What's new
Fantasy Football - Footballguys Forums

Welcome to Our Forums. Once you've registered and logged in, you're primed to talk football, among other topics, with the sharpest and most experienced fantasy players on the internet.

Thinking Of Starting A Dynasty League Next Year (1 Viewer)

Warhogs

Warhogs

Footballguy
I have been playing fantasy football for 30 years. In the past decade I've played in a couple redraft type leagues and a handful of dynasty leagues. I'm getting a bit tired of the format of the dynasty leagues and have been turning my thoughts to starting a new dynasty league and dropping most of the old ones.

Some of the things I am looking for are to make a dynasty league that rewards owners more for uncovering the hidden gems. Meaning not just those guys that turn into studs but also creating rewards for someone drafted in the very late rounds that even just becomes good. A guy might be like Stefon Diggs. Let's say you drafted him this year in round 6 of your rookie draft and maybe it takes him a couple of years to earn decent playing time but potentially in a couple years puts up 850 yards and 6 td type line.

My thinking is in order to do this of possibly creating a league where after the initial draft you have unlimited rosters. Each year you do a deep rookie draft and because the rosters are unlimited you can keep that diamond in the rough forever. I think you would have to create a pretty restricted free agent claim system during the season. I think you would also want to create pretty deep starting lineups to create value for those late round guys.

This is my rough thought process and would like to hear some input on some of the experienced guys around here as to what would be the good and the bad in this format and maybe some suggestions. Sorry this got so long to lay out the thought process.

 
The biggest issue with deep rosters is that it is very difficult to find replacement owners because the waivers ate so thin. This tends to make it very difficult to attract replacement owners.

As an aside I know the feeling of being bored with dynasty league because there is so little trading going on. A good format for trading and keeping a league more active is a keeper format. Antsports had some keeper rules that really created a lot of year round trading. Unfortunately they ran that service into the ground.

 
Really deep rosters are never a good thing, imo.

Rich get richer and bad teams don't have many options to improve their team.

In your format, not only would waivers be thing, they'd be virtually non-existent. So finding a replacement owner for really bad teams would be almost impossible.

 
I see the points. In my mind I was thinking teams would be willing to take on the challenge of building through the draft since this would be a free league. I can see where it could be doomed if owners poorly managed their teams and dropped out and replacement owners were hard to find.

 
I'm in a 20 player roster dynasty league. Each year we have a 4 round rookie draft. Before the draft starts, we have to drop our rosters down to 16 players to account for the new players we are drafting. I wish we could add a few more spots to our rosters...that being said, having a 20 player limit makes it so there is value on the Wavier Wire.

I think the ideal limit would be right around 25.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
HairySasquatch said:
I'm in a 20 player roster dynasty league. Each year we have a 4 round rookie draft. Before the draft starts, we have to drop our rosters down to 16 players to account for the new players we are drafting. I wish we could add a few more spots to our rosters...that being said, having a 20 player limit makes it so there is value on the Wavier Wire.

I think the ideal limit would be right around 25.
Click to expand...
The problem I see with that is what I see in all my dynasty leagues. There is no reward for making a good selection in a late round if that player becomes simply good. It's more of the usual league setup where the reward is in the elite players and good players are simply depth due to injuries.

 
The thing is, if you have unlimited roster spots, then basically every rookie should be drafted every year. At a certain point, I'm not sure that makes it worth rewarding those who are really just lucking out with a longshot bet. The opportunity cost of taking those rookies is essentially nonexistent in the later rounds. To me, what is worth rewarding is the owner who takes the long shot over other options and then sticks with them. And sticking with them to me means that they kept them over somebody else.

 
What would stop people from picking up every single available player on waivers, since there's no roster limits?

 
shader said:
Really deep rosters are never a good thing, imo.

Rich get richer and bad teams don't have many options to improve their team.

In your format, not only would waivers be thing, they'd be virtually non-existent. So finding a replacement owner for really bad teams would be almost impossible.
Click to expand...
A new owner could always improve their team by drafting and building. The problem is, these days, especially in money leagues, nobody wants to do that.

Overall, though, I prefer larger rosters because it truly does do what the OP is seeking; it rewards the better owners because it is those owners who have the vision to draft those players or trade for them. Then those owners have to make the hard decisions of holding those players through the trying times before they are rewarded.

I like that scenario much better than the guy that drafts a RB and holds him for a year and a half but, because he owns a competitive team, has to drop him to try to win a league. THen some doofus who had no clue about the RB says "I'll pick this guy up. Must be some reason the guy with the good team held him for a year". Fast forward 8 months-How the hell did doofus end up with CJ Anderson?

