There’s no denying redraft will always be the most popular version of fantasy football. Nevertheless, dynasty fantasy football increases in popularity every year. As the fantasy community continues to grow, so does each subset of the community, including dynasty.
With many fantasy managers discovering dynasty for the first time, it’s important to have a one-stop shop for all the of basics you need to know.
How Does Dynasty Fantasy Football Work?
Before we get into what separates this from other formats, I want you to remember the most important fact about dynasty fantasy football: It’s still fantasy football. The goal, as always, is to compile a roster of players that score the most possible points on a weekly basis.
Where dynasty diverges from redraft is how you go about constructing the optimal roster. In redraft leagues, the current season has no bearing on the following one. No matter how successful or unsuccessful you are this season, everyone starts the next one at the same point, with a clean slate.
In dynasty leagues, there is only one time at which every manager has the full player pool at their disposal — the initial startup draft. After that, every active NFL player will remain with the team that drafted him unless and until he is cut, traded, or retires.
Dynasty Fantasy Football Never Ends
I know what you may be thinking: “What do you mean by ‘never ends?'” Well, until your league disbands, it quite literally does not end.
The fantasy football season goes from September until the first week in January. After Week 17, a champion is crowned, and the season ends. That’s correct, and that isn’t going to change — well until the NFL inevitably adds an 18th game when they negotiate the next CBA, but that’s neither here nor there.
In the regular season, dynasty leagues operate just like any other league. The difference is after Week 17 is over, your job as a manager is not — it just shifts into offseason mode.
If this sounds like a lot of work, allow me to disavow you of any concerns about this being something you have to focus on 365 days a year. Much like the real NFL, dynasty leagues have downtime. Just because you can do something every day of the year doesn’t mean you will.
With that said, this is the appeal of dynasty fantasy football leagues. If you play fantasy football of any kind, you probably love football. But when you compare the length of an NFL season to the NBA or MLB, you can’t help but notice how much shorter it is. That’s not even accounting for the fact that those sports have games every day during their seasons, and the NFL does not.
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The NFL has managed to find a way to make itself relevant year-round. Between free agency, the draft, and the schedule’s release, the NFL has enough key events in the offseason to keep people engaged even during the downtime. As for fantasy football specifically, it can’t be anything other than 17 weeks. We can’t manufacture more football games.
If you only play redraft leagues, you’re really not doing anything from January to August. You may read articles, listen to podcasts, and keep yourself up to date on the latest news from the NFL, but you don’t actually have any players on your team to manage.
The main appeal of dynasty fantasy football is the ability to make moves and improve your roster — even when no football games are being played. The idea is to emulate being a real general manager to the greatest extent possible, including building your team from the ground up.
How To Get Started in Dynasty Fantasy Football
There are dozens of different league formats, settings, and rules for fantasy football leagues. I certainly could not even dream of covering all of them in a single article. For the purposes of this primer, let’s stick with the basic tenets of dynasty leagues.
Choosing a Platform
This often goes overlooked as a relevant detail, but it’s actually a really impactful decision. Which platform you choose to host your league matters immensely. You need a platform with the ability to meet your league’s needs.
MORE: Which Dynasty Fantasy Platform Is Right for You?
MyFantasyLeague remains unmatched in terms of customization, but it also remains unmatched in terms of how awful its user interface is. What do your league-mates care more about? Flexible settings or functionality? Are you willing to sacrifice the user experience in order to implement certain settings that don’t exist on other, more mainstream platforms?
If you don’t require any complex settings, a more user-friendly platform like Yahoo or Sleeper will suffice.
League and Roster Size
The most common leagues will have 12 teams. That’s certainly not a strict requirement, though. There are plenty of leagues out there with 10, 14, or even 16 teams. For true beginners, even an eight-team league is acceptable, although I would not advise that for dynasty.
As you gain more experience, you will inevitably want to expand to 10 or 12 teams. While it’s possible to add expansion teams just like the NFL has over the years, that comes with a whole host of additional issues you would rather not deal with if you can avoid it.
When I first started playing over 20 years ago, I did an eight-team league with some high school friends for about five years. In retrospect, it was kind of silly that 75% of the league made the playoffs and everyone had a super team.
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But at 15 years old, we didn’t know any better … and it didn’t matter. We were learning. Most importantly, everyone cared … a lot. Those leagues provided the foundation for all of the knowledge I now have about this game.
After two decades of experience with many different styles of leagues, I’ve settled on 12 teams as the optimal size. I occasionally dabble in 14-teamers, but never anything else. But by all means, do whatever it is that you find the most enjoyable. 16-team leagues exist, and even 20-team leagues exist. There is no objectively correct way to play. Do what you find to be fun.
