How I Build Dynasty Teams

TheFFGhost

Many dynasty leagues have their inception late in March or early in April as fantasy owners start to get that itch to create something new and put their own personal stamp on it. Maybe it is something primal that coincides with the start of Autumn and the need to be part of the birth, or rebirth in some instances, that surrounds all of us. Then, mix in that this period falls right between the two largest events held by the NFL that don’t feature on the field play, the NFL Combine and NFL Draft, and you have a recipe to create the equivalent of catnip for dynasty players.

However, this environment is also into which many inexperienced dynasty players get introduced to the format and wrapped up into the excitement. For everyone wanting the format to flourish and grow, we should want to make resources available to new owners, especially those which will help them build solid, competitive teams as it will keep those owners engaged and coming back to the current league, and hopefully additional leagues, year after year.

As such, this article will hopefully serve as a primer for those new and experienced owners alike into how I build dynasty teams. I am currently in well over 100 different dynasty leagues which are on several different hosting platforms and which incorporate a huge variety of settings and formats. I share my advice with each of you not as a direction of what will work every time, but more as a way to share what has worked for me.

Before we begin, I will differentiate between building a dynasty team through a start-up draft and building one through a dispersal draft. Depending on which type of draft you find yourself in, you may need to pursue different strategies. With that made clear, let’s dig in:

Startup Draft

A startup draft is pretty much just as it sounds: a draft that occurs when a league is brand new and has just started up. In this format, no players are on any team and the startup draft will be used to draft players, and sometimes assets, to the team that selects them. This is the single largest player movement in the history of any dynasty league and will define how a team performs for many years, possibly, for the entirety of the league. As such, there are a great number of varying strategies that teams generally follow.

The most common is drafting for the long-term by eschewing older veterans and drafting young players almost exclusively. Then, there is drafting an even mix of young players and veterans in the hope of competing immediately and hoping to sustain the momentum long-term. Finally, there is what many dynasty owners call “punting”, or the trading away of start-up picks in a two-pronged approach to field a subpar team in the first few seasons of a league, guaranteeing high rookie picks over that span, while also accumulating additional rookie picks in subsequent seasons through those trades.

Prefacing once again – before I reveal the strategy I prefer – this is simply my opinion and should be taken as such. Now then, my preferred strategy, far and away, is a blended approach to drafting that places equal value and distribution between both veterans and younger players. This approach, I feel, gives me the best chance to win immediately while reducing my risk on multiple levels.

First, it’s no secret that dynasty leagues, while created and designed to last – theoretically forever – often fall apart only a few years into their existence. To be fair, not all leagues disintegrate in this manner, but a sizeable number do. Whether due to commissioner mismanagement or apathy, owner dissatisfaction or some mixture of each of the factors I listed, and some I didn’t, there are just as many reasons a league might fold as there are leagues out there, each with an ending as unique and varied as their creation story. Therefore, if I can field a team that is immediately competitive, the risk that I am simply throwing money into a doomed venture also decreases, hence one of the reasons why I find this strategy the most appealing.

Second, while I study draft prospects more intently than roughly 99 percent of all dynasty owners, I fully recognize and admit that much of what guarantees a rookie’s success is out of my control and, honestly, out of the control of even those players themselves. A draft prospect could be viewed as “can’t miss” or “the next big thing” only to land on a team that either doesn’t know how to use his talents effectively or that isn’t a good fit for those same talents. We have seen that story play out time and time again, often in ways, and to players, we never imagined it would.

Names like Ryan Leaf, JaMarcus Russell, Eddie Lacy and Johnny Manziel, plus countless others, looked like world-beaters on the college stage, only to fall flat shortly after joining the NFL. Therefore, a solely youth-focused approach to drafting, be it directly within the draft or by punting to future years, only serves to compound that risk I mentioned earlier. Not only do owners who subscribe to these strategies have to hope the league doesn’t fold shortly after joining it, but they also must hit on many more correct picks with much more limited information than I do while drafting a greater share of veteran players.

Dispersal Draft

Dispersal drafts occur in some established dynasty league when the owners of two or more teams decide not to return the following season or, in some instances, when one or more teams decide to throw their players into that player pool and join the new owners in redrafting their teams. The strategy here is, understandably, a bit different considering the player pool is smaller and often less desirable than that you would find in a start-up. I say less desirable because it is rare, but not unheard of, that winning teams, especially championship teams, are abandoned or surrendered to a new owner. In most cases, the teams that are orphaned were mismanaged by their previous owners and, because of this, the available assets are less than optimal. However, if you find yourself in a dispersal, it could be a very interesting and downright enjoyable experience.

If the other participants in the dispersal draft have complementary strategies to your own, you can often “sync up” with each other and each come away with exactly the type of teams each of you want. Conversely, if you are able to quickly identify the strategies employed by other teams, you can pivot and come away with a team that takes you out of your comfort zone and forces you to manage that team in a new, exciting and informative way. While I outlined why I prefer a well-balanced mix between veterans and young players, if another team in the dispersal draft is pursuing a similar strategy, I have been known to pivot off my initial strategy and shift into a youth-centric approach.

Put another way, I am often very fluid and flexible in how I draft dispersal teams. I find this allows me to seek out value as it is presented to me and forces me to play outside of my comfort zone, presenting me with a learning opportunity and, ultimately, making me a better owner in the long run.

Drafts, whether they are start-ups or dispersal, present unique challenges every time an owner is engaged in one. Ultimately, no two drafts are the same. Some feature unique owners, others feature unique player pools, some may be identical in the owners involved and player pools, but drafting in a different order, others still may be identical in the owners involved, the player pool to choose from and even in the exact same draft or, but separated by the prism of time, knowledge and experience, leading to completely different decisions by those owners and totally different outcomes. So while I said no two drafts are the same, keep in mind, good or bad, each draft is ultimately what you make of it.