 
Dr. Octopus said:
What would stop people from picking up every single available player on waivers, since there's no roster limits?
Click to expand...
thought the same thing but assumed since the OP mentioned severed restrictions in waivers it would include something to address that.

 
I think this would be a very boring league after the draft. There would be no wavier wire activity after the draft. I doubt there would be any more trades than normal...in fact, I would bet that their would be less, because you would already have the handcuffs or someone else to replace them already on your team.

 
Dr. Octopus said:
What would stop people from picking up every single available player on waivers, since there's no roster limits?
Click to expand...
There would be some sort of very strict limits to in season waiver claims. I have even considered having none with the draft the next year being free agents and rookies.

 
Sounds like, OP, what you may need to get the balance you want is a creative salary league where it directly rewards shrewd drafting.

Say, for instance all your players get "x" salary increases and you have a cap. However, any player drafted in rounds 6-8 are forever locked into a very small salary.

Instant deliverance on what you want. If I drafted Arian foster for $.50 in round 7 back in the day, there's my pat on the back and reward when I get to use him his entire career at a low salary while everyone else is paying $25 for their Melvin Gordon's.

You might also want to carry that out in Tiers.

Rounds 1and 2 rookies are subject to "x" increases all their careers.

Rounds 3-5 are 65%.

Rounds 6-8 are set, as said above.

Then, when a guy gets Gronk in the 3rd, he has a superstar TE for $8.00.

The guy that picked up Ladarius Green gets him for $1.50 if he pans out.

The guy that invested in Eric Ebron (and let's say he becomes a top 5 guy), is paying $15 or $16.

This is where you will reward better owners.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Shutout said:
Dr. Octopus said:
What would stop people from picking up every single available player on waivers, since there's no roster limits?
Click to expand...
thought the same thing but assumed since the OP mentioned severed restrictions in waivers it would include something to address that.
Click to expand...
Yeah, you could always require a "drop" with any "add".

Personally I think expanding to 30 or 35 roster spots should be enough to address the issue.

 
Shutout said:
Sounds like, OP, what you may need to get the balance you want is a creative salary league where it directly rewards shrewd drafting.

Say, for instance all your players get "x" salary increases and you have a cap. However, any player drafted in rounds 6-8 are forever locked into a very small salary.

Instant deliverance on what you want. If I drafted Arian foster for $.50 in round 7 back in the day, there's my pat on the back and reward when I get to use him his entire career at a low salary while everyone else is paying $25 for their Melvin Gordon's.
Click to expand...
That may be a worthwhile concept to consider. Possibly create a wage structure over X number of seasons based on the slot a player was drafted in? I think I would need to be careful to not let someone get locked in forever for that $.50 salary but I want reward for picking the right guys.

 
Warhogs said:
Dr. Octopus said:
What would stop people from picking up every single available player on waivers, since there's no roster limits?
Click to expand...
There would be some sort of very strict limits to in season waiver claims. I have even considered having none with the draft the next year being free agents and rookies.
Click to expand...
I think instead of curing the "boredom" you are experiencing, you'd be creating and even more boring experience for the league.

Creating a five man "taxi squad" to a 25 man roster, would help solve your problems in a better way imo.

 
shader said:
Really deep rosters are never a good thing, imo.

Rich get richer and bad teams don't have many options to improve their team.

In your format, not only would waivers be thing, they'd be virtually non-existent. So finding a replacement owner for really bad teams would be almost impossible.
Click to expand...
What? Isn't that the point? For the cream to rise to the top? I never understood the push for parity. There is so much luck in this game that the last thing we need is to strive towards parity. Deep rosters are pretty much the best way to differentiate from other managers. If you want every week to be a 50-50 matchup, just play in 8-10 team leagues.

 
My dynasty league is a contract, hard salary cap league. I think it accomplishes a fair amount of what you want. Though for the kind of longer term ability to hold players you'd probably want to tweak the settings.

The rookie draft has set salaries per round by position. 1st round pick salary, we average the salary of the bottom half of fantasy starters at the position. So for start 2 RB, 12 teams, we start 24 RBs. Sort the RBs by salary and average RBs 13-24 and that's the cost of a 1st round rookie RB. 2nd round is 2/3 the 1st round price, 3rd round is 1/3 the price, 4th round and beyond are $1. An elite RB might cost $70-$80 in the vet auction, while a rookie 1st rounder is running more like $25-$30.

Contracts run 3 years, but you can extend the player after year 2 only with a 40%/$10 raise for 2 extra years (5 total) or 20%/$5 raise for 1 extra year.

