Dynasty fantasy football is much like war. You need to know your opponent, understand how to prepare and create a battle plan, how to construct a balanced roster with a defined vision, and know when to go for the title or (re)build for a future run. A deep and intimate understanding of both strategy and football is required to be consistently successful in a dynasty league. This treatise illustrates the fine art of building a true dynasty and maintain a top position in your leagues for a considerable time.
These are the 10 core tenets I believe are critical to success in building a dynasty behemoth that will yield results year over year.
- Startup Drafts
- Roster Construction
- Ideal Archetypes
- Ship Chasing
- Iron Bank
- Rookie Pick Values
- Rookie Drafts
- Trading
- Roster Management
- Bayesian Inference
Dominating Startup Drafts
The (deal) way to dominating startup drafts is trading back and attacking tiers. Trading back is easier said than done, but even if your leaguemates are sharks (or sharps) who refuse to fall prey to trading up to “get their guy(s)”, by developing your own set of tier-based rankings, you can maximize the return on investment of each of your picks. Additionally, you are able to avoid falling into the trap of reaching for players in fear of a “position run”.
When creating rankings and tiers, it’s useful to consider projecting players’ production in the immediate and near term. A great resource/tool for making projections is Analyst Depot which has a projection wizard, making it easy to use previous player performance and team usage with machine learning to generate statistical projections.
If you are looking to trade back in a startup draft, you need to be aggressive. You should try to trade back from the 1st round to at least the 3rd or later in order to accumulate additional draft capital and future picks. Also, be patient and read the room. There’s no need to trade back for the sake of trading back only to lose value. And as in most startups, there may be a hesitancy among the league to trade back in the first few rounds but as drafts unfold, teams will undoubtedly get antsy and pull the trigger and give up a decent haul to move up. If possible, stock up on picks in the 3rd to 9th rounds as that is where the types of players you will want to roster (based on their lifetime values and potential for immediate production).
Here is a recent thread where I discuss my startup strategy with examples:
How to Rob a Startup Draft
The trendy thing to do is “trade back” and when you get into a draft, everyone immediately puts their 1st round pick OTB. 🤦♀️
So how do you successfully pull off one of the most common strategies when everyone knows the secret?
BE AGGRESSIVE.
— ¢ʜᴀʟᴋ 🚫 (@101chalk) February 23, 2021
When drafting in a 1QB startup, the strategy that has worked for experts like @2on1FFB is to go RB early and often – your first 3-4 picks should be solid, consistent RBs. You should target RBs with a high weekly floor and opportunity for targets (more on bellcows later). As Tommy recommends, after you’ve stacked your RB room, you can concentrate on WRs and TEs to fill out the roster and then hit a safe play QB coupled with a high upside signal-caller in the late rounds. The goal is to have 4 RBs in the top 15 insulated by a core of young WRs and topped off with a couple of top 20 QBs that you grab later.
As you draft your team in a dynasty startup, remember that you are usually not drafting a team that will be the exact roster when Week 1 comes. Draft the best value available using lifetime values and balancing young, promising players with proven performers. As you near the end of the draft, pack your team with high ceiling fliers to increase upside.
