How to evaluate your Dynasty team ahead of your Rookie Draft
Does your dynasty team suck??? Probably :/
Welcome back. Let’s get into it.
From my first entry in this newsletter:
“Where does my team sit right now?” is an excellent question to start with. How to evaluate your team for going into next season is going to be an entry in the next week of the newsletter.
After the season ends, it is difficult to predict where your team will end up in the following season. You may have been eliminated in the first/second round of the playoffs/booty bowl, and are left wondering what went wrong?
In Dynasty, you are retracing your your trades. Agonizing over your waiver wrecks. These things are natural, but will not help you right now.
If someone else in your league comes at you saying your team is looking shitty for next year, are you prepared to defend your team?
You need to figure out where you sit currently, where you want to go, and how you’re going to get there. Once you come to that decision, are you going to proceed straight ahead or try to misdirect your league for another goal?
The reason this can can be difficult is because right after the season ends there are a plethora of variables that will change ahead of next year. FA/Draft/Trades/Injuries will happen, but we can still get a relative value for this point in the season.
What we have to do is look in the mirror and be realistic about everyone. Who is likely to regress? Who is a candidate to perform better? Who’s situation can improve and is likely to improve? Who’s target share is going to get cut into? Who are your studs, your blue chips, your money makers. Who are your penny guys, the streamers?
You also need to figure out what you are going to do if your team over-performs. Are you going to sell everything to win? What if they under-perform again?
Trading is what makes a dynasty league great, so if you are left feeling like you lost most of your trades, a future post will address this issue. But now you need to figure out what you need to trade for. Or not trade for! Treat this email as a basic way to figure out where your dynasty team sits, and hopefully help you figure out where you want to go.
How to evaluate your Dynasty team ahead of Rookie Drafts:
Step 1 - Figure out your league.
The first thing I look at by the end of the season, is the actually points leaders on the season. I view it by total, by position, by rookies, by sophomores. I look at it any way I can in order to just see which names pop out to me.
A little discussion: A big topic this year has been on the limited top tier QBs available. Just six in the top twelve scorers when previous years it was 10-12/12 QBs at the top. Mahomes and Allen rightfully get all the love, but Hurts is right there too, and is primed for a big season next year as well. Burrow is obviously a star in real life and fantasy too, but don’t sleep on Tlaw and Herbert.
Herbert is my buy at all costs target with a new OC and a healed up shoulder for next season, but I’m also expecting some better performances across the board in the mid tier of QBs with a few guys trending back towards the mean. I’m thinking OCs will have an off-season to adjust to the Tampa-2 defenses that have swept the league, and scoring be up a slight amount.
Guys who will be better: Lamar, Herbert, Lawrence, Fields, Rodgers, Pickett, Goff, Kyler.
That 2017 RB class continues to be the class that redefines the position. The infamous RB cliff will be challenged by these guys next year but some may fade.
Ekeler, McCaffrey, Mixon, A Jones, Kamara, Cook, Chubb, Fournette, Connor are all approaching 6+ years in the league. It seems insane right now to think that a cliff is coming for these folks. I have to think a few of them end up having longer careers than your average RB from years ago, especially because these guys are the same ones who pushed that RB cliff younger when they took over the league by 2019.
Quite a few WRs over 300 points. Take your pick in Dynasty for WR2. JJeff is historic, but after that I’ll accept a few answers. Back to back to back years with excellent rookie WRs. Does that trend dip, or are we in a new era of talented, young WRs?
TE is a crapshoot. Kelce is doing crazy numbers. If you have any of the other top 8-12 TEs you might be okay, just not as good as the guy with Kelce.
There are copious amount of tools available now to help with this:
Find out your leagues rankings two ways. Someone is going to be geared towards Redraft or Win Now, and others will be geared towards the future. Dynasty Ranker, and KeepTradeCut league tools with the draft picks on will give you the most likely Draft Kings of your league.
If you sort without draft picks on KTC, you might get the people who were in the playoffs but maybe not. Same with the Fantasypros sort on Dynasty Ranker.
Superflex is a nice mix of everything because it has it sorted by the different rankings as well, either Dynasty or “Contender” rankings from various sources. It will also give you values, and a trade evaluator from all the trades in your league based on two databases.
Step 2 - Figure out your team.
There are various ways to do this and varying opinions on every player in fantasy. One thing that I like to do is figure out who are the core players on my team. This can mean different things for different people, but mainly the guys you do not want to trade.
I have created two worksheets to display how figure out your squad. They are two versions of the same thing, fill able PDFs, that help sort your players. Sometimes it is nice to be able to view things on paper or in a different way than it is normally presented in an app or site.
Worksheet 2 - The Portfolio Method
But following along with the worksheets, you will go through the various subgroups throughout the form, adding your players and their value. I linked KTC for the values on the spreadsheets, but you can obviously enter anything you want in those boxes.
After going through the worksheets, you might have a good internal feel for how your team is doing, but how can you be sure?
This is part where the monthly dynasty checklists I publish will come in handy, but you may need to just be seeing a good amount of opinions on rankings. You can do this by checking ADP from sleeper your league sites. Also by checking the various rankings that get posted throughout the year but I will start with a very basic one, Mike Clay’s Redraft Rankings vs his Dynasty Rankings.
Do whatever you need to figure out how your team stands, but I’ll copy the rankings over to a OneNote page real quick, and highlight my dynasty players for my specific teams. You obviously want to have about one guy per round. So if you have 3-5 guys in the top 30-45 players of anyone’s redraft rankings, you are in good shape, and potentially going all in at the right time. If your team is sitting at less than 1 player per round, this is where you know that you probably need to start rebuilding, especially if these guys are not young.
Now you need to look at which positions from the top columns of your worksheets, and the top of the rankings, to see what positional groups you need to improve. This is where you will see where you are relying on your breadwinners, and where you are hoping for improvement.
I do this from time to time as a nice break during work. Takes like 5 minutes and can give you a little boost during your day. Then I continue to do this throughout the season pretty much.
Step 3 - Identify targets who may be available at your 1st and 2nd round picks in your rookie draft.
Plenty of time to get into draft discussion and resources. That will be a futu re post. For now, thank you for reading. Please share this with any noobs you feel would enjoy it.
I want to end your team’s evaluation by propositioning you on the tools I use to help organize my life and how I use them for Dynasty:
Best Self Planner - or any blank planner. Writing things down physically is such a different part of your brain than what you type or read on your screens, which is why I will also provide some dynasty worksheets to help with these arduous tasks. But using something like that with different colors or memory cues like a song you’re listening too, or maybe some note on crazy weather/events going on at the time help with recalling information in general.
Microsoft OneNote - or any cloud based notes. I have this OneNote app everywhere. I know Apple just came out with their own, Freeform, but Microsoft has an advantage of being able to integrate Excel and PDF pretty seamlessly.
Google Drive - or Excel on a OneDrive. I also have this app everywhere. I keep a few spreadsheets personally and for dynasty. Nothing crazy. Until the draft that is, which I will also share eventually.
Apple Freeform + Notes + Reminders - Similar to above, you need to be able to jott things down when you hear a name or see a guy do something subtle or outstanding in CFB or NFL.