Mahomes is the pick at 1.01, any number of quarterbacks could be available to you at two or three. With that in mind, you could also look to trade back utilizing some values like this in the table below, courtesy of Dynasty League Football.

Let’s say you own the 1.02 pick in a startup draft, but you’re looking to move back to acquire more capital in the following rounds. The guy that has the 1.12 pick is desperate to move up for a quarterback other than Mahomes, and you’re able to get his first and second-round picks in return for your 1.02. It’s an overpay for him, but he also is getting to leap in front of nine other players to nearly have his pick of the litter at quarterback. You won’t have the same luxury, but you get to add four top 26 players to your roster in the first three rounds with that move.

If you’re in the middle part of the first round, you should be ready to scoop up value when it slides to you. You’re okay with waiting for a round or two to take a quarterback because you know someone like Stafford or Matt Ryan are still going to be available to get you by for a year or two. While everyone is rushing to grab a quarterback, Saquon Barkley or Christian McCaffrey slips into your lap at the 1.05 which gives you one of the top running backs in the game for a discount. Quarterback will likely become a priority for you in the following round or two, but you can rest easy knowing you have a legitimate stud locked in at a position without a ton of depth.

At the end of the first round, your plan is similar to the mid-firsts with one slight exception. You may want to trade up. I never advise trading up at the beginning of startups. Values change too quickly on players, and it’s always nice to have your full gambit of picks to really round out your roster. However, if you really want Dak Prescott at 1.10, and you know he isn’t going to get to you. Go get him. Fantasy is more fun when you have the players you want on your roster. You may have to overpay to get the job done, but sometimes you just have to do whatever it takes.

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