By definition, Dynasty fantasy football leagues last a long time. This makes it all the more important for new leagues to get off to a solid start. Having a sound dynasty draft strategy and making solid selections comes a very close second. After all, you could be stuck with some of the players you draft for a long time!

 

 

 

We’re going to cover a LOT in this article. First up, we’ll get into some of the best rules, scoring, settings and start-up advice for creating a new dynasty league. After all, we need to make sure you get into a league before we can talk about a draft strategy!

What Is A Dynasty League In Fantasy Football?

Dynasty is a fantasy football format that goes all year round. And you can keep your players forever. It’s a never-ending story. 

Well, I guess you’ll probably want to drop those players if they retire. And there are dynasty leagues that end, unfortunately. That’s why today I’m taking a moment to share with you exactly how to set up your dynasty league so that it’s both the most fun AND it’s sustainable. 

Here are some tips for starting a dynasty league ranked in how important they are to ensuring you have a good time!

Suggestions For Setting Up Your Dynasty League

Since you are here and part of the Fantasy Alarm #FAmily, that means that you’re likely more plugged into football than your leaguemates, and you’re also probably smarter and more attractive too. That means that you are probably going to be the one that has to initiate the dynasty league and get things going. 

If you are reading this because you are joining a new dynasty league that someone else is the commissioner of, you’ll still want to read this section so that you can use a bit of politics to make sure the league is set up properly. If you are joining an existing league and the rules are already set up, maybe then you can just skip to the “Strategy” section. Anyway, here’s some advice:

Leaguemates

There are a handful of things that are important, but this one is the absolute biggest. In a redraft league, if one of your leaguemates turns out to be a jerk, you can simply not invite them back the following year. In dynasty league fantasy football, you can’t do that. 

These people are expected to own their teams and make decisions that might have ramifications FIVE years from now. Moves that have ripple effects on the entire league. It is absolutely CRITICAL that you choose people who are going to be engaged in the league and aren’t going to bail after things go poorly in the first season. 

The biggest thing that makes dynasty football fun is that you make moves and negotiate deals all year. There is nothing more boring than a dyno league that doesn’t trade or talk trash all year – that’s the whole reason you are setting the league up!

Bored Christopher Walken GIF

Vote

Voting is the next important factor here. And it will make your life as commissioner a LOT easier. You know the basic structure of what you want the league to be, so you set that up in advance and find leaguemates that are on board. But some of the details – like trade deadline, bench spots, the ability to spend FAAB – you can put to a vote. 

For me, it’s not only about getting things right but it’s about taking pressure off yourself. If you rule with an iron fist, that leaves room for complaints. It makes your leaguemates feel like they have no say. If you vote on a couple things, it not only gives the league a voice, but it sets the precedent for how future disputes will be resolved. 

It’s hard for someone to be TOO upset if you can turn around and say “well, we did vote on it”. Not to mention, you already took care of the most important aspect first which was filling your league with good people. So, you shouldn’t run into much trouble. 

Dues

Dues are a little bit trickier in dynasty than a normal league. And I have two pieces of advice on that. First, keep them reasonable. I know we all want to win a lot of money but, if the buy-in is $300 and someone has a terrible draft or makes a bad trade, they might look at their team and say, “I’m not paying $300 for this trash, I’m out”. 

In Dynasty, it’s more about the pride that comes with being able to tell the football future anyway, so keep it light enough that people will still be willing to pony up with a bad team. If you want to play high stakes, go to a site like MyFFPC.com to do it. And, if you are doing that, use promo code COOP and they’ll give you $25 with your first deposit if you deposit $35 or more!

The second piece of advice depends on how well you know your leaguemates or trust them, but I like to collect dues for the first two years in year one. So, if the buy in is $25, you collect $50 in the first year. The extra year essentially serves as a deposit. If someone wants to quit the league after the first season, they need to help find someone to pony up the $25 for their team. 

It’s as simple as that. It helps prevent people from mortgaging the future of the team and quitting the league. If you trust that everyone is in it for the long haul, you might not need to do that, but I advise you to go that route. I’ve seen teams that are so bad that the only way to entice someone to take them over is for the commissioner or league to eat the dues for a year. You don’t want that.

Tanking

There are two ways to tank: a right way and a wrong way.

  • Right Way – Trade all of your aging, good players for picks or young upside players so that you can naturally lose and get a better draft slot.
  • Wrong Way – Purposefully bench all your good players to both come in last and keep your good players.

Personally, I hate the “wrong way”. The worst teams should get the best picks – not the team that benched all their players to weasel their way into a good pick. I personally like to make a “gentleman’s rule” that everyone should always be putting out their best lineup. 

