Jeff Hill has been playing fantasy football for more than a decade but decided to get into dynasty in 2013. He’s been listening to UTH since before the launch of the site, and has written for UTH and Global Football Today. Follow him at @hill_jeffrey.
This series is geared towards the redraft player who is transitioning to dynasty for the first time. Suddenly, there is a whole new level of depth to the strategy, and making a few critical mistakes in the first year or two can set a team back several years. Read on for some tips on how to avoid those mistakes.
Know Your League
If you’re new to dynasty, it can be overwhelming to attempt to rank players. Instead of just worrying about a player for the next four months, you now have to consider the range of outcomes for the rest of a player’s career. The easiest way to bypass all the stress about how to value one player vs. another is to simply get on Google and grab a set of dynasty rankings. While I have a whole list of issues with the creation of dynasty rankings and their flaws, the biggest problem with using them is often related to the reader – they don’t even apply to your league.
Usually, a set of assumptions comes with any list of rankings – the standard when it comes to dynasty is 1QB, 2RB, 3 WR, 1TE, and PPR scoring. But what if that’s not the exact setup of your league? Is your team non-PPR? Running backs will have more relative value to wide receivers in that format, and early down/goal line running backs will have more relative value to pass catching backs. Is your league super flex? If so, the value of quarterbacks will skyrocket. 2QB? Even higher. Are passing TDs 4 or 6 points? Is your league TE premium? How much is the premium? What about flexes – how many? Are they WR/RB, WR/TE, WR/RB/TE? I play in one league where you can start up to 5 RBs, or 5 WRs, or 4 TEs in any given week.
The important thing to keep in mind when it comes to rankings is it’s a snapshot of how an analyst is feeling at any given point in time for a very specific league setup. If that set up doesn’t match yours exactly, you need to take them with a grain of salt. Use rankings as a loose guideline for relative value, as opposed to the end-all and be-all. It feels obvious, but it’s imperative that you know your league settings, and how to leverage rankings accordingly.