The number of teams typically impacts the roster size. With more teams, you will likely have fewer roster spots. Regardless of league size, though, dynasty rosters are quite large. They typically range anywhere from 20-30 players.
Initial Startup Draft
Another common thread across all dynasty fantasy football leagues is the initial startup draft. You have to kick off your league somehow. This is the way you do it.
For your first draft, it will feel just like a redraft league (until you start drafting). It will either be in a snake or auction format.
The primary difference is how you navigate the draft room. You can’t only draft players based on how you expect them to perform in the upcoming season. It’s imperative that you construct a team with players you are confident can produce for at least a couple of years.
MORE: Dynasty Fantasy Football Startup Draft Strategies
Every subsequent draft beyond the initial startup will consist exclusively of rookies. If you don’t draft a player you want, the only way you can ever acquire him on your team is via trade — unless he gets dropped, in which case you probably don’t want him anymore anyway.
If it seems like the startup draft has a massive impact on the trajectory of your league, that’s because it does. How you go about drafting your team will set the stage for what you do over the next few years.
In this article, you can find different strategies to implement in your initial draft. It’s not as simple as just picking the best players for the upcoming season.
Rookie Draft
Depending on when your league has its initial startup draft, that year’s rookies may or may not be part of it. Either way, after the first season, the only draft you will have each year is the rookie draft.
Typically, the rookie draft is linear, just like the NFL Draft, and quite different from every other fantasy draft you’ve probably done. In a linear draft, the order of picks will be the same in each round — it does not snake. If you pick first in the first round, you will also pick first in the second round.
Dynasty leagues often determine the draft order for the rookie draft based on the reverse order of the previous season’s standings. The last-place team will pick first and the champion will pick last.
MORE: Dynasty Rookie Draft Strategies
Much like the NFL, the idea is to give the worst teams the best chance at securing the players that can turn their franchise around. That is why the worst teams get to pick first in every round.
It’s important to the health of a dynasty league to give the bad teams opportunities to turn their fortune around. The quickest path to a dynasty league folding is for a couple of juggernauts to form early, with around 1/3 of the league drawing dead.
There are plenty of fantasy managers who enjoy the challenge of turning an organization around, but even the most hardcore of gamers won’t be having fun if they come in last year after year after year. Eventually, managers are not going to want to pay into a league just to lose when they can easily join a new one and not be fighting an uphill battle.
While it’s important to give the bad teams a leg up on the rookies, we also don’t want to encourage tanking. When the draft order is purely based on the standings, you either want to make the playoffs or come in last. Anything in between is suboptimal.
In an effort to combat over-tanking, some leagues award the first overall pick in the rookie draft to the best team to miss the playoffs (i.e., the seventh-place team in a 12-team league). This encourages everyone to try all season, but it also can result in legitimately bad teams having no real path to turning things around.
Who you choose to play with in your league matters greatly. Depending on the type of managers in your league, it is up to you to decide how to balance helping bad teams become good while maintaining competitive integrity.
Are you starting up a league with a bunch of friends and acquaintances? If so, you probably don’t need to worry about the league folding early. But if your league is a bunch of randoms you found on the internet, you’re going to want safeguards in place.
MORE: What Is a Dynasty Rookie Draft? How It Works, Tips, and More
Rookie drafts typically span five rounds and consist exclusively of the players from the current year’s NFL Draft class. Some leagues opt to include un-rostered veterans in their rookie drafts, but most just allow veteran free agents to be added and dropped throughout the year.
I prefer rookie drafts to occur after the NFL Draft, but it is by no means a requirement. Your league is free to do whatever it wants. Your rookie draft can occur at any point between the end of one season and the start of the next.
If that means scheduling the rookie draft before we know where these players will be playing, it just creates a different challenge. There are pros and cons to every decision your commissioner makes.
In-Season
The in-season play is no different than any other fantasy football format. Assuming your league is a traditional head-to-head format, you will have your weekly matchups, then the playoffs, and then someone will be the champion.
Why Should You Join a Dynasty Fantasy Football League?
Dynasty leagues are not for everyone. There is nothing wrong with only doing redraft, only Best Ball, only DFS, or being someone who has fun betting on the games each week and rooting for players that way. Enjoy football in whichever way you want.
Perhaps you join a dynasty league, play a couple of seasons, and decide it’s not for you. That’s completely okay. Everyone has their own preferences.
I know people who don’t play in dynasty at all because they just don’t prefer it. I know people who do dozens of dynasty leagues and are joining new ones every year because they love it so much.