So players that you draft late or get off waivers who end up working out, you can end up having at some pretty great bargains since their salary starts so low they are still values after an extension. I got Foster at $1 as a rookie, extended him 2 extra years to $11. At the end of a contract we have a franchise and 2 transition tags you can use to try to retain them, with a required salary/raise (average top 5 at the position/20% raise for franchise) and if someone else takes them in a special tagged player auction, you can keep at the winning bid or let them go and get rookie draft picks as compensation.

So, for what you're talking about wanting, I might modify it so you have more options to extend the player than just our one opportunity after year 2. And maybe build something around the cost of the extension raise being based on their performance. So if you wanted to keep a player who hasn't broke out yet, the raise would be negligible, and you could keep extending him however many times you think is sufficient or until he's not worth the cost. But maybe you have if he makes the top 30 at his position then his next extension has a minimum raise of $X/30%, if he makes top 15 it's a bigger raise of $Y/50%, etc. The exact numbers just depend on how long you want a top player to be kept before he is too expensive. I'd set it up so if you extend the player for longer before his breakout you can get him cheaper, but then you're gambling he achieves a level of performance worth the cost. Which was kind of our goal in placing our extension after year 2, you often have to anticipate as many rookies don't really break out until year 3.

This system also has the benefit of it keeps cycling a few top level players through the vet auction since eventually prices climb to where a player isn't worth either extending or tagging due to it requiring a percentage raise. Brees was $94 and was cut and is hitting the vet auction this year as an example. $94 is probably the tops someone might spend, so the team who cut him can either get him back for less or spend the money elsewhere, I had to trade Brady to free up cap room and my franchise tag (it stays on the player for 3 years) so I could tag Dez Bryant, and traded Lynch whose contract was up to someone who had the cap room to transition tag him. I am going to lose Demaryius Thomas at the end of this year because he's on a cheap salary but his extended contract is up and I can't afford to tag him next year. I'll have to decide if I try to trade him now for something, or if I want to hang onto him through a hopeful title run and then get nothing, or only get the lessened value he has being traded on an expired contract where someone who gets him has to tag him.

So teams do have opportunities to improve. Our limit of 1 extension per contract caps the players at 5 years unless you tag them. Even then, a player already well-priced will not be worth a tag or an extension because of the raise that would have to be given. That frees up players in the vet auction, or through trades, so there is always a little bit of churn. Though you're better off building through the draft and smart waiver moves, as just like the NFL, you may have to overpay a bit for vet auction players since there aren't as many.

The bad teams who cut players not worth their salary will have a lot of cash for the vet auction, while the teams that are better off won't. Out of a $500 cap and 55 roster spots (we start 26 players: 2 QB, 2 RB, 5 WR, 2 TE, 11 IDP, kicker, punter, coach, return unit), the two of us who played in the Super Bowl last year both have $13 to spend in the vet auction, while the last place team has $186 to spend. There's 7 teams who have around $100 or more to spend. I think you could cut the roster spots down to 25 or 30 for a normal league starting lineup, and that would be sufficient to let you sit on rookies for quite awhile.

 
Greg Russell said:
My dynasty league is a contract, hard salary cap league. I think it accomplishes a fair amount of what you want. Though for the kind of longer term ability to hold players you'd probably want to tweak the settings.

The rookie draft has set salaries per round by position. 1st round pick salary, we average the salary of the bottom half of fantasy starters at the position. So for start 2 RB, 12 teams, we start 24 RBs. Sort the RBs by salary and average RBs 13-24 and that's the cost of a 1st round rookie RB. 2nd round is 2/3 the 1st round price, 3rd round is 1/3 the price, 4th round and beyond are $1. An elite RB might cost $70-$80 in the vet auction, while a rookie 1st rounder is running more like $25-$30.

Contracts run 3 years, but you can extend the player after year 2 only with a 40%/$10 raise for 2 extra years (5 total) or 20%/$5 raise for 1 extra year.

So players that you draft late or get off waivers who end up working out, you can end up having at some pretty great bargains since their salary starts so low they are still values after an extension. I got Foster at $1 as a rookie, extended him 2 extra years to $11. At the end of a contract we have a franchise and 2 transition tags you can use to try to retain them, with a required salary/raise (average top 5 at the position/20% raise for franchise) and if someone else takes them in a special tagged player auction, you can keep at the winning bid or let them go and get rookie draft picks as compensation.

So, for what you're talking about wanting, I might modify it so you have more options to extend the player than just our one opportunity after year 2. And maybe build something around the cost of the extension raise being based on their performance. So if you wanted to keep a player who hasn't broke out yet, the raise would be negligible, and you could keep extending him however many times you think is sufficient or until he's not worth the cost. But maybe you have if he makes the top 30 at his position then his next extension has a minimum raise of $X/30%, if he makes top 15 it's a bigger raise of $Y/50%, etc. The exact numbers just depend on how long you want a top player to be kept before he is too expensive. I'd set it up so if you extend the player for longer before his breakout you can get him cheaper, but then you're gambling he achieves a level of performance worth the cost. Which was kind of our goal in placing our extension after year 2, you often have to anticipate as many rookies don't really break out until year 3.

