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With the NFL Draft just a month away, we are in peak Dynasty Startup season. Fantasy managers everywhere are feeling the itch to hop in a draft, but it’s not yet time for Redraft leagues to kick off (unless you’re hitting the Best Ball streets). Instead, now is a great time to join a new league in my favorite fantasy football format, Dynasty. Whether you’re about to enter your first Dynasty league or you are a seasoned Dynasty veteran, this article will go over some general strategy tips for how to approach a Dynasty Draft Startup. Let’s get started!
Dynasty Draft Startup Strategy Guide
Pick An Approach
One of the best things about Dynasty fantasy is that there are truly multiple ways to win. There are of course a variety of strategies in redraft leagues, but every manager’s goal is always the same: Score the most points this season. In Dynasty, that’s not the case.
You can be all in on the current season, trading away future picks and young players in exchange for productive studs, regardless of their future outlooks. But because a Dynasty league will (hopefully) last for multiple seasons, you can also look to the future. This can mean anything from slightly prioritizing younger players to completely gutting your current roster of productive players in exchange for future picks.
The decision of what approach you are taking is one you should make during your startup draft. If you don’t make this decision, you might end up with an unhelpful mix of aging stars and young, unproductive prospects. I recommend allowing your league and draft board to decide which strategy you will take. If your leaguemates are allowing productive vets to fall, swoop them up and go for the win in year one. If everyone else is taking a more redraft-like approach, consider targeting youth and hoarding draft picks.
Which approach you choose isn’t as important as simply having a plan in mind. Win-now, win-later, and balanced techniques can all be very successful. If you want more specific advice on how to implement different startup draft strategies, I wrote a full breakdown of Dynasty Startup draft strategies last off-season. For now, though, my advice is simply to have a strategy, whatever it may be.
Take Advantage of Trades
Now that you have an overall strategy in mind, it’s time to take advantage of my favorite thing about Dynasty Fantasy Football: trading. Because different managers will have different timelines in mind for their rosters, it’s much easier to make win-win trades in a Dynasty format. If you’ve decided on a win-now approach, consider moving some future picks to trade up and snag another stud player. If you’re already planning on tanking for Arch Manning, maybe you want to auction off one of your top Startup picks for future capital.
Of course, you can still make classic trades if you simply value things differently than your leaguemates. This is where taking a tiers-based approach to drafting can be very helpful. If you realize that your pick falls just outside of what you view as a clear tier break, try to trade up. On the flipside, if you are struggling to decide between multiple players whom you view as roughly equivalent, that’s a great sign that you should trade down. Hopefully, one of your leaguemates loves one particular guy in that tier and will be willing to pay the price to move up.
Because Startup drafts are usually down as slow drafts, with multiple hours per pick, you can make trades while on the clock. Don’t be the manager who wastes hours every pick waiting on an offer that never materializes, but trading on the clock is usually easier. The manager acquiring a pick knows exactly who will be available, but they aren’t locked into a given player.
Pro Tip: Trade Calculators
As much as I love trading, I should include a word of warning. Making a few bad trades is the fastest way to tank your Dynasty team’s future. This is especially true if you start trading future rookie draft picks. A first-round rookie pick is the most consistent way to get a new stud onto your roster. Don’t give yours up lightly. I recommend running any potential moves through a trade calculator, especially if you are new to the Dynasty format.
Trade calculator sites get a bad rap, but they are great resources for sanity-checking potential moves. Barring extreme cases (don’t trade your first-round startup pick for 10 future third-rounders), a trade being considered even in a calculator is a good sign that it’s not too egregious. Some sites even have the option to include startup picks in a hypothetical trade. Others don’t, but you can estimate the value of a given pick by inserting the player whose ranking on the site you’re using matches up with the pick (i.e., if you’re trading the 65th overall pick, find the 65th-ranked player and use them as a stand-in).
There are tons of Dynasty trade calculators out there, both free and premium. Player Profiler’s Trade Analyzer is an invaluable resource for gauging values.
Player Profiler’s customizable Trade Analyzer is an invaluable asset for Dynasty football managers.
I also recommend FantasyCalc.com, which calculates trade values based on real Dynasty trades. KeepTradeCut is another very popular free site, although their crowdsourced values often overvalue potential and future picks and undervalue current production. Find a site that works for you and use it to check other’s offers and craft your own … just don’t expect your leaguemates to accept a trade just because a given site says it’s “fair.”
Prioritize Value Over Positional Need
In redraft fantasy, it’s important to spread your draft resources relatively evenly among the four core positions (QB, RB, WR, and TE). Sure, sometimes you can wait to take your quarterback or tight end late in the draft. But in general, it’s not a good idea to grab multiple studs at one position at the expense of the rest of your roster. This is far less true in Dynasty.
For one, Dynasty lineups tend to be much larger, with tons of FLEX spots. True to their name, FLEX spots allow you to be more flexible in filling your lineup. If you’re stacked at a particular position, you will probably still be able to fit all of your studs in. And having, for example, a lackluster starting tight end is a lot less important when that slot represents just one of 10+ players instead of one of seven.
The long-term nature of Dynasty also encourages a position-agnostic approach to Startup drafts. With how fast things change in the NFL, what looks like a stacked position group right now could be a position of need by next off-season. It’s better to take the most valuable player, even if they won’t have a spot in your lineup right away, than force yourself to draft an unappealing option to fill a hole.
Get Your Guys
I’ve talked a lot about maximizing value in this article, but there’s a dirty secret hiding just below the surface. Any estimate of Dynasty value is based on rankings, and even the best Dynasty rankings will age terribly. Just three years ago, Najee Harris, Javonte Williams, and D’Andre Swift were all top five running backs in Dynasty ADP. Deshaun Watson, Russell Wilson, and Trey Lance were top 10 quarterbacks. We’ve been lucky in recent years to have consistent young studs at the top of the WR position, but we aren’t too far removed from the days of the consensus Dynasty WR1 overall being JuJu Smith-Schuster.
Things change fast. Look back at any Startup draft from even one or two years ago, let alone five years, and the vast majority of picks will look hilarious in hindsight. This can be a bit of a depressing notion, given how much time we all spend on this game. But I prefer to look at it as freeing. We’re all going to be wrong anyway. Get the guy you love, whether he plays for your favorite team or the fantasy gods told you in a dream that he will be a Hall of Famer. At the end of the day, this is a game, so have fun with it.
Also, check out these Dynasty pass-catchers to buy now in your Dynasty draft.
Ted Chmyz is a fantasy football contributor for PlayerProfiler. Find him on Twitter and Bluesky @Tchmyz for more fantasy content or to ask questions.
