dynasty strategy

Dynasty Strategy: Going All In

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In Dynasty Leagues you are either rebuilding, retooling, or going all-in. For some of us, the fun in a dynasty league is rebuilding or retooling our team. Hell, isn’t that the reason you chose the worst-rated team in Madden franchise mode to build them back up from the bottom to get your hands on the Vince Lombardi Trophy. Sometimes the lines can get blurred when you’re in the retooling phase. You’re one or maybe two players away from putting you over the top and one or two away from forcing your hand into a rebuild.I’ve talked about doing the rebuild for your dynasty league. Now let’s talk about going all-in. Although not as “scary” as a full rebuild, there are some things that you need to keep in mind as you push the chips to the center of the table.WHO ELSE IS IN ALL-IN MODE?Everyone is operating on a different timeline. As noted before, you are either rebuilding, retooling, or going all-in. Take an honest assessment of your team and your opponents’ teams. Every player in fantasy should be viewed as a stock, either rising or dropping. If your players are rising then you’re headed for, or on the cusp of, all-in mode.CONGRATULATIONS! You’re almost there.As fun as it is rebuilding a team, we’re ultimately playing to win it all. To rub it in our friend’s face, indulge ourselves in the spoils of a successful season. But how do you put yourself over the top, ensuring a victory over your fellow “all-in comrades”?Simple, get veterans.Rookies are coveted in dynasty leagues. They’re your team’s future, the foundation on which your team will be built on for future seasons’ glories.Here’s a fun stat from last year, because I know we all love stats. Baker Mayfield, Saquon Barkley, Calvin Ridley, and Chris Herndon were all the highest scoring rookies at their respective positions last year.All of these rookies finished outside of the top 15 in scoring at their position last year, except for Saquon, who passes the eye test and looks to be a fantasy football god in the making and has “Zero to Hero,” from Hercules playing in my head every time I see highlights of him. Baker finished at QB16, Calvin at WR18, and Chris at TE15.

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Using VBD to Determine Your Chances of Contention

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Sometimes in dynasty fantasy football, it can be hard to know if your roster is worthy of a championship run or not. There are stacked teams, but this is a high variance game that we so love, so even the stacked teams find ways not to win sometimes. Today I’ll show you how to quantifiably show you are in the ballpark of contention for either a playoff spot or a championship run.

How do we do that, Mike? Well, if you’ve read my stuff before, you know I love using VBD (Value Based Drafting) for a variety of subjects. If you haven’t read some of it before, I’ve previously shown you how to game your league format using the concept, as well as quantifying how much tight-end-premium scoring really matters. A lot can be learned from comparing players to “replacement level”. That’s the very basic definition of VBD if you’re unfamiliar with the concept.

Alright already, let’s get into it then! First off, VBD is built off projections. So you will have to find your favorite set of, hopefully fairly granular projections, and get them into a player database. Once you have this, you can apply your league’s scoring format to the season-long projections for every player to determine just how many points each player projects to score, specifically for your league. For this article, I’m using my good buddy @FF_TomB ‘s season-long projections. It’s honestly better than anything I could have gotten put together this year, not having done so before. Plus he let me in to see how the “sausage is made” so to speak and I wholeheartedly approve of his methodology. I also held a contest on Twitter to decide whose league to break down. My fellow “815” guy @JasonTran guessed my favorite Chicago Bear of all time correctly.

If you don’t know who Peanut Tillman is, look him up. He’s a genuinely cool person outside of the sport too. But…that’s not why you clicked the link to this article!

Scoring / Starting Requirements

Here are the scoring and starting requirements for Jason’s league:

As you can see here, it’s a relatively normal starting lineup for an offense only Superflex league. Flex heavy lineups allow for some cool roster construction techniques compared to more rigid starting lineup settings. A few things to note about their scoring that’s different from many leagues.

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Trading: Who, What, When, Where, and Why?

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If you are reading this article, you probably like to trade. It doesn’t take an avid mentalist to propose that thought, though. The vast majority of dynasty football players love to trade. This is understandable because of how crucial trading is to capture value for your rosters. I’ve compiled a list of trading theory and tips, many of which you probably already know. However, it’s always good to get a refresher on the best practices of trading.

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How Does a Quarterback’s Fantasy Production Impact Team Winning Percentage?

