How to build a dynasty... your best advice

[Shcritters]

Let me start by saying that I am in no way claiming to be the be all, end all resource for building a dynasty. This post - probably like many others before it - is meant to share a few strategies that have been effective for me in building my team. My hope is that people will follow on to this post and give their input. I love this community and the immense depth of knowledge available... this is meant to help those who may be newer to get some ideas of how to build an effective dynasty.

Let me start by saying that I have learned the hard way that having the best team on paper doesn't necessarily translate to championships. This is my 8th year in a league and I have been the top team for at least half of the years (points scored and record), have gone to four championship games, but have only won once. Sometimes it is better to be lucky than good. But that shouldn't stop you from trying to build the best team possible. To do that I have focused on a few key things:

1). Thinking 2 years ahead
I play in a salary cap/contract league and most of the teams I play with are thinking only about this year. I am always thinking about the the year after. For example, in the free-agent auction I am looking to scoop up backup RB's or WR2/3's that are behind RB1's or WR1's who are FA's. These are low-risk/high-reward players, and generally are really low cost. Latavius Murray? Picked him up back when Darren McFadden was the starter and a year away from free-agency. Jeremy Langford? Picked him up at the beginning of last year when there were rumors Forte wasn't going to be re-signed (I subsequently sold a Langford package for a 2017 1st before his value plummeted, but you get the picture). This year I picked up McKinnon... and we'll see what happens next year with Peterson. This is a great way to always be one step ahead of your competition.

2A). The waiver wire
This is the gold-mine for the experienced dynasty player, mainly because the resources are free. You don't have to trade any of your assets to get these and you aren't risking draft capital either. On this point, I've found that the first 3-4 weeks of the season are the most crucial in scooping up soon-to-be breakout players. Last year this was Diggs for me... and now he is a solid WR2. This year it was Tyrell Williams, Quincy Enunwa, and Hunter Henry. Some of the players I just listed also check item number one above in that they are behind players who may not be on their teams next year.

2B). Waiver wire fliers after a major injury
I've found that, whenever a major player goes down, you should generally try a dart throw on who you think the most likely replacement breakout will be. For the savvy dynasty dynamo there is major value here. That's how Enunwa ended up on my roster. Look at Spencer Ware, Ajayi (maybe not the best example), and Thomas Rawls. Just pick a player when someone major goes down. Even if it doesn't work you are only out an end-of-bench player and you might get lucky.

3). Trading for projected early rookie draft picks
I've found that targeting a team you think will finish poorly and then seeking to swap next year's 1sts or trying to get their 1st outright is one of the best ways to build a dynasty. In 2013 I won the league but ended up picking at 1.02 in 2014 because of an early-season trade. In 2015 I finished second but ended up picking 1.03 in 2016 because of an early season trade. In 2016 I will finish top 4 (depending on how the playoffs go) but will pick 1.03 because of an early-season trade. Doing this keeps your roster fresh with incoming talent. Then all you have to do is draft well (and a whole article could be spent on top tips for doing that!).

4). Trading for players before they reach their peak, and trading away players who are about to go past their peak
My philosophy is that I'd rather trade away a player a year too early rather than a year too late. The point here is to take the long-view of things. Always look to trade 1-2 years of high level production for 3-5 years of high level production. I hit a homerun when I traded Andre Johnson and a 2nd for Julio Jones in Julio's 3rd year when he was injured. This was Andre's 2nd to last good year, but it paid off well in the long-run. One semi-miss that I had was when I traded Adrian Peterson the year after his torn knee for the 1.04 rookie pick (Doug Martin). Who could have predicted that Adrian would come back that strong... but I subsequently traded Doug Martin, John Brown, and a 2nd for the 2015 1.02, which turned out to be Todd Gurley. Who would you rather have right now, Adrian Peterson and John Brown or Todd Gurley? That's the long-view coming through.

And finally, there is a lot of luck involved. Injuries, getting lucky on breakout players, none of this is an exact science. The main point is to increase your odds compared to your competition of finding those key players who can change and define a dynasty.

So... community... what say ye? What is the best advice you'd give in building and sustaining a dominant dynasty?

[lukkynumber13]

I'm in my first year so I'm just here to learn right now! This is great stuff thank you so much

[Jfever]

1. Be aware of learning curve and life expectancy curve of NFL positions. Meaning, Qb, TE, Wr on average have longer careers than Rb, but, they take a bit longer to get acclimated. Don't over value Rb.