Other commissioners will institute a system for “ideal lineups”, which basically just calculates best ball style what the points would be. If you think some of your leaguemates might be lazy and miss setting lineups, this is the way to go. A third way to handle tanking is a lottery system like the one the NBA uses to de-incentivize tanking. 

Dynasty Draft

Now is the perfect time to do start-up drafts because the NFL Draft is already over; the player pool is set. If you wait until after the 2024 season but before the 2025 Draft, you will have a decision to make about how to handle rookies: draft the prospects or draft picks for the rookie draft? I personally prefer to draft the picks because there is already enough random chance involved without having to guess where guys get drafted, or if they get drafted at all.

Trades

You know what else I hate? Vetoes. Vetoing trades is nonsense in regular leagues and it’s even crazier in dynasty. No one knows what is going to happen. Just imagine last year someone offered Puka Nacua and Kyren Williams for Justin Fields – that trade probably would have been vetoed because Justin Fields was “too valuable”. You have to let people play. 

You know what the secret to that is? Tip number one: have good people in your league. If someone is colluding, which is cheating, don’t “veto the trade”. Kick them out. If your friend doesn’t know how to play, holding a public vote on how stupid they are is not the answer. Either help them or get them out of the league. Voting on opinions in a game where no one knows what is going to happen is crazy.

Waivers

Use a Free Agent Auction Budget (FAAB) system. It’s light years better than the old revolving waiver system. Every decision in dynasty is one zillion times more important than a typical redraft league – you could have these players for DECADES. Tom Brady was a 6th round pick rostered behind Drew Bledsoe who was just given a 10-year, $100 million dollar contract. 

Safe to say, Tom Brady wasn’t being drafted in any dynasty leagues. So that means that at some point, he was added by someone off waivers – which changed that person’s entire team. For 20 years. Same goes for guys like Adam Thielen or Wes Welker who were undrafted free agents who didn’t break out until they were like 27 years old. 

You don’t want those players to be randomly distributed by chance or getting lucky with timing. The people who know what they are doing should be able to allocate their resources to acquire the good players before they break out. Since you are a Fantasy Alarm member, you are practically a football genius, so you want a system that rewards smart players.

Format

The format is entirely up to you and there are obviously a ton of options, but these are my recommendations. One thing I will universally recommend is having a couple IR spots – especially with short benches. It’s a long-term game so it is silly for folks to have to make decisions on whether to drop a guy with a torn ACL to make room. 

I also universally recommend half-point PPR or PPR over standard as standard leagues are old hat. But again, you are the commissioner, so do what you want. Here are some other suggestions based on league size:

Small Leagues (8-10 Players)

For this you can do either half point or full point. Given the high level of talent available at all positions due to the small number of teams, I would recommend making it either two QB or Superflex meaning you can start QBs at a flex spot. 

If possible, I would also do a tight end premium so that high end tight ends have similar value to WR/RB. That way there aren’t a bunch of good tight ends on waivers at all times, which often happens in small/shallow leagues. 

I’d also have as many starting spots in the form of flexes as your leaguemates will allow since everyone should have pretty loaded rosters – say, QB, RB, RB, WR, WR, WR, TE, Superflex, Flex, Flex, Flex. That keeps things interesting and helps separate the top teams from the bottom. Waivers should be plentiful regardless so it’s okay to have deeper benches as well.

Medium Leagues (12-14 Players)

This is the sweet spot, in my opinion, so you can be much more flexible. At 14 man especially, it can be difficult for teams to field viable starters, so I would recommend NOT doing two QB (since that would be 28 starting QBs and there are only 32 NFL teams). I’d also go with full PPR which opens up the player pool. 

I prefer deep benches but, if you have beginners in your league, you might not want to make them too deep because that can create a large skill gap from players in the know to players who are a bit newer. Fantasy gamers with a limited knowledge base benefit greatly from being able to find viable fill-ins on waivers. 

I know you want to win, but it’s a difficult balance in dynasty because you also want to make sure people are having a good experience so they don’t quit. Think of it like a house party. If you are just destroying everyone on the Beer Pong table and not making sure the party is fun for everyone, some people are just going to go home. In dynasty, you need everyone engaged for the party to work.

Large Leagues (16+)

In this format, I would recommend doing a PPR best ball league with taxi squads. It can be so hard to field a roster and make start/sit decisions once you are talking about an NFL teams’ WR4 or 5 that this format just allows people to focus on what’s important: rostering the best long-term assets.

