Redraft leagues remain the most popular format in fantasy football, but dynasty leagues have a lot to offer as well. Did you ever want to be the general manager of your favorite team? This “front office” mentality works very well in dynasty leagues; whereas you’re solely focused on winning right away in redraft leagues, the focus in dynasty is to “win sustainably”. Tom Brady may be the better quarterback for this season, but if Justin Fields offers more value long-term, he might be the better option. The opportunity to attempt to build a dynasty of your favorite players is very appealing, and there are so many other benefits to partaking in a dynasty league.
Today, I’ll be introducing my dynasty rankings, updated after the first three weeks of the season. By now, we’ve gotten to get an idea of what the roles are going to be for each player, and which rookies are going to contribute. Thus, now would appear to be an appropriate time to shift our attention from redraft leagues to dynasty leagues!
Ranking players in dynasty can be very difficult; you have to balance out their short-term production with their long-term production. Generally, as I ranked these players, I’d ask myself where I envisioned them being ranked this year and the year after that. Therefore, you’re balancing out the immediate impact that a player can have with the potential for them to be elite players in the future. Obviously, a player is going to have a different valuation for a contending team than they will for a rebuilding team, yet this is the balance we have to find to make them as context-neutral as possible.
In redraft leagues, volume (opportunities) is the ultimate source of fantasy production. In dynasty leagues, though, you’ll want to focus more on the talents of a player. It’s hard to know what role a player is going to have on a year-to-year basis, but if you bet on a talented player getting a lot of touches, you’re probably using an optimal process. Draft capital and contracts are also two factors that cannot be ignored; the investments teams make in a player often define the opportunities given to them. In the end, projecting volume can be quite difficult, but it’s something we have to do in order to create the most accurate dynasty rankings possible.
While I’ll list my top-300 players, I’d pay more attention to the positional rankings. This is where you’ll get a complete deep dive (50 quarterbacks, 100 running backs, 125 wide receivers, 50 tight ends) into each player, and since positional valuation depends greatly on your team’s needs, the overall rankings may end up carrying less weight. Enough rambling; let’s get to the rankings!
Photos from Icon Sportswire and Dave Adamson/Unsplash | Adapted by Justin Redler (@reldernitsuj on Twitter)