2. Be careful with trading. If you are new to dynasty, there is likely a few sharks in your league. I've been in a few leagues were a couple owners ruined leagues because they were unable to make fair trades and they insisted on "winning" each deal essentially - bullying, rip off type traders. One or two trades can set your team building back and could be detrimental to the parity in your league as a whole. Think before accepting. Don't give into a trade if you don't like it and don't give into email / text, repeated offer type pressures. Don't make trades for the sake of making trades. Come up with a plan and stick to it. If you have questions or uncertainties, this site is a great place to go for helpful, insightful advice.

3. Establish good trade relationships / or at least communication lines. Be polite, Be respectful, respond to offers made in a timely fashion / even if it is a no. Maybe give a brief explanation as to why / what you were thinking. This goes a long way.

4. Be active, stay informed about injuries, weekly trends, NFL roster adjustments etc.

5. Be aware of your leagues scoring rules.

6. evaluate players if you have time. Watch film, take in information from as many different sources as possible and come up with your own rankings. These may change as the combine, draft, and NFL year roles on, but, at least here, the team is yours, the successes mean more, and, you can learn from "your" mistakes rather than Todd McShays or whomever...

7. The build around Wr philosophy has been discussed in depth many times. It started a handful of years ago with the whole - do the opposite trend thing in redrafts. In dynasty it is magnified however. If you are in a ppr league, building around WR is the way to go. Rb production and shelf life are quite volatile. Be aware of this. Even guys that are talented (Gurley), do not produce at elite levels (he is the #19 RB in ppr scoring as of today!) - unless they have a line and talent around them (Zeke). AND even if and when they do, they are more likely to get hit harder, more direct, and more often due to the nature of their position. Take this in mind. It is wrong to blindly assume that Rb x is 22 years old so, you can depend on him in your rb1 or rb2 spot in your line up for 6-8 years. It just doesn't work like that most of the time. Try to think in a 3 year window.

8. Be realistic. Either you are are a playoff team or you are not. THE WORST place to be in dynasty is in the middle. It is no mans land as far as championship trophies and award money as well as future draft picks awarded. Meaning, you aren't winning anything and your future picks aren't early. If you think you can make a run, do it. Those opportunities don't come around all the time. Be honest with yourself if you can't make a run. Sell off your older vets and get something for them before it is too late and they start announcing for FOX or ESPN.

Have fun, good luck

[NattyDread]

This:

8. Be realistic. Either you are are a playoff team or you are not. THE WORST place to be in dynasty is in the middle. It is no mans land as far as championship trophies and award money as well as future draft picks awarded. Meaning, you aren't winning anything and your future picks aren't early. If you think you can make a run, do it. Those opportunities don't come around all the time. Be honest with yourself if you can't make a run.

In my experience, few owners seem to understand this, and end up in the middle of the pack each year. Be a contender or a rebuilder, and stay out of the middle.

[skip]

Word of caution: Projecting future picks is a dangerous game. A great team on paper can miss the playoffs with just a couple injuries while an average one can win a title. This is something that is a safer way to go about midseason. Never, ever make projections past the following year.

Trade smart, not often. There isn't anything wrong with making a lot of trades but there are plenty of owners who get caught up in trading and make more mistakes than wise moves. Patience is the key to this game and this is particularly true when it comes to moving players.

[sunnyd23]

I like where you all have gone with the advice. Very helpful.

Here's mine:

Don't overreact to a down year. I did this my first year playing dynasty and it set me back for some time. Don't be hasty in trading away core assets when you fall out of playoff contention. You'll have down seasons, whether it be performance, injury, or both. Use over-performers and non-core assets to upgrade picks or land other injured players that aren't helping the contenders. The goal, regardless of size and type of league, is to compete for championships year after year. Be patient.

[kylejargon]

Several have already said it, but my advice is run it like a stock exchange. Buy players low and sell high. Eventually you will have several studs on your team. I am not saying it is the best team but my sig 1 team has a lot of young players to build the future around including luck, carr, cooper, evans, and CJA. I know I have two qbs but it has saved me this year when Luck went down a game and I play matchups. I am second in my league with a first round bye because I sold all my players last year that were high that I thought were on the decline: L Murray, D Murray, Bortles, and Gronk. I have missed some also, but I hit more than I miss because I stay involved and visit this site A LOT. Thanks guys.