  • Best Ball – You field a roster of players. The site you play on automatically takes the best players from your team each week and slots them into the starting spots, so you don’t need to set your lineup every week. This allows teams to focus on collecting the best possible overall group of players which makes things easier for large leagues. We already have a whole section of articles on how best ball works with a cheat sheet and everything.
  • Taxi Squad- When “taxi squads” are in play, you have X number of players and Y number of those players are designated to your taxi squad and are not part of the pool that you can use in your lineup. So, they are essentially inactive. Say you have a 20-man active roster with four-man taxi squads. You can own 24 total players, but four of them will not be eligible for your lineup unless you promote or demote them. This allows teams to stash players (like handcuffs for instance) even though they may be putting up zeros. Nothing better than having a friend give up on a guy early then add him, stash him on the taxi squad and he breaks out.

Dynasty Draft Strategy - 2024 Fantasy Football

FINALLY – the fun part. You went through all the trouble of setting up this league and getting the perfect leaguemates, so now it’s time to destroy them.

By having a dynasty draft strategy that you stick to in 2024, you’ll prove to be no match for the competition. 

Early Draft

This might feel like common sense, but the very beginning of a dynasty draft is going to consist of the best, young players. For instance, not only is CeeDee Lamb great, but he’s also only 25 years old. You can start him now, you can start him later; he’s great. It’s a no brainer. 

But, at a certain point, these players are going to dry up and you will be left with either young unproven guys who are risky or older talents who may not have many years left in the tank. Regardless of your draft strategy, you’re going to have to make some critical decisions. 

Middle Rounds

This is a potentially controversial topic, but I think it’s a bad idea to try to spend the ENTIRE draft trying to balance youth and talent. In the first round or two, the picks are obvious. After that, unless you hit the nail right on the head, trying too hard to balance young and old is how you end up with a mediocre team that comes in 6th. 

And that’s how you end up in “dynasty purgatory,” because you aren’t winning now but you also aren’t doing poorly enough to get a good pick. You are just coasting along in mediocrity while your older players get too old and your young lottery tickets bust.

So, my dynasty draft advice is this: depending how the first few rounds go, make a decision. 

If you end up taking guys like CMC, Josh Jacobs, Joe Mixon early on, then go all in and try to win now. RBs have a short shelf life. Trade your future picks. Draft guys like Davante Adams and Travis Kelce. Put your name on the trophy right away. If you win the league, then your dues are paid for for at least a few years, so go get it. I personally skew this way on most occasions. 

On the flipside, maybe you find value in some younger players like Marvin Harrison or De’Vone Achane early on, but you don’t feel like your team is quite ready to win right away. In that case, maybe YOU are the one that trades FOR future picks. Move your assets forward. Go young. Maybe you finish last, but then get the first pick the following year. You draft that stud rookie RB and now are poised to win multiple years. 

What I like to do is look around after the first round or two and see what other people are doing – if a lot of people are going young, I go all in on winning now because the value will be there. If multiple people are clearly playing to win now, I might go young.

Your dynasty fantasy football strategy can’t and won’t be fluid for your entire draft. But you can be opportunistic. At some point, commit to a direction and go for it. 

It’s a lot of fun this way because it really facilitates trading. For instance, if you are going all in now and your buddy is going young, then you can trade that guy a bunch of picks for players to help you win year 1 or 2. You win now, your buddy wins later. Win-win! Meanwhile, the rest of your league is scratching their heads wondering why two teams just dominated the first five years of the league while THEY all sat in fantasy purgatory.

Late Rounds

This is where you ABSOLUTELY need to know your dynasty league format. If you are in a 10-man league that starts 1 QB, 2 RB, 2 WR, 1 TE and 1 Flex, then guys like Tyler Boyd or Samaje Perine do literally nothing for you. Unless your team is absolutely atrocious, they are NEVER going to crack your lineup. 

So, in this case, you should only be shooting for upside plays. Go after unproven rookies, look for mobile QBs, take stabs on random athletic tight ends. Forget the boring guys. If you are in a deeper league that starts like 15 players though, maybe Tyler Boyd IS a valuable piece. Maybe Tyler Lockett will be in your lineup every single week. 

That’s why format is so key – especially for best ball. Make sure you have enough viable players to field a lineup. With your very last bench spot, you always want to go big since you will likely need to drop guys to waivers anyway, but you have to make sure you have a solid foundation. 

Last Piece Of Advice

Here’s my last piece of advice: have fun. Like we said earlier, if you are in it for the money, go over to MyFFPC.com, use promo code COOP and beat up on some strangers for some big cash prizes. If you are starting a league that you are going to be the commissioner of, set it up with some friends. 

Draft the players you like. Watch their career grow. Or watch it crash and burn. Either way, if you keep the right mindset about it, you’ll have some laughs and enjoy football season just a little more. At the end of the day, that’s what this is all about!

2024 Fantasy Football: Related Draft Guide Articles

Enhance your understanding of 2024 fantasy football with our other draft guide articles, packed with additional insights and advice for the upcoming season: