Spring of 2018, scrolling through my Twitter feed I stumbled upon a tweet about a 24-team 2-copy Superflex IDP Dynasty League. I didn’t know what Superflex or Dynasty meant but it sounded fun. In my mind, it was like building a Madden franchise, so I joined the league.
I really had no idea how to draft or what rankings to follow. I was always very good in my redraft home leagues, but it was difficult to adjust my rankings. It was the middle of the offseason; I had no rankings for 2018 yet. I ended up opening FantasyPros and using the consensus rankings for dynasty. The problem was, I didn’t realize the rankings were for 1QB leagues.
My first pick was 1.23 and I drafted Michael Thomas. Five minutes later I changed my mind and traded him for the 2.08, a bump from the sixth to the fifth and a bump up from the 10th to the eighth. After some trading, I ended up with three second-round picks, one third, two fifth-round, and two eight-rounds. Up to that point, my team was Case Keenum, Dalvin Cook, Melvin Gordon, Mark Ingram, Keenan Allen, Stefon Diggs, Alshon Jeffery, and Travis Kelce. Not bad for my first time as a dynasty drafter (let’s ignore I had no QBs).
Nevertheless, throughout the years my draft strategy has changed significantly after I started learning from my flagrant mistakes. It was a tough process; none of the analysts I followed (Fabiano, Rank, Harmon, etc.) talked about dynasty, and in my hometown, Monterrey, Mexico, nobody played dynasty fantasy football.
Now that I have made mistake after mistake, it could be useful for you to learn from my experience and start in a better place than I did. Here I’ll talk about my main five errors and how I overcame them.
Mistake 1 – Recency Bias and RB value
In redraft, I’m an RB lover. I hate Zero-RB drafters. Since my first year playing (2010), I’ve almost always started with two RBs in my first three rounds. In dynasty, everything changes. RBs are still important but their shelf life is MUCH shorter than any other position. Pro Football Reference made a study to find more about shelf life using data of every NFL player that was active after 1998. They found out that RBs tend to have a decline in their performance at 27 years of age. Meanwhile, pass catchers start declining at about 31 years and QBs at about 33.
In October 2017 when I traded for Todd Gurley in the middle of his amazing season, age was not an issue. He was only 23 years old and crushing the league. I decided to completely ignore his multiple knee problems and fell in love with his great start of the season. I traded away Mark Ingram (28), Stefon Diggs (24), and Travis Kelce (28) for him and Jarvis Landry.
I enjoyed about two years of amazing production from Gurley, which was awesome, but I endangered the future of my WR and TE rooms because of my RB love and recency bias. This DOES NOT mean that you should not trade for RBs; it means you should have in mind the fast decline in his production, the hype train RBs normally have during the season, and the injury history players have.
Mistake 2 – Redraft Mentality
Redraft mentality does not work here. One-year rentals are not very valuable in a startup. You can’t hope to be streaming QBs or have a late-round grab, even in 1QB dynasty leagues.
RBs do not have much more value than WRs. In the last five years, the total point decrease from the RB1 to the RB25 averages 240.72 points while the difference between the WR1 and the WR25 is 139.94. Nevertheless, a WR is much more durable, in dynasty terms, than an RB. Let’s go back to the 2017 season, only four top-24 RBs repeated the feat in 2020. Of these four RBs, only three of those are still considered top-24 RBs in Sleeper’s ADP. Meanwhile, 11 WRs were top-24 WRs in both 2017 and 2020 and six of those are still considered top-24 WR assets. Durability closes the value gap between RBs and WRs.
Remember, you may be very good at redraft leagues, but dynasty is a different monster. You need to have two different rankings, and a long-term vision to succeed in dynasty.
Mistake 3 – Overvaluing Your Team
Stop lying to yourself. When it’s time to rebuild it’s time to rebuild. When your team is a middle-of-the-pack team you need to either go for all or start rebuilding, if not you’ll be stuck. The mistake that hurt me the most in my first dynasty league was overvaluing my team. I always thought my squad was ready to be the champion and a true competitor. In fact, I was always near the price as a top-six team, but I never pulled the trigger on trades that could take me over the fence.