[stoneghost28]

Some really good advice in here to go with stuff that hopefully you'd already know about before playing dynasty.

OP:

#1 No doubt. This is why I was stunned at how many people gave 3 and 4 year deals to RB's in two RSO leagues I'm in.

#2 Absolutely. My most costly Dynasty start up I joined last year lost a player who quit the league once he saw a certain player had joined. He told me the player was notorious for targeting novice players with god awful trade offers, and for carpet bombing the league with endless, one sided offers, doing it enough where eventually someone would pull the trigger on one of his awful offers. Halfway through the start up draft he had a squad featuring 6 consensus top 20 players at RB/WR. Kept telling me that I was wrong in trashing his offer of Will Fuller and Tyler Lockett for OBJR, citing the now notorious raves Lockett received at Reception Perception, lead to a league with a poisonous atmosphere, distrust, and a belief in many quarters that 1-2 owners might have been sock puppet squads for him. You do need to take your time with trades. That being said, I love being active and trading. I get owned from time to time, (Jamison Crowder and two 2nd's for John Brown looks horrific right now), but generally its an even up, or a win for me. Do the research and you should win them half the time or better.

#3 Absolutely, for a positive league atmosphere that's essential, I'd also add that while you can't always be sure what people will think is a screw job (I was stunned at someone telling me I was trying to swindle him when I offered him Doctson, and Smallwood, for two waiver wire pieces and one of his many '17 1sts (right now I think it would be 1.5). This was pure insanity to me. The same day he was trashing that offer of mine as the worst offer ever, another owner tried to pry Mike Evans off of me for Tavon freaking Austin and a late '17 1st in the very same league. Try to make your offers reasonable to start. Horrendous low balls out of the gate create bad blood for some owners, and pretending you don't understand why is not respecting human nature and attitudes.

#4 Absolutely. Inactive owners are actually kicked out of some leagues that actually have preset "check in" levels during the offseason.

#5 No doubt, i stupidly didn't notice a league I joined this year wasn't PPR. I'm so used to PPR these days, that I had foolishly assumed it without double checking. A cardinal sin to say the least.

#6 Definitely. Nothing is more frustrating than missing out on a player because you didn't bother to do your homework. I had so many summer chores from the wife in '15, that I skipped my typical research levels and let podcasts from footballguys, and DLF dissuade me from considering David Johnson. I don't have him on any teams because he was a small school guy, and a ton of guys I respect repeatedly talked about how he was the worst inside runner in terms of toughness they'd ever seen. Funny to note that these guys, even at DLF, have not made a point of making consistent and loud Mea Culpa's on this account. That should happen, I've been dead wrong about plenty of guys I had a firm take on from time to time, and try to own it. You don't, and there's no reason to listen to you. Regardless, again, do your research.

#7 At this point, I think people are so WR focused, that RB's carry more value than usual. When game changers like Lev Bell and Gurley can be had for peanuts, it's worth considering. That being said, Gurley's years away from being a difference maker because of the incompetence and bad luck of the franchise (incompetence in terms of keeping Fisher, and Draft Day decision making, bad luck, in terms of legit OL prospects failing to deliver for them-everybody missed on Robinson for instance). For god sakes, Mayock called him the next Orlando Pace. That is bad luck. Everybody missed on Robinson. But flinging a gargantuan amount of picks to grab a QB that would have a 20th-35th grade in a draft featuring a healthy supply of quality prospects is just stupidity. At this point Gurley needs several OL's, multiple quality WR's, and Goff to develop (and I do like Goff long term) and his coach to be fired to live up to his potential. If someone sells on the cheap, buy, but otherwise, yeah, stay away.

It's a balancing act. Earlier in the year I dealt Miller and Matt Ryan (and Dixon as the chief pieces) in a package to get younger at RB, and land some WR1 prospects (not WR1's, but guys that could be if everything went right) because I had Lev Bell, Miller, and a WR corps full of WR3 and WR4 types. I got back Gurley, Kevin White, Tyrell and Cam as the pieces coming back. Now I'm younger at RB so if things go wrong with Bell or I can't sell him for fair comp, I have a RB corps that still included Gurley, and Henry as developmental options, and a top 3 pick this year as well which gets to.