This system also has the benefit of it keeps cycling a few top level players through the vet auction since eventually prices climb to where a player isn't worth either extending or tagging due to it requiring a percentage raise. Brees was $94 and was cut and is hitting the vet auction this year as an example. $94 is probably the tops someone might spend, so the team who cut him can either get him back for less or spend the money elsewhere, I had to trade Brady to free up cap room and my franchise tag (it stays on the player for 3 years) so I could tag Dez Bryant, and traded Lynch whose contract was up to someone who had the cap room to transition tag him. I am going to lose Demaryius Thomas at the end of this year because he's on a cheap salary but his extended contract is up and I can't afford to tag him next year. I'll have to decide if I try to trade him now for something, or if I want to hang onto him through a hopeful title run and then get nothing, or only get the lessened value he has being traded on an expired contract where someone who gets him has to tag him.

So teams do have opportunities to improve. Our limit of 1 extension per contract caps the players at 5 years unless you tag them. Even then, a player already well-priced will not be worth a tag or an extension because of the raise that would have to be given. That frees up players in the vet auction, or through trades, so there is always a little bit of churn. Though you're better off building through the draft and smart waiver moves, as just like the NFL, you may have to overpay a bit for vet auction players since there aren't as many.

The bad teams who cut players not worth their salary will have a lot of cash for the vet auction, while the teams that are better off won't. Out of a $500 cap and 55 roster spots (we start 26 players: 2 QB, 2 RB, 5 WR, 2 TE, 11 IDP, kicker, punter, coach, return unit), the two of us who played in the Super Bowl last year both have $13 to spend in the vet auction, while the last place team has $186 to spend. There's 7 teams who have around $100 or more to spend. I think you could cut the roster spots down to 25 or 30 for a normal league starting lineup, and that would be sufficient to let you sit on rookies for quite awhile.
Click to expand...
Thanks for this information. Certainly helps create some ideas for someone who is finding all their dynasty leagues to be a bit stagnant.

 
What if you had an unlimited taxi squad instead of an unlimited roster? Unlimited both in how many spots in has, and how long you can keep a player on the taxi squad.

You'd need some restrictions like: a player can't be put back on the taxi squad after he has been activated in your regular lineup, and only rookies taken in the rookie draft can be put on the taxi squad (or players from another team's taxi squad which you acquired through trade).

 
I like the 20 man rosters. Not too big where there are tumbleweeds only on the waiver wire, but not too short where there are an ample number of decent players in the free agent pool for players who have no quality depth on their rosters.

 
If you really want to get something out of those mediocre guys just increase the size of your starting lineups. Go to 1 qb, 3 rb's, 5wr's, 2te's and allow a choice of a 3/4 or 4/3 def.

Now those guys who never see time as a starter but have "good" nfl careers will pay off for owners. It will also get deals going. Just make your taxi squad indefinite or 4-5 years.

 
Dr. Octopus said:
Creating a five man "taxi squad" to a 25 man roster, would help solve your problems in a better way imo.
Click to expand...
I never understood the point of a taxi squad...why not just increase your total roster size and be done with it?

 
imjackdupp said:
If you really want to get something out of those mediocre guys just increase the size of your starting lineups. Go to 1 qb, 3 rb's, 5wr's, 2te's and allow a choice of a 3/4 or 4/3 def.

Now those guys who never see time as a starter but have "good" nfl careers will pay off for owners. It will also get deals going. Just make your taxi squad indefinite or 4-5 years.
Click to expand...
I agree with this approach.

I would suggest 20-24 roster spots unless you are doing IDP then you may want to double that to accommodate the defensive players as well.

2QB 3RB 5WR 2TE 1FLEX

I don't really like taxi squads or developmental roster spots.

I do think it would be interesting if you could combine pro with college players. Perhaps start small there like 1-3 college starting slots allowed. Let the college players score the same points on their performance from Saturday as the pro players do on Sunday (and Thurs, Mon ect,).

 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

RGIII will lead the way
Where should Caleb Williams go in 1 QB leagues?
Replies
39
Views
1K
beef
beef
zamboni
Should There Be A League Trade Deadline (Keeper/Dynasty)?
Replies
33
Views
766
Mitchie
M
JohnnyU
Dynasty Leagues with a toilet bowl
Replies
19
Views
540
InDitkaWeTrust
InDitkaWeTrust

Users who are viewing this thread

Total: 2 (members: 0, guests: 2)
Top