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Every year you see fantasy players draft quarterbacks because ‘The team will be passing more’ when the team is losing, but what if I told you this isn’t the way you should be looking at how to draft quarterbacks? Did you know, since the beginning of the 2000 NFL season (606 games), that for each fantasy football point per game scored by a quarterback, their team’s wins for the given season increases by roughly 0.4 wins.

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RB THEOREM: College 2kers vs Rookie Output and Career Gains Part II

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Larry Johnson (Penn State 271 att. 2,087 yards 7.7 YPA) The year was 2002 and Johnson had never seen more than 75 carries or 358 yards in a college season. He had been locked in a timeshare with somebody named Eric McCoo. When the trust was finally put in Johnson as a senior he rumbled

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Dynasty Hot Routes: Tales from Rookie Draft Heaven

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The mission of this article is to make our in-house experts sizzle and bristle over the hot button issues that face dynasty owners. Our experts make the entire route tree HOT as they address topics from the world of IDP, Devy, Start/Sit, Non-PPR (standard scoring), PPR, and everything in between. Try not to get burned

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In Celebration of Detective Pikachu DFF presents: Pokémon League: Superpowered Dynasty

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One of my favorite parts of the dynasty fantasy football league community is the unique league formats. There are salary cap leagues, there are PPR, PPC, IDP, Superflex, vampire, best ball, capitalist pigs, rolling bankroll leagues, auction everything, etc. The list goes on and on. One thing I had never heard of prior to this

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RB Theorem: College 2Kers vs Rookie Output and Career Gains

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Barry Sanders (Oklahoma State 344 att. 2,628 yards 7.6 YPA) – The year was 1988 and even my own mother knew he was a shoo-in to win the Heisman Trophy. In the NFL Sanders was a spectacle of epic effort and bake-n-shake. He finished his career 1,457 yards shy of the all-time leader (at the

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Buy, Sell, Hold – Seahawks Edition

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The 2018 Seattle Seahawks’ season did not go quite as planned after getting bounced in round one of the playoffs by the Dallas Cowboys. They then saw longtime safety Earl Thomas leave in free agency and sign with the Baltimore Ravens. Most recently they also traded away defensive end Frank Clark to the Kansas City

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Tips to Trading: The Actual Meaning of Sell High and Buy Low

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You feel a vibration in your pocket. You check your phone and have a notification that you have received a trade offer. Let’s be honest, you check it instantly. As you are looking at your phone, you think to yourself “what kind of offer is this. Are you kidding me?” Everyone has sent or received

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Hot Routes: NFL Draft and Dynasty Rookie Draft Strategy

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The mission of this article is to make our in-house experts sizzle and bristle over the hot-button issues that face dynasty owners. Our experts make the entire route tree HOT as they address topics from the world of IDP, Devy, Start/Sit, Non-PPR (standard scoring), PPR, and everything in between. Try not to get burned by

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Instant Reaction: 1st Round Dynasty Impact

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Below are a few spontaneous reactions to some of the picks in the 2019 NFL Draft — and how they may affect dynasty football: Arizona Cardinals: Kyler Murray, QB, Oklahoma Kyler Murray to the Cardinal’s first overall was the worst kept secret since 2010 when the Rams all but officially drafted Sam Bradford at the

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Dynasty Hot Routes: Why do Owners Fail?

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The mission of this article is to make our in-house experts sizzle and bristle over the hot button issues that face dynasty owners. Our experts make the entire route tree HOT as they address topics from the world of IDP, Devy, Start/Sit, Non-PPR (standard scoring), PPR, and everything in between. Try not to get burned

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Dynasty Hot Routes: Why Do Players Fail?

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The mission of this article is to make our in-house experts sizzle and bristle over the hot button issues that face dynasty owners. Our experts make the entire route tree HOT as they address topics from the world of IDP, Devy, Start/Sit, Non-PPR (standard scoring), PPR, and everything in between. Try not to get burned

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Dynasty and Redraft: A Symbiotic Relationship, Part 2

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In my previous article, I discussed how playing dynasty fantasy football could help you win your redraft leagues. I said the two types of leagues are symbiotic, similar to how the cyanobacteria and fungus team up to create the lichen. In this analogy, I thought it that a dynasty league would be the autotroph, since it

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Dynasty and Redraft: A Symbiotic Relationship, Part I

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In nature, the concept of symbiosis is when two organisms work together for their mutual benefit. This is different from parasitism where one organism is harmed while the other is helped. An example of parasitism is a tick on a dog. An example of symbiosis is the lichen. Cyanobacteria (algae) live in harmony with a

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