#8 This is HUGE. I had 8 Dynasty, Salary Cap, and RSO Contract Leagues this year, and from the jump, my Orphan was going to be garbage, I had one productive struggle strategy in place for sure, and another team I was leaning that way. The Orphan team was garbage so I spent the entire offseason when I took it over selling off all the assets I wasn't high on for picks in '17 and '18, rather than picks in the '16 draft which I felt were garbage. Like you I targeted the teams I thought would be poor. Unfortunately the bulk of them were unwilling, and so I only managed to swing deals with 3 owners I felt would be bad, there was a snag though. Only 1 of the 3 ended up being garbage. The second, a fellow orphan buyer spent the offseason swinging deals for his picks and players to rebuild immediately on the fly and a roster I felt ws 11th in the league in May became a top 7 roster by September. Frustrating as it killed the value of my picks. The same thing happened with a second guy I traded with. He swung some deals that radically improved his roster, landing some sleepers that blew up this year, and his pick, which I projected to be 1.5 in May, ended up looking like a 1.8 or 1.9 in September, and now instead, he's a #1 seed. This orphan team was a worst case scenario in that regard with all but one of the teams I swung deals with making the playoffs. However, for now my picks in that league are 1.1, 1.5, 1.7, 1.9, and 1.12, followed by an additional 5 picks in round 2.

The big wins were in my other leagues. In one of my productive struggle leagues I decided that my roster had a ton of injury risk players, and with that, combined with my projection that both of the '17 first rounders I picked up during the '15 start up belonging to teams I projected to be playoff locks, I decided to bet on 2017 rather than '16, and may several trades targeting the three rosters I felt were virtual locks to miss the playoffs. two of the trades were made in February and March of last year, and the third was put together before the rookie draft in the summer. Additional trades targeting these teams second rounders were also swung, 2 in the offseason, 1 in september. The pay off? I own 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.5, and then those two picks I thought had playoff rosters ended up landing in slot 1.10 and 1.12 pending playoff results. Additionally the second rounders I targeted landed exactly where I projected, 2.2, and 2.3. So now in that league I have the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 10th, 12th, 13th, 14th, and 15th picks in this stacked draft. With Watkins, Eifert and Evans all missing time, my concerns with injury issues proved prophetic. Going into next season I'll have those picks to go with a RB/WR/TE core that includes Gurley, Prosise, Allen, Watkins, Martavis, DGB, Perriman, and Eifert, and a couple of decent stash's (M. Lee, C. Patterson, Hogan). I suspect that '17 will be a rare year in which a team that deservedly picked 1.1 after being ghastly, ended up making the playoffs next year (I hope).

In other leagues I was also successful. After making what proved to be a disastrous trade up for Hopkins at 1.6 (2 firsts, a 2nd, and a 3rd, for 1.6, a 4th, and a 7th if I remember), I made an excellent trade mid-start up draft to land a 1st rounder for moving from the early 6th to the bottom of the 7th. At the time I had the roster of 1st rounder ranked 8th in the league. He had a better draft after that, and then proceeded to reel off 4 straight wins to start the year despite being 7th in scoring. After white knuckling it, and many expletives, he proceeded to finish the year going 2-7 down the stretch reinfocing the idea that it's PPG, and not W-L's, that tell you which teams are actually the most likely to contend and which aren't. That pick ended up going from 1.12 in early October, to 1.3 by this Tuesday, saving my franchise to some degree (OBJR-Hopkins-Moncrief-Floyd-Dev Parker, running back corps is very weak, especially after I dealt Martin for Parker).

In my other two leagues, I swung a pile of deals to make my team more competitive long term, making my squad younger at RB, and landing those WR1 hopeful's, and adding a 2nd first rounder, and 2 second rounders that I ended up trading in deals to add pieces (including Prosise). In my RSO league, once I identified that I had zero chance of contending fora title, that I was a middle of the road team (5th-8th best, at best), I sold off all my valuable players on 1 year contracts, and sent Cooks and his 3 year 70 mill deal off the books as well, it was the 9th most expensive contract given to a WR, and I felt and still feel that Cooks upside will never live up to that price, so shedding the deal carried plenty of value, before even adding in that I landed 1.5 in the '17 rookie class, and an '18 2nd as well. At the end of the day, engaging in these deals provided me with 2 extra '17 1sts (for now 1.5 and 1.11), 2 extra '17 2nds (2.8 and 2.12), 2 extra '18 2nd rounders, and more than $100 million in cap space for the '17 free agent class (I plan to use the space on 1 year deals to allow me to have the most cap space in '18 when players signed to two year deals this offseason are available).

