Roster size for dynasty league? (1 Viewer)

[Jackal]

8 team (I know) dynasty league. Going into our 15th year and it has been brought up that roster size is too big. We started off at 30 for the first year, 35 for the second, and we currently stand at 40. I believe in a dynasty league that you should be able to take chances on players and have the room to sit and stash them. Also throw in the fact that the available free agent pool shouldn't be brimming with talent. We start 1 qb, 2 rb, 3 wr, 1 te, 1 k, 1 td, and 1 superflex. An option instead of reducing roster size is to increase the starting lineup a bit. Make it 2 qb or add another superflex. What says you shark pool? Any opinions? Are the rosters too big?

 

[Arodin]

No such thing as "too big" or "too small" just depends on whether you want an active waiver wire with devaluation of the marginal talent, or a rarely used wire with lots of teams carrying their own development prospects as backups.

Both are fun. Sounds like your leaguemates have split preferences.

 

[Bronco Billy]

You start 10 positions and you have 40 roster spots? The WW must be completely bare. That's enough room to stash even the wildest flyers. That means that acquiring long shots that make seasonal impacts are sheer luck.

An example would be the RBs for KC - West and Ware. Almost no one saw them coming with Charles and Davis established as the bell cow RB and his handcuff at the start of the year. With rosters that deep I'd be willing to guess one or both were on rosters somewhere in your league. Why not? There'd be plenty of room.

In my opinion, you ought to be able to have some meaningful waivers during the year, so you need to control rosters a bit. It seems like 2.5 to 2.8 times your starters is in the right range. Then decide how much you want to dedicate to player development.

Examples: 2 dynasty IDP leagues, both start 20 players each week. One has 50 roster spots (45 regular plus 5 practice squad spots limited to rookies and 2nd year players only) while the other has 55 roster spots (42 regular plus 12 practice squad limited to rookies, 2nd and 3rd year players only). Both have different rostering philosophies and have enough room for handcuffs on regular rosters, but not so much room that all potentially meaningful players can be rostered. So WW activity (both are blind bid waivers) is meaningful and can have impact during the season.

Without the WW and with owners able to just sit on a ton of players, you either need a league with very active traders or it's going to get stagnant very quickly, which is no fun at all.

Just my thoughts on it.

.

 

[Cjw_55106]

Way too big IMO. I play in one 10 team and four 12 team and they hover around 22-26 roster spots. No reason for an 8 team league to have that many spots.

At 40 spots, you aren't "taking chances on players" you are picking up every single guy and hoping. Big difference IMO.

 

[bostonfred]

You start 10 positions and you have 40 roster spots? The WW must be completely bare. That's enough room to stash even the wildest flyers. That means that acquiring long shots that make seasonal impacts are sheer luck.

I'm in a 14 team league with 24 man rosters. That's 336 players kept as opposed to 320 in an 8x40. I picked up both west and ware off of waivers during the season (but before their respective starters were injured).I also was in a long time 8 team league that had two qbs, 2 rbs, 2 wrs and 2 flex. If anything we still thought the lineups were too short and wanted to add a flex or two. You guys are only starting 40 position players a week. That takes all the fun out of discovering a guy with those deep rosters because he will almost never crack your lineup. You're only starting the top 16 backs and top 24 receivers. Probably some guy is starting wr40, but not because he wants to. It's just not do enough to justify the roster depth.

I would add two regular flex positions if I were you guys. One phasing in in 2017 and the other on 2019, so you have time to prepare. Sooner if you get unanimous agreement. Leave the roster sizes alone until you see how that changes things.

 

[mr roboto]

10 team, 2QB 2RB 3WR 1TE 2FLEX (WR/RB/TE) K DEF. 28 man rosters during season cut to 24 by Super Bowl 4 round rookie FA draft in late August.

 

[Jackal]

You start 10 positions and you have 40 roster spots? The WW must be completely bare. That's enough room to stash even the wildest flyers. That means that acquiring long shots that make seasonal impacts are sheer luck.

An example would be the RBs for KC - West and Ware. Almost no one saw them coming with Charles and Davis established as the bell cow RB and his handcuff at the start of the year. With rosters that deep I'd be willing to guess one or both were on rosters somewhere in your league. Why not? There'd be plenty of room.

In my opinion, you ought to be able to have some meaningful waivers during the year, so you need to control rosters a bit. It seems like 2.5 to 2.8 times your starters is in the right range. Then decide how much you want to dedicate to player development.

Examples: 2 dynasty IDP leagues, both start 20 players each week. One has 50 roster spots (45 regular plus 5 practice squad spots limited to rookies and 2nd year players only) while the other has 55 roster spots (42 regular plus 12 practice squad limited to rookies, 2nd and 3rd year players only). Both have different rostering philosophies and have enough room for handcuffs on regular rosters, but not so much room that all potentially meaningful players can be rostered. So WW activity (both are blind bid waivers) is meaningful and can have impact during the season.

Without the WW and with owners able to just sit on a ton of players, you either need a league with very active traders or it's going to get stagnant very quickly, which is no fun at all.

Just my thoughts on it.

.

Well, that's another issue. Trades are somewhat on the rare side unless somebody gets a hard on for a player and overpays or someone gets hit hard by the injury bug and has to fill a spot.

I also think a lot of this is getting kicked up because some teams don't draft well and their depth plummets and this year in particular being heavy with the injuries to big ticket players is why the timing is now. Lil bit of sour grapes imo.

