12 team PPR 1 QB Start 9 Dynasty league.
Give: Late 2024 1st
Receive: Ekeler
I am struggling balancing win now vs longterm success. My league currently has one aging superteam that will be hard to beat even with Ekeler. I was hoping to use my 2024 1st to upgrade my QB room. I am not too confident on the longterm fantasy futures of Dak and Howell. All top QBs are already on competing teams in the league and QBs are valued very highly in my league. How do you balance winning now vs building long-term success in dynasty leagues? My team is currently in 3rd (standings and points scored) and is set up well to compete the next few years.
My opinion is somewhat in the minority, I think, but I err on the side of future. I try to maximize dynasty value. In the long run, it eventually in theory should end up producing a win-now roster that also has a bright future, and then hopefully that "double-edged" sword can be maintained.
It could work, or it could just leave you stuck with a "perennially great future" and a "perennially meh present".
My personal testimony:
I took over my team in 2013. Inherited a strong team of some young, some old, players. Fortunate to win the championship in my second year on the back of someone else's roster, as I hardly made any moves of my own. Didn't really have a strategy yet, but tried to start making trades.
Some trades weren't the wisest (gave Beckham for Jonas Gray after the 200-yard game), a lot of high draft picks over time that refused to really pan out (Bishop Sankey, Laquon Treadwell, Rob Kelley, Kenneth Dixon, Breshad Perriman, Matt Jones, Duke Johnson, Samaje Perine, OJ Howard, Njoku, Ameer Abdullah, Jamaal Williams, John Ross, Curtis Samuel, Kerryon Johnson, Royce Freeman, James Washington).
Have kept making a lot of trades, often times to get picks and then take the best dynasty player available. Have been trying to never have a veteran "just for points right now" guy on my team. They take up a roster spot, with low (or at least plummeting) value. I want prospects in those bottom few roster spots. I want to sell a top RB by age 27-6, sell a top WR by age 29-0 (just rule of thumb).
Floundered around, made the playoffs as a low wildcard team a few times, until around 2020 some draft picks really started to come to fruition. Finished 3rd last year, and am tied for first at 8-1 with a 100-point lead for the tiebreaker. I have Hurts, AJ Brown, Lamb, Bijan, Etienne, Gibbs, Swift, Godwin, Dotson, as my main guys, and I have an early first, late first, early second, late second, early third next year. I feel like the plan has finally paid off, even if it did take years. Yet to be seen, though, how the "maintaining" part goes. I'm hoping to keep making the right trades to stay young AND highly conpetitive.
So, my method is not proven. But at the moment it looks good.
