Going Long: Getting Started in Dynasty League Play
NOTE: This article originally appeared in the FootballDiehards.com 2020 Fantasy Guide and has been selected as a finalist for FSWA Article of the Year. Congratulations to DLF writer and podcast host Dan Meylor for this huge honor. To celebrate this accomplishment, we are reposting and sharing this free article, with the permission of FootballDiehards.com.
In my 20-plus years of playing fantasy football, I’ve found there’s nothing better than a dynasty startup. The rush of building a team exists in all leagues including redraft and daily but the multitude of startup strategies available in a dynasty league make it the most exhilarating event in fantasy football in my opinion.
Over the years I’ve watched countless startups materialize and I’ve learned many lessons. Throughout it all, however, I’ve realized that the best advice I can give somebody is very simple.
A successful dynasty startup comes down to two things. Preparation and execution.
Whether you’re a dynasty rookie or seasoned pro, it’s imperative before the auction begins to lay out a solid game plan which will help keep you on track during your startup.
Preparation
There are a handful of things when preparing for a startup that are exactly the same no matter what kind of league you’re in – dynasty, redraft, or daily. Primarily, knowing your rules. Having a firm handle on how many teams are in the league, how many roster spots each franchise has, the starting lineup requirements, and scoring settings are vital.
Once you have the rules down, it’s time to create a cheat sheet, or a set of rankings in order of dynasty value, by position. But ranking players one by one can be such a drag, right?
Wrong!
There are many factors to consider when creating your cheat sheet. Scoring settings and lineup requirements are vital but also, having a good feel for up to date average draft position (ADP) can also be incredibly useful. My favorite place to find ADP that is updated monthly is www.dynastyleaguefootball.com. There you can not only look at broad dynasty ADP, you can also view custom ADP for leagues with the exact settings as your startup. The data you pull there will create your cheat sheet for you.
In my opinion, there is no better way to create a cheat sheet than by inputting it into a spreadsheet. So after visiting DLF, my cheat sheet will look something like this.
As you can see, I like to include the players’ ages and their current ADP so I can quickly and easily determine while on the clock if a player fits my team makeup or if somebody very close in ADP would be a better selection.
Obviously if you’re especially high or low on a specific player, you can manually adjust the rankings as you see fit. You can also make adjustments based on what kind of strategy you intend on employing. For example, if you want to build your team around youth, you might bump rookies or other young players up a bit.
The final step I like to take while building my cheat sheet is creating tiers inside the rankings. This will make it easy throughout the draft process to identify if the talent pool is dwindling quickly at a specific position. I like to do so by color-coding my cheat sheet.
If you want to take your preparation for a startup draft to the next level, revisit the ADP you pulled from Dynasty League Football. From there, build the best team you can pulling one player from every round. The exercise will give you a strong feeling for what rounds you like, which ones you dislike and where you can find pockets of value. If your league allows startup draft picks to be traded, it will give you a good idea of when to move up or down and where in the draft you should be looking to collect extra selections.
At this point, you should be prepared for your startup draft – unless you’re prepping for an auction that is. If that’s the case, there are a couple more steps you’ll want to take to be sure you’re properly prepared.
First, in the cheat sheet spreadsheet above, simply add a “price” column to the right of the “ADP” column for each position. This simple addition will be crucial to keeping a firm grasp on the action as the auction moves along.
The next thing you’ll want to do is create a budget, which is incredibly easy and perhaps the most important step you’ll take in this process. Simply write down each starting position as well as the number of bench spots that are required to be filled in the auction. Then put a dollar amount next to each roster spot. Those numbers should equal the total budget allowed for each team. I like to build my budget on the same spreadsheet I used for the cheat sheet, which looks something like this.
This example is from a $400 auction in a league with 10 starting spots and 25 roster spots. I include a “Budget” column for the rough starting budget I put together, as well as the “Roster” column which is a place for the players’ names as auctions are won. Finally, the “Spent” column is for the final cost of the player.
When the auction starts, this can be edited as you learn the cost of players as well as the tendencies of the auction room, but we’ll get to that as we progress.
As I stressed above, budgeting is the most important part of your auction preparation and too many dynasty owners completely ignore it. All of the worst dynasty teams I’ve ever seen were put together by an owner that decided to “wing it” during the auction. Don’t be one of those owners.
Execution
Now that you’ve spent the necessary time to prepare for your startup, it’s time to put that preparation to good use by executing your game plan.
If you’re taking part in a snake draft, the process is easy. Simply cross off every name as they come off the board, watching closely for tiers of players to dwindle. When you’re on the clock, look over the entire cheat sheet in an effort to identify players that stick out as values or those with limited alternatives.
The only difference between a dynasty startup and a yearly draft is that when building a dynasty roster, it’s important to consider team makeup when selecting players. For instance, if you’ve spent your first handful of picks on youthful players with limited immediate upside, it may not make sense to select a veteran wide receiver to put in your starting lineup. After all, in dynasty the rookie draft order next year is decided by the standings this season so having a WR scoring points this season may cost you down the road. The better play is most likely to find a similarly ranked young WR with long-term upside to use the pick on.
In dynasty startup auctions, however, executing the perfect strategy takes a bit more effort.
Nominating is the first tactical decision you’ll have to make and there are two strategies to use when nominating, the aggressive approach and the passive approach.
Those who employ the aggressive approach nominate players they intend to bid on which ensures that he or she has the money available to attack the players they’re most interested in, but most likely gives every other owner the most possible money to bid on the player with an equal amount of aggression. The passive approach to nominations is crafty and takes a bit more willpower to execute. The intent of this approach is to nominate players you’re not necessarily interested in paying a high price for by identifying players that the dynasty community values at a higher level that you do or don’t fit into the budget you laid out in your preparation.
When it comes to bidding, you can either creep your bid up slowly one dollar at a time until you’re either the high bidder or can’t bid anymore, or by immediately putting in your high bid and letting the chips fall where they may. Both have been known to work but there is something to be said about scaring the competition off with a big bid. No matter what bidding philosophy you use, always consult your budget before submitting a bid.
No matter how you nominate or bid, tracking the auction on the spreadsheet you created during preparation is imperative to a successful auction. In the price column of your cheat sheet, keep a running tally of how much each auction ends for as it will help you easily identify bargains as the auction progresses – particularly if you took the time to break your rankings into tiers. As you win auctions, enter the player’s names and prices into the budget you created. When you save money at a specific position, immediately move those savings to another position, and if you’re forced to overspend by a few dollars, adjust your budget accordingly.
All things told, there are countless ways to build a quality team during a startup but I’m convinced that all of them begin with preparing a solid game plan and end with precise execution. Taking the time ahead of time to pencil out a detailed strategy and carrying out that plan faithfully is the best way to build a true dynasty.
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