Dynasty Startup Draft Strategy Overview

Nicholas Savoie

Editor’s Note: This is the first article from one of our new Member Corner writers, Nicholas Savoie. Follow Nicholas on Twitter @ArryIT

One of my favorite television shows when I was younger was The A-Team. I still have fond memories watching old episodes, even if the action now looks dated when compared to modern shows. Regardless, the show is a classic from an era of classic television. Furthermore, the show was a goldmine for great quotes including my favorite quote from “Hannibal” Smith that goes, “I love it when a plan comes together”. Now fans of The A-Team will recall that Hannibal’s plans did not always work as intended, but the team was ultimately successful.

What does The A-Team have to do with dynasty? A lot more than you would think. For example Colonel John “Hannibal” Smith’s nickname comes from the famous military commander & strategist Hannibal Barca. Well, strategy is exactly what I am here to talk to you about. Dynasty League Football has a strategy, and that strategy includes making sure that every one of its members has as much information to help them with their dynasty teams. Each owner too should have a strategy. You need a plan, whether it is for an orphan you took over, a startup league that you just joined, or an upcoming rookie draft in a league you want to keep dominating. Like Hannibal’s plans, your strategy may not always work as planned, but it should ultimately benefit your team.

In this article we are going to discuss some of the different strategies that you as an owner can consider. Some will work better for startups than orphans. Others might not appeal to you due to your style of play. Regardless of how you play dynasty, it is important to at least have an understanding of the different strategies so that you can see how other owners run their teams. That information alone can benefit you immensely, either by helping you to trade with that owner, or to allow you to figure out which players you can project they could draft. Not to mention, looking at your team through the different strategy lens can be a useful exercise to help you assess how others might view your team.

There are plenty of different strategies but for now we will focus on five main methods.  These are the strategies that all dynasty owners should, at the very least, be aware of and have a basic understanding of. They are the following:

  • The Win Now Approach
  • The 1+ Year Approach
  • The Progressive Struggle or Draft For The Future or Youth Centric
  • The Zero-Position Strategy
  • The Long Term Approach

Let us start with the strategy that most owners say that they do not use, but you will come to learn, many of your fellow owners do use, even if subconsciously. The Win Now Approach. The Win Now Approach is exactly what it sounds like. It is looking at your dynasty team through the lens of how can my team win this year.  Some owners liken it to a re-draft approach, and when taken to an extreme can slowly but surely gut your team of long term value. However when taken in moderation, it is an important tool to help you ascertain your chances in winning this year. Basically it focuses on how much production you are going to get from your players this year. As such players like Larry Fitzgerald or LeSean McCoy will take on more value from this perspective, because you are concerned mainly with their production this year versus their production in future years.

Now you will recall that I said that this approach is used more by owners than some would actually admit. How come? Because many owners do not correctly project how the future can play out. They see the current situation and either expect that this is the situation going forward, or misjudge how long that situation might last. Obviously, there are situations out of our control that are impossible to project. However, I am not referring to things like Kareem Hunt being released by the Kansas City Chiefs or Odell Beckham Jr. getting traded, although those things did have some, if brief, warning of it happening. Instead, consider players like Tyrell Williams or Cameron Meredith who were productive in an obvious driven by necessity situation continuing that same production longer than the short term situation.

This is where the 1+ Year Approach comes into play. While similar to the Win Now Approach in that the focus is more on current production and what can the player do for my team this year than in the longer term, it realizes that it is important to keep an eye on the future as well. So this approach looks at a player and tries to project more clearly if this production is a short-term solution, or if the production can occur next year as well, assuming a similar situation. Some times this can be very hard to do, but the key I find is in taking your current information, along with past history, and try to look at it through best & worst case outcomes.   Usually the answer lies somewhere in the middle. Similar to positive & negative regression. This approach is very helpful especially when looking at a stud player like a DeAndre Hopkins. If you took his 2015 season and expected that to occur every year, then you were obviously much disappointed by his 2016 performance. However, if you took his 2016 production and sold on him expecting that going into 2017, then once again you were disappointed. The answer lay somewhere in the middle. Years such as 2015 and 2018 are examples of his ceiling type season, while 2016 was a floor type season and 2017 is a middle ground.

So while the Win Now Approach focused on the strategy of what is good for your team right now, and the 1+ Year Approach tries to bridge the divide between right now and going forward, another approach focuses mainly on going forward. This approach has different names to it, like Draft For The Future or Youth Focused / Centric but I like the term Progressive Struggle. Mainly because this acknowledges that you are going to struggle for the time being, but with the expectation to progress to Contender in the future, usually one or two years away. The main premise is that you as an owner are more concerned with what your team is going to be like in a year or two, versus what it is going to do this season. That is why many call it Youth Focused, because many owners will focus on younger prospects and rookies who will eventually develop into the producers you need in future years. Furthermore the Progressive Struggle owner, if they are not careful, may tend to get stereotyped into chasing rookie draft picks to the detriment of production.

The next strategy can be used successfully by any owner already applying one of the previous strategies. How so? Because this strategy is a position specific strategy. You should be aware of the term Zero-QB or Zero-TE.  Well depending on the scoring format of your league, I think the term Zero-Position is a better moniker.  The key to this strategy is the decision to punt, or sacrifice, production or value at a position, in order to focus on other positions and build strength there. In your typical PPR league you may find owners going Zero QB or Zero TE, but in a super-flex and/or tight end premium format you may see an owner going Zero WR or Zero RB. Thus why I prefer the term Zero-Position, because it is the same strategy, just employed on different positions depending on your league & your preference.

The last strategy is one that has fallen out of favor by many owners, but one that I feel remains as vital today as it was years ago. Whether you call it the Three Year Window or a Three-Five Year Plan, it is basically a Long Term Approach that focuses on a more lengthy perspective than the other strategies. Many owners do not like this approach because they feel it is too impossible to project a player over a longer term window due to, what can appear to be constantly changing situations. The NFL is always changing. Players are always changing teams, or even if remaining on the team, changing roles. Injuries, suspensions, future draft classes. The reasons are ample why owners feel that longer term planning can be useless.

I disagree, and in fact I would argue that the Long Term Approach is more useful now than ever before. The problem, at least for me, is how you apply it. Obviously yes it is not a good idea to project a WR1/RB1/TE1/QB1 season every year for the next 10 years, which is how some owners dismissively suggest. But that is not what a Long Term Approach is. Rather the Long Term Approach focuses more on long term value and understands that many players have multiple windows of value. Whether it is Josh Gordon, Rob Gronkowski or someone like Tyreek Hill going forward, if you look at the player over a long period of time, you will see almost every player has peaks and valleys, and that there are multiple windows of use, whether as a trade asset, or as a player to plug into your lineup.

Over the course of my next few articles, I hope to convince you that the Long Term Approach remains as viable as it always has been, and that in fact by it takes the best features of the other strategies with few of their flaws. However I fully recognize that this strategy is not for every owner, nor does it work all the time. No strategy does. However this strategy has worked for me, and I can say without a doubt that the use of this approach has helped every team that I started or took over in the years 2015 and 2016 to become a much better team today than it was then.

Regardless, it is important that you as an owner be aware of the different strategies, and how they apply to dynasty, and how you can look at a time through different perspectives and get different interpretations. No plan ever goes perfectly, but by having a plan, you are much better off, and if you use the strategy that works best with your mindset, and know how the other strategies may be influencing your leaguemates you are much better off than simply flying by the seat of your pants. Above all, use all the tools available to you, especially if a Premium member, to help you determine your course of action. DLF is there for you to succeed.

nicholas savoie
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