Great input SammyJ. You say the 1.1 Rookie pick is worth way more than the 2.4, I just think it's tough to go a lot higher than that based on the caliber of player available there and the risk/reward of any NFL rookie.
I thought a good bit about what redraft pick would be comparable to the 1.1 rookie pick in a dynasty league. After thinking about it for a bit, the answer is clear IMO,
The 1.1 rookie pick in most rookie drafts is more valuable than the 1.1 pick in a redraft league.At first glance, it sounds like that can't be right. After all, the 1st pick in a redraft league can take any player, while the 1.1 rookie pick can take only the top rookie. In other words, the list of available players with the 1.1 rookie pick is some subset of the players available with the 1.1 redraft pick. Furthermore, the 1st pick in a redraft league will likely be used to select an established player, while the 1st rookie pick will be used on a player that hasn't played a down in the pros. While every pick carries risk, clearly the top redraft pick is a safer bet than the top rookie pick. So how can the safer pick, more flexible pick be worth less than the riskier more limited pick?
Let me start by saying that comparing rookie draft picks in a dynasty league to picks in a redraft league is a bit of an apples to oranges comparison. So when I make it, I'm talking about how much of a competitive advantage that pick gives you over your opponents in that league. In other words, who is in a better situation, the 1.1 redraft pick owner or the 1.1 rookie draft pick owner?
What we're talking about here is value. In a redraft league, when comparing two players, the more valuable player is the player that gives you the bigger edge over your opponents over the course of the season. That's what VBD is all about. It gives you a means to evaluate the worth of players at different positions by asking, "What player gives me more of a competitive edge against my opponents?". However, if you wanted to simplify the discussion down to one position, namely running backs, it gets pretty easy. In a redraft league, the best RB is the one that scores the most points. (The cynic might argue that the best RB is the one that gets you to your playoffs and then scores the most then, but I'll talk about short vs. long term value in a second).
But the value of dynasty players is more complicated. Suppose I look into a crystal ball, and can predict two players futures and offered you a choice of which you wanted. The first player is Priest Holmes, who I see having his best year ever in 2005, being the #1 RB by a wide margin and leading the Chiefs to a Super Bowl. Unfortunately the downside is that he retires at the end of the season. The other player is Ronnie Brown, who is drafted by the Dolphins. Due to their sub-par line and poor QB play, Brown has a pretty average rookie year. However, the Dolphins shape up in 06 and Brown goes down to be one of the greatest runners to ever play the game, finishing in the top 5 year in and year out. If you could have your pick of one of these two players in a dynasty league, which would you rather have?
The answer of course is "it depends". Clearly, if you're a team that is built to win in 05, but whose only hole is at RB, Holmes is your guy. Adding Holmes to your team, likely elevates your team to a super bowl crown. But if your team is a doormat, Holmes likely only raises your team to an average level and then he's gone. So in that case, you would want Brown by far.
So when we're talking about dynasty value, we need to be clear whether we're talking about long term or short term value. However, unless you fall into that "one player away from the super bowl" situation, you want to maximize your long term value. If you're picking 1.1 in a rookie draft, you likely got their one of two ways. Either your team stinks, or you're an owner savy enough to trade for the 1.1 pick. If you're a doormat, you want to maximize your long term value. If you moved up to #1 to get that pick, you're savy enough to want to maximize your long term value as wel.. So when we talk about the "value" of a rookie pick, I'm going to assume we're talking about long term value.
So getting back to the matter hand: What's the long term value of a dynasty player? All things being equal, its the value of a player multiplied by the number of years that player does it. For example, if we're comparing two RBs that will each average 100 points a year, the RB that will play six more years is twice as valuable as the RB that plays three more years. Things are rarely this simple though, if you really want to compare value you have to talk about distribution of those points. Plus there is no good way to project a player's stats over his career. Nonetheless it should be clear though that long term value in a dynasty league is similar to redraft value, but the extra consideration is the number of seasons the player has left.
So if we just came back for the future and wanted to plot the long term value of all available players (vets and rookies) we could just add up their numbers from each year (VBD if comparing different positions, FF points if we're comparing players of the same position). What we'd see is that the distribution would be quite different. The handful of very young elite RBs would be signifigantly worth more than any other RB. Guys like Kevin Jones, McGahee and Tomlinson would blow away anyone else. Not only do these guys figure to outperform their counterparts in the years ahead, they figure to do it for a good number of years.
This gets back to what I stated in a previous post, that young stud RBs are so valuable in a dynasty league as to be almost untradable. They are simply worth leaps and bounds more than any other player. Much more so than a redraft league. If you have three good RBs in a redraft and only one good WR, why not trade the RB for a WR and maximize your chances in that league to win? But in a dynasty league, trade away that RB and he'll be very difficult to replace. You have to think about next year, when one of your starters might retire.
So when we're comparing rookie to redraft picks, it doesn't make sense to ask who will be available with the pick, it makes sense to ask how much of an advantage that pick gives you. The top rookie pick carries more risk than the comparable redraft pick. In this regard, the rookie pick cedes some ground to the redraft pick. However, a young rookie runner is so valuable in a dynasty league, that the pick is worth the risk.
Kevin Jones was a middle of the pack runner in a redraft league last year, but if you took him in your rookie draft last year, you now have a player valued as the #2-#5 overall player in all of FF. You have a player that is so valuable as to be almost untradable. What I'm getting that Kevin Jones in dynasty is worth leaps and bounds more than Kevin Jones in a redraft league. So much so that the #1 pick in a rookie draft that gives you an opportunity to draft a player like jim, is worth more than any pick in a redraft league.