This is my long winded way of saying that when it comes to trading, evaluating your roster with brutal frankness is key. How many PPG are you scoring, what's your median points per game, are players coming back from injury, or are you sustaining even more injuries and less likely to contend? All of that is far more important than your W-L record, and if you're running an orphan, or a rebuild team, make sure you acquire players that have value to you, and to your opponents. It may be annoying to carry veterans that aren't helpful to your young roster, but if they have values to others, you can deal them for futures. I didn't need L. Blount on my orphan, he's going to be retired or unemployed by the time the orphan is a legit contender in '18 (hopefully) or later, but I still drafted him because I knew he'd carry value to others with Dion Lewis out until week 10 or later. Sure enough I was able to flip him for multiple picks in '18. I was able to swing seven of these veteran based trades this year, landing plenty of picks and young players to build my future contender, I hope, around.

[stoneghost28]

Word of caution: Projecting future picks is a dangerous game. A great team on paper can miss the playoffs with just a couple injuries while an average one can win a title. This is something that is a safer way to go about midseason. Never, ever make projections past the following year.

Trade smart, not often. There isn't anything wrong with making a lot of trades but there are plenty of owners who get caught up in trading and make more mistakes than wise moves. Patience is the key to this game and this is particularly true when it comes to moving players.

I mentioned this in my long winded post. I trade often because I trust my instincts, but yes, you do make mistakes, and sometimes they can be catastrophic, one thing that goes along with that is recongizing mistakes after they happen and addressing them. In one start up I was so unhappy with how I started the draft (trade down then selection of Allen at 2.2, selection of L. Miller at 3.3, selection of D. Martin at 4.6, and John brown at 4.11) that I ended up working a series of trades to address the issues (I was worried about having too many shares of a player I loved in Allen, being a Cal Alum, and having followed his career I knew his injury history stretched back to his days at Cal which were responsible for his terrible combine and workouts (he was still in recovery from serious injury and shouldn't have run the 40), and as such i wanted to divest myself of the shares, additionally I had soured on Lamar Miller by the end of the preseason and wanted to get rid of him after having acquired Lev Bell and Henry as key pieces in my Allen trade from back in June, so I started floating Miller in offers in early summer, then held off until he played fairly well and then dealt him immediately in a package that was sweetened by Matt Ryan (I had Winston already), and Kenneth Dixon to address my issues at WR (adding kevin White, Meredith and tyrell Williams in the deal), and to get younger at RB with Gurley, whose struggles I could live with as I didnt expect to contend till '18 anyway.

Another example is one I mentioned where I traded up for Hopkins after seeing him fall from his average ADP of 1.3 to 1.6. It was a horrific mistake as I realized afterwards, and as the season reinforced with brutal regularity. Out the door went 2.11, 3.2, 6.11, 9.2, a '17 1st and an '18 1st, in the door came 1.6, 4,8, 10.8 and '17 and '18 2nds. It was a horrible deal, and recognizing that, I began to try to figure out ways in which I could turn around the failure, or at least mitigate it. I put together a series of trades, turning a late 4th and an early 7th into a late 3rd, and a late 7th, with some added late rookie picks in place to sweeten the deal, traded a late 4th and a late 10th for a mid-late 3rd and a late 13th, a late 7th and a late 10th for a mid 5th and an early 15th, giving a '18 2nd, and '17 3rd, for 3rds in each year, and when I wasn't happy with the players available at 5.5, I traded down to 6.3 in exchange for moving up in the 8th, 12th, and turning a '17 5th into an 17 3rd. culminating in acquiring a '17 first in exchange for moving down from 6.3 to the late 7th and some other much later pick movement.

