There are all kinds of ways to build a fantasy football dynasty. One approach is to draft a grip of young players, a strategy that sacrifices the ‘now’ for multiple ‘down the road’ years of domination. Another approach is to throw youth to the curb, thus building a team of elite players that are overlooked because they are near the end of their fantasy prime. A third approach is to draft a combination of young and old players, where the older players are in the prime; the goal of this approach is to have your younger players develop so that they can replace the older players once those veterans slow down. So, what is my favorite approach? The answer is: None of these approaches!

I firmly believe that one can accomplish building both a youth-geared team and a team that has ‘win now’ capability. No, I’m not talking about the third strategy up above, which is mixing both young and old talent, as that strategy only gives one half of a roster that is youth-based. No, what I’m suggesting is that, for the most part, one can build an entire roster around ‘win-now’ youth. Now, I’m not suggesting that you can’t have one single veteran fantasy player on your roster, but if using this approach, the majority of your team should/will be upside- and youth-based. And, more importantly, all of these players will [level-all]have either already had their breakout campaigns, or those campaigns are immediately on the horizon. Now, there are two ways to break this down: 1) Building such a team through an inaugural draft, 2) Building such a team via trade (in an existing league).

So, let’s start with inaugural drafting.

Drafting a “Young/Win-Now” Dynasty

If drafting from scratch, and let’s start with regular old snake-style drafts, to build a “Young/Win-Now” roster, you clearly will want to invest in Trent Richardson and Doug Martin type players over let’s say Adrian Peterson or Arian Foster type players. And, in the second- and third-rounds, you will want to target players like David Wilson, Lamar Miller, Dez Bryant and Julio Jones instead of players like Marshawn Lynch, Brandon Marshall, and so on. That’s the easy and obvious stuff. The tricky part, the part that requires craft and skill, is ensuring that your middle-round players consist of guys with monster-upside. Or, my favorite approach, which I will write more on in the coming month, is to trade-up. Move your 4th- and 5th-round picks to get another 2nd-round pick. Or, trade your 6th- and 7th-round picks for a 3rd- or 4th-round pick. This “trade-up” approach, which again I will write on more this June, is the best way to acquire young and ‘on-the-rise’ type talent in those middle rounds, talent that you can then set right next to your first- and second-round picks (like Trent Richardson and Julio Jones). Your goal should be to construct a team like this:

Again, the goal above is to draft those young rising star type players (like Richardson and Julio, or even two receivers like AJG/Julio), even if you have to do some small trade-ups to get there. Then, the crafty moves to this strategy are those 2-for-1 trade-ups in the middle rounds. In the example above, we traded our 6th- and 7th-round picks for an additional 3rd-round pick. Sometimes it takes more to land a 3rd-round pick, sometimes it takes less, but this type of roster is possible with some trade-ups. And if you think it’s tough landing such deals in your league, make sure you’re sending out an offer to everyone in your league. That’s right, have 11 pending ‘trade-up’ offers sitting out there all at once! Will everyone want to accept your offer? No, probably not, in fact some will usually be offended, but that’s why you’re offering in masses; all it takes is one owner to accept! Other great move-up ideas are acquiring someone’s 2nd-round pick using your 5th- and 6th, and even throw in a 10th-round pick if need be. Again, not everyone will even consider your offer(s), but someone’s desire for depth might just match your desire for power-type players.

Now that we’ve looked at how to draft a “Young/Win-Now” dynasty roster, let’s take a look at how you rebuild into such a squad!

Trading Into a “Young/Win-Now” Dynasty Roster

So, you have a strong team, one built around a decent mixture of youth and veteran leadership; however, you want to do as we have suggested, trade into a roster that is young, but can win now! Your first step, before doing anything, is to analyze your roster and decide who stays and who goes (assuming that you are not selling low). Who stays? Players that fit the profile. What’s that profile again? Young players that have already had that breakout season, or players that are on the verge of breakout. What’s the second step? Attempt to sell your veterans, no matter how good they are. Just be certain not to sell-low. Wait to sell a player if need be, even if it takes waiting until Week 1 or 2… A small example of this type of trading would be trading in Ray Rice or Arian Foster (before they decline at all), and your targets would be a youth-based package like Lamar Miller and the 1.01 rookie pick (so that you can land a Montee Ball or DeAndre Hopkins). The important thing to remember here is that your objective is not to merely trade-in one player for another, like an Arian Foster for a player that you think could be as good as him some day. No, the objective is to convince the other owner that the player you are receiving will never be as good as Foster (even though you quietly think differently), and because of that, you need the 1.01 in return. That’s the mentality you need to make this strategy work. If you don’t have that mentality straight from the start, what you are going to end up with is a lesser team than before, but one that is far from proven. That is not the point of this article… the point of this article is to figure out how to pull off the kind of player aquisitons listed below:

Drew Brees, Arian Foster, Marshawn Lynch, 2014 second-round pick

… and turn it into something like this:

Robert Griffin III, Lamar Miller, Montee Ball, David Wilson, Josh Gordon, DeAndre Hopkins

How can one make such moves above? Well, trades that could lead to such a transformation could consist of:

• Turning Drew Brees into Robert Griffin III & DeAndre Hopkins

  One could trade Brees for RG3 and a 1.05 or 1.06, which could lead to the drafting of DeAndre Hopkins. Let’s say you could only get back RG3 and the 1.07 or 1.08! Well, get creative and package that pick with your 2014 2nd-rounder, and upgrade into a pick that will land you Hopkins.

• Turning Arian Foster into Lamar Miller & the 1.01

  This will either be the easiest of the moves to pull off, or the hardest. Foster is either easy to sell at this price, or you will run into owners that wouldn’t trade for Foster for anything even close to reasonable. In cases where you can’t sell Foster for fair market value, hold off until Week 1 or 2 of the upcoming season, then revisit trade talks for this piece of your roster reconstruction. Patients is key with this strategy, as you can ruin the entire process by trading in one of your biggest bargaining chips for pennies on the dollar. If you do that, as said above, you’re going to have a thinner team and one full of all kinds of unproven talent. Don’t regret your trades later because you settled in a panic.

• Turning Marshawn Lynch into David Wilson & Josh Gordon

  Maybe you can’t get anything extra in a Lynch for Wilson swap, or maybe you can. It all depends on your league and how in tune your league mates are with breakouts such as Wilson. If anything, like above, toss out future 2nd-round picks if that gets such a swap done, or settle for a TY Hilton in place of Gordon, etc…

That up above is how you trade into a youth-built team using veteran players that are still playing at a high level. And, keep in mind that we only talked about moving three players; you could do a whole lot more with more pieces to trade!

Ok, DC Nation, now go build a dynasty!

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