Everybody hates the guy who overvalues his assets and undervalues other teams in trade negotiations. Please don’t be that guy.
Mistake 4 – Not Trusting My Process
When you start going into the fantasy world you start hearing A LOT of opinions. If you disagree with a guy who has 10k followers, it does not mean you are wrong. Trust your own process, it still hurts me when I don’t trust mine. I always believed Dak Prescott was a top-eight Dynasty QB, and I always believed he was way better than Carson Wentz. Nonetheless, that was not the popular opinion in 2018.
I picked Wentz over Dak in a trade, and I still cry about that decision. Throughout the years this process has been tweaked and improved. I’ve started to make notes mid-season on players’ progress; I’ve started consuming a lot of podcasts; I’ve started paying attention to rookies, vacated touches, target share, and backfield splits. Fantasy football information keeps evolving and growing, you should too.
Mistake 5 – Trade Future Picks and Ignore Rookies
As you can recall from the beginning of the article, my QB room was AWFUL in my first year. I had Case Keenum, Nick Foles, and Tyrod Taylor, so I started trading my future picks for QBs (I even got Andrew Luck about a month before he retired). Trading future picks is okay, they are assets and I have no problem with trading for them or away. My mistake was that, since I had no rookie picks in my ONLY dynasty league, I didn’t study the incoming rookies.
Remember I’m Mexican and live in Mexico, so I don’t normally watch college games (they are not on TV). I only know the popular guys. So, when I didn’t study profiles, landing spots, and depth charts I had a significant gap and disadvantage against my league mates. Nowadays, to overcome the disadvantage of having no live games, I usually keep track of top players throughout Heisman trophy nominees and rookie trackers on popular platforms. In the offseason, I watch film on YouTube, study depth charts, track vacated touches, and hear different experts’ opinions across the fantasy football community. It’s important to not only search for opinions that are the same as yours, but you also need to hear opposite opinions and rethink your values. Trust your process without ignoring other people’s processes.
Going back to the point of when to trade future picks, don’t be afraid to trade them for one-year rentals. Be aware of how the league values rookie picks throughout the year and try to take advantage of the hype cycle. Even though in startups I don’t usually like to draft one-year rentals, when you are halfway through a championship run, one-year rentals and old players could push your team to the next step. It’s all about winning, nobody cares that you are a constant playoff contender if you never fight for the big prize.
Always keep studying, keep grinding to find value. You can always trade into the draft if you love a specific player.
After learning about these five (and some other) mistakes I started designing my own fantasy strategy that has helped me out building some amazing teams these last few weeks. In the next section of the article, I will introduce you to my Ten Dynasty Commandments.
Julio’s Ten Dynasty Commandments
- Draft value, always look for value, fallers, and bargains.
- You should always target a top-eight QB with either of your first two picks.
- Young RBs are preferred (24 or less) but we are not scared of older ones. I like to pair up a young one and an oldie. (Henry & Dobbins for example)
- Stash WRs. After the RB40 you are not finding anything important. Go for a lot of WRs with big upside.
- Everybody likes to trade out of the first round. Do it smartly. If the value is not good, you should secure your franchise QB.
- Give names to your startup picks. Understand the draft board to see which players are going to fall in each round. This will help you understand the value of each pick and make trading easier.
- Don’t be afraid to have your own rankings. You will learn and have a lot of fun. It’s better to make your own mistakes than paying for somebody else’s mistakes.
- Include tiers in your rankings. This will help you identify drops in values thru the draft board. When you identify this you can start trading up and down smartly.
- Read articles, listen to podcasts, everything. Hearing other opinions will only enrich yours.
- Have fun and make new friends.
Hey, thanks for reading the article. My DMs are always open to any question, critic, or fantasy advice in any format. You can find me on Twitter @MisterMartinez9.