That's a crazy train of moves needless to say, but it was my way of aggressively moving up and down the draft to gather back value, after flushing it down the toilet in the Hopkins trade up. 7 months later, and while I'm ready to throw some desks out my classroom window after having gone 3-10 earning the 1.1 despite featuring a seemingly dominate WR corps of OBJR-Hopkins-Moncrief, and a solid if unspectacular RB corps with Doug Martin, Abdullah, Gio, and Riddick, and Luck directing, I can take solace in having identified and successfully executed a deal to recoup one of the lost first round picks, targeted the right team (he finished in 10th place, so I have the 1.3) and made enough quality deals to land plenty of young talent, and 4 extra '17 2nd rounders to offset the pain of losing a 1st in '18 as well. Hopefully those picks can help me to shore up my RB and TE positions so I can be a contender in '17 .

[stoneghost28]

This:

8. Be realistic. Either you are are a playoff team or you are not. THE WORST place to be in dynasty is in the middle. It is no mans land as far as championship trophies and award money as well as future draft picks awarded. Meaning, you aren't winning anything and your future picks aren't early. If you think you can make a run, do it. Those opportunities don't come around all the time. Be honest with yourself if you can't make a run.

In my experience, few owners seem to understand this, and end up in the middle of the pack each year. Be a contender or a rebuilder, and stay out of the middle.

So true. One of the most baffling choices I saw this year, was in my orphan league, where another two guys bought orphans. One guy did little trading, and just is slow building it, he finished in 11th place, landing the 1.2 and a few other picks in trades in other rounds in '17 and '18, I traded virtually everything that had any value at all, utilized the '16 rookie draft to trade down and acquire future picks in '17 and '18, and lower '16 rookie/waiver picks, those deals allowed me to make futures trades by landing players other people wanted like Matt Ryan, Blount, Coates and Davante Adams, and turning them into future picks as well, and a handful of building block players like Derrick Henry, and then there was team 3, turned out to be a high school senior, so maybe that explained the impulsiveness and lack of patience, but he made a million trades as well and I did not benefit as I didn't realize when I picked up his '17 first in a deal, that he was bound and determined to contend immediately. Well, with a crummy roster with only a handful of legit players, and the basic draft picks in place, how the heck was he going to build a legit contender? Answer was he wasn't. There are no short cuts, but he was quite skilled in whom he acquired, he rarely made bad deals in whom he was actually picking up and drafting, and he turned a bottom 3 team into a team, that as the post above illustrates, is guaranteed to dance around the edges of the playoffs year in and year out, but never contend. He finished this year in the 5 slot in terms of the playoffs, but even w/tons of luck, I can't see his roster putting together back to back to back wins for a title, he just doesn't have the talent. Without the rookie picks to augment what's a league average roster, he is in that edge of the playoff purgatory.

Meanwhile I have a dumpster fire of a team, only building block players for sure are Henry, Prosise, Abdullah, Dev Parker, Lockett, DGB (maybe) and Malcolm Mitchell along with five or six youngsters and vets that may have trade value to people in '17 (Romo, Kelley (never got a good enough offer to trade him, will try to deal him before the draft in the offseason), M. Lee, C. patterson, T, Smith, J. Gordon, but I also have 5 '17 1st rounders (1.1, 1.5, and 3 from playoff seeds 1, 3, and 5), 5 '17 2nd rounders, 2 '18 1st rounders, and 4 '18 2nd rounders, plus plenty more picks.

Yes my team is garbage, but I didn't want to be stuck in mediocrity, and I saw no way out of being garbage, or at best mediocre unless I piled in a ton of '17 picks to take advantage of that stacked draft, and load up on an '18 draft that appears solid and could be augmented by players staying in school. Now with those draft picks, and a little luck, I add a RB with RB1 to my RB staple, add a WR with WR1 upside to my WR's, add a TE with TE1 upside to a sad sack collection of TE's (Take a bow, Allen, Doyle, and Walford), and then hammer away at other high upside RB and WR prospects and/or swing deals for quality young players or '18 picks.

Again, acknowledge whether your team is good or not and act accordingly. If you are 3-5, you better be making deals at the trade deadline. If you are 4-4 but 10th in points, be a realist, and start trading for the future, if you're contending, do the same but build to win. My teams reflect this philosophy, My best teams finished at the top of the standings, my worst teams were utter garbage save for one that somehow finished a tiebreaker away from making the playoffs at 5-8 (ridiculous I know, i hate division winner rules in 3 division leagues, so stupid), but that league holds a lottery for non-playoff teams, so finishing out of the playoffs was a better fate, almost assuredly, then making them only to get blasted.