The beauty of fantasy football, especially the modern game, is the wide array of options to play.
MORE: Dynasty vs. Keeper Leagues
Whether you choose to play dynasty or not, it’s easy to understand why those who do play love it so much. As managers, we want to “do stuff.” How many of you have played with that manager who loves to trade — the person willing to make trades just for the sake of trading? Why do you think that is? It’s fun to “do stuff!”
There is quite literally nothing you can do with a redraft roster from the months of January to August. You don’t have a team. Researching and preparing for the upcoming season is not the same as actually managing a roster.
Dynasty leagues reward managers by providing an opportunity to make changes to their roster for most of the calendar year. Of course, there won’t be trades every day. There won’t even be trades every month. But it’s fun to have a means of reacting to all the latest news. Many managers enjoy the simple act of negotiating a trade, even if one doesn’t end up materializing.
One of the main reasons I play in anywhere from 8-10 leagues every season is because I love fantasy football and want to be able to play the entire year. If I played in just one league and my team was very clearly terrible by mid-season, that’s it. I’m done.
Although I’ve never found myself eliminated in all of my leagues before at least the semi-finals, it’s possible. If I play long enough, it will probably happen. In redraft, there is no guarantee of being able to compete for more than 14 weeks.
In dynasty formats, there is no risk of being done. Whether your team is a championship contender or completely cooked for the current season, there is always something for you to do. That something just changes, based on which direction your team is headed.
In a redraft league, when your team is bad, you can try and make moves to fix it, but sometimes there’s nothing you can do. Even the best fantasy football players in the world can’t overcome a roster riddled with injuries or busts (or both).
Once you get to eight losses, that’s pretty much it. Typically, fantasy managers know when their team is buried long before they are mathematically eliminated.
In dynasty leagues, accepting defeat for the current season doesn’t mean you stop caring and simply go through the motions of fielding a full lineup the rest of the year, waiting for it to end. Instead, your priorities merely shift. You still have managing to do. Your goal is just no longer to win, but to set yourself up to win next year.
Imagine you entered the season with a team you felt could make the playoffs and compete for a title. Unfortunately, things didn’t go your way. Your top player got hurt. Your sophomore breakout wide receiver failed to launch. A couple of your veteran stars declined. By midseason, you quickly realized that lifting the proverbial trophy was probably not going to be in the cards. You don’t stop playing. You just change the way you’re playing.
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I will be the first to admit that when I have a team that’s toast, I don’t care much anymore. I would never disrespect a league by failing to field a full lineup, but I’m not scouring the waiver wire for the slightest of advantages. I’m just going through the motions.
In dynasty, once your team is eliminated, you still have a reason to be active on the waiver wire. But rather than looking for players that can help you win now, you’re looking for anyone with a shot to see his value increase by the time next season rolls around.
When your redraft team is done, there are no trades to be made. Most leagues don’t even allow teams eliminated from playoff contention to make trades. In dynasty, the best time to trade is often when you’re already looking ahead to next year.
Ship off those older veterans with only a year or two left for young players with more long-term upside. The best part about dynasty fantasy football is the constant ability to play.
I love watching football. I don’t miss a single game. But, like most fantasy managers, my favorite part of fantasy football is August. It’s the pre-draft process plus the draft itself. I love diving into data and information on players to make the best predictions possible about what they will do in the future.
We can’t control what happens in the games. There is a ton of variance in the week-to-week nature of fantasy football, and so many ways you can lose that there is no way to prevent it.
If variance slaps you in the face in a negative way, dynasty fantasy football allows you to continue the evaluation process throughout the season. The added bonus is if you do figure something out when it would otherwise be too little too late, you can still reap the benefits the next season.
If you hit on that breakout player in a redraft league, you will get to enjoy the fruits of your labor for one season. If you hit on that breakout player in a dynasty league, you may benefit from that for the next 5-10 years.
In 2017, Tyreek Hill was my guy. I drafted him quite literally in every league. As you may have imagined, that went quite well. But that was it. The cat was out of the bag. I reaped the benefits in 2017 (and a bit more in 2018 because people didn’t fully buy in), but then his price went up.
I wanted to draft Hill every year after that. But the value was gone…except in my keeper and dynasty leagues. In one of those leagues, I’m still reaping the rewards of that great call in 2017 to this day.
If you read through this and decide it’s not for you, that’s perfectly fine. I’ve played in all different types of fantasy football leagues, and traditional redraft remains my favorite. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a place for dynasty formats. There are plenty of people out there who can’t get enough of dynasty fantasy football.
If you feel up to the challenge, give it a shot — you may just fall in love.