 

[Jackal]

You start 10 positions and you have 40 roster spots? The WW must be completely bare. That's enough room to stash even the wildest flyers. That means that acquiring long shots that make seasonal impacts are sheer luck.

I'm in a 14 team league with 24 man rosters. That's 336 players kept as opposed to 320 in an 8x40. I picked up both west and ware off of waivers during the season (but before their respective starters were injured).I also was in a long time 8 team league that had two qbs, 2 rbs, 2 wrs and 2 flex. If anything we still thought the lineups were too short and wanted to add a flex or two. You guys are only starting 40 position players a week. That takes all the fun out of discovering a guy with those deep rosters because he will almost never crack your lineup. You're only starting the top 16 backs and top 24 receivers. Probably some guy is starting wr40, but not because he wants to. It's just not do enough to justify the roster depth.

I would add two regular flex positions if I were you guys. One phasing in in 2017 and the other on 2019, so you have time to prepare. Sooner if you get unanimous agreement. Leave the roster sizes alone until you see how that changes things.

Looking into either making it a 2 qb and/or making another flex spot. Also in some form for this year or the next two.

 

[FF Ninja]

People saying the waivers will be bare seem to be missing the fact that it's an 8 team league. As bostonfred mentioned 8 x 40 is only 320. That is a very reasonable amount of rostered players in dynasty. Personally, I wouldn't play in a 12 team dynasty with less than 25 man rosters, with my preference being 12x30.

I'd also like to second the idea by fred of increasing the number of starting positions if you only have 8 teams. Hell, I'd take it a step farther (beyond the extra flexes fred recommended) and make it 2QB if only 8 teams.

 

[jvdesigns2002]

People saying the waivers will be bare seem to be missing the fact that it's an 8 team league. As bostonfred mentioned 8 x 40 is only 320. That is a very reasonable amount of rostered players in dynasty. Personally, I wouldn't play in a 12 team dynasty with less than 25 man rosters, with my preference being 12x30.

I'd also like to second the idea by fred of increasing the number of starting positions if you only have 8 teams. Hell, I'd take it a step farther (beyond the extra flexes fred recommended) and make it 2QB if only 8 teams.

I think this is a good point. The total number of players rostered is probably not too far off from what you would find in a 12 team league. However--the issue is not with how many people are being rostered--the issue is in how many are being started. In a 12 team league with the same starting requirements there are a total of 120 players being started every week. Under these starting requirements--there is only 80. The bench to starter ratio is gigantic. You essentially are already playing in a 2qb league if you have a super flex feature in an 8 team league. I can't imagine why anybody wouldn't want to start a second qb there. My recommendation would be to add 2 regular flex positions to your starting lineup requirements so that you do get to 120 weekly starters.

 

[Borden]

8 team (I know) dynasty league. Going into our 15th year and it has been brought up that roster size is too big. We started off at 30 for the first year, 35 for the second, and we currently stand at 40. I believe in a dynasty league that you should be able to take chances on players and have the room to sit and stash them. Also throw in the fact that the available free agent pool shouldn't be brimming with talent. We start 1 qb, 2 rb, 3 wr, 1 te, 1 k, 1 td, and 1 superflex. An option instead of reducing roster size is to increase the starting lineup a bit. Make it 2 qb or add another superflex. What says you shark pool? Any opinions? Are the rosters too big?

With an 8 team league the WW is already devalued because of the quality of starting talent. In theory, the top 24 WRs are being starting by the teams. Then I'm sure each team has 3 back ups (not counting the stash guys). Which means if some wants to pull a guy to start out of the FA pool then he is trying to replace a top 24 WR with a player that isn't even in the top 50. That's a 50 point difference (75 points in PPR) over the year and that's at #24 - #50. Of course, it isn't that simple but I think it safe to say it won't be overflowing with talent.

I would also axe the Superflex. I just find that it either couple teams have a huge advantage or QB points get knocked down so much that it turns into just a complete crap shoot at that spot. If this were an 8 team redraft league I would say to switch to a 2 QB league but this far into a dynasty it's pretty difficult to do that. Plus, in dynasty it gets weird because people will just hoard QBs. I don't think you can switch it to just a normal flex either. It's too much of an advantage swing against the teams that built around having a QB in the Superflex.

Then I would get rid of kickers. They are usually the first to get cut anyways. I'm of the opinion that if I'm in a dynasty league it's because I want to build and develop a team. I like to think that I'm out maneuvering the other owners. Now after literally years of building these teams the pretty much random kickers could decide the winner. That's just my opinion though.

The last to moves would be to cut back to 25 and add locked taxi squad. I'd say the taxi squad have as many spots as there is rookie draft rounds (4 round rookie draft, 4 taxi spots). You don't have to use them and you use 1, 2, 3 or 4 spots. But they have to be submitted before the first game of the season starts and then those players are stuck there for the entire season. You can't ever start them but they don't cost you a roster spot either. I'd say not to go crazy start adding extra rules about who can go on, or long, etc. So in the end it would look like this.

Roster: 25

Taxi: 4

QB - 1

RB - 2

WR - 3

TE - 1

D - 1

Possible team construction:

QB - 3

RB - 8

WR - 8

TE - 4

D - 2

Taxi - RB, WR, WR, TE or QB

The difference in scoring between the #8 QB this year and the #25 (basically the best WW QB) was 140 points. This way at least there is someone that you take off of the WW if need be. It's not pretty but it's better than a zero.