[Ryantacular]

Ignore player rankings when it comes to any self evaluation, only use them for the unsavvy owner who lives by rankings. Become able to see who is ranked too high or too low and use that to your advantage.

In a startup, dont waste high picks on high upside players. Stick to proven product to build around.

[stoneghost28]

Word of caution: Projecting future picks is a dangerous game. A great team on paper can miss the playoffs with just a couple injuries while an average one can win a title. This is something that is a safer way to go about midseason. Never, ever make projections past the following year.

Trade smart, not often. There isn't anything wrong with making a lot of trades but there are plenty of owners who get caught up in trading and make more mistakes than wise moves. Patience is the key to this game and this is particularly true when it comes to moving players.

Good point. I'm fairly proud of my projecting ability. but too many trades, and waiver wire finds can happen to reliably project out that far.

This year I was pretty skilled with it. In my original league I targeted 3 teams that I projected to miss the playoffs, and sure enough the 3 ended up providing me with 1.2, 1.3 and 1.5, and 2.2 and 2.3 in trades last offseason.

In my 2nd league I did badly at projecting, I nailed the #1 and #2 sees, but I was dead wrong about the 4th, 5th and 6th seeds, meaning I was quite wrong about half of the worst teams in the league (although in fairness a team I ranked bottom 3, was bottom 4 in terms of record, but made the playoffs due to the foolish divisional champs angle.

In my two new start ups this year, and my orphan league I did fairly well too, in one league I acquired a '17 first from a team that I predicted would finish in 10th place, and he was in 10th after week 12, but jumped to 6th, through winning in week 13, and grabbing the playoff seed via tiebreakers, in another start up I projected a team to finish bottom 4, and after a fast start, he finished in 10th place, and lastly in my orphan I was right in one case (predicted bottom 4 finish, and he finished 8th), but totally wrong in two others, with teams I projected missing the playoffs, but who made them as 5 and 1 seeds after making a series of excellent trades in August, and nabbing a couple of highly valuable waiver wire guys.

So, yeah, no way in heck should you be making trades for future picks multiple years down the road with set expectations on whether they will fall, because you never know, I'm still smarting by how in the heck I've managed to go 5-8 in back to back seasons after a start up that landed me a regular starting lineup of Dalton-Gurley-Abdullah/Ware-OBJR-Evans-Watkins-Walford/V. Green. I think using a lot of skill you can project teams fairly well, but there's no guarantee because you aren't running them. As mentioned earlier I expected to land the 1.2 or 1.3 from another orphan squad in my league where I took over an orphan, but the owner inexplicably sold away all his future assets to try to win in the present, and by doing so he pushed the value of that #1 in my eyes from 1.2 or 1.3, all the way to 1.8 pending the playoff results, if I'd known that was going to happen i definitely would have picked a different trade partner, but at the time the deal was made, I had no expectation of that happening.

And of course it can.

[ppm]

I believe in staying strong every year through incremental rebuilding rather than stacking a team as much as possible for a specific year or two and then starting from scratch when it implodes. By capitalizing on uncertainty there are usually ways to make lateral moves to younger ascending players without adding much, if anything.

[moishetreats]

All of this is wonderful. Thank you!

My rule for myself, though, is simple, and I have only one.

If you're competing, acquire production to fit a need. If you're rebuilding, acquire value.

For Team 1 in sig, my big trade off-season was acquiring Tate and in-season was acquiring Baldwin. I'm competing, and I needed WR production.

For Team 2, hah! Check out my RBs . But, every move has been to gain a potential valuable piece for 2017 and beyond. It won't be hard to then transition to acquiring production (I'll have great WR values to trade) into acquiring productive RBs for my 2017 run (yes, I think that I can compete that early given the league's parameters).

[Orenthal Shames]

I believe in staying strong every year through incremental rebuilding rather than stacking a team as much as possible for a specific year or two and then starting from scratch when it implodes. By capitalizing on uncertainty there are usually ways to make lateral moves to younger ascending players without adding much, if anything.

This. I'm anti-UTH in that regard. I draft a solid mix to compete with some upside talent to fill in the back end and then constantly keep talent coming in via the draft or trades.

I'll sell out to win a title, because picks can always be bought and sold. Now is the time when picks will never be easier to attain if you're not in the hunt, while pre draft they'll never hold more value if you're looking to cash in for some players to win now. It's all fluid.