Preparing for Your Dynasty Rookie Draft

Apr 19, 2023

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I receive a lot of questions via Twitter (@MikeEHavens) or through the DLF forum about what to do come draft day. Some of the answers to these questions feel like common knowledge, while other answers are things that get debated to this day. I’m going to cover the basic do’s and don’ts of draft day so you’re better prepared when that big day arrives.

Pre-NFL Draft Preparation

The number one thing most people don’t do enough is a quick one or two minute analysis on each of the 50 or so rookies leading up to the draft. There are dozens of websites that have hired thousands of analysts who have already done the research for you. Find one you like and make a quick spreadsheet of the pros and cons of each player, or find a source you trust who already made the list for you.

With 50 players at two minutes per player, you’re spending under two hours at this stage, and it’s well worth it because sometimes you’ll have a fellow owner who is on the clock late in the draft and they are looking to unload their pick. If you don’t know if you want the pick or not at that moment, you might miss out on a lottery ticket player that you’ll wish you had later.

Once you’ve assembled all your information, it’s now time to make a tiered list. You can take the players you’ve made in your spreadsheet and move them up or down with a few clicks of the mouse. I like to space out my players when I make tiers or throw a thick black border around the groups to help see the separations. Now I know if the 12th pick in the draft is as good in my mind as the 16th pick, and therefore I’ll know if I can feel safe moving back in the draft or not.

Lastly, you should never fall in love with another player until you know their landing spot. Take the case of Kelvin Harmon, wide receiver from NC State who was going as high as fifth in mocks leading up to the NFL Draft. He had such a cult following that it was hard for many to shake it off, even after he fell in the NFL Draft to the sixth round.

NFL Draft Preparation

This is a good segue into the next section, and that’s paying special attention to the NFL Draft. NFL teams make or lose money by drafting well, and these teams generally know what they are doing year to year, so pay attention.

Back to Kelvin Harmon—when a player falls behind other players of the same position in the Draft, that’s almost always a huge red flag. Sixth-rounders hardly ever pan out, and ones that fall to the sixth are red flags you usually want to avoid. Some people were unable to fall out of love with him, however, as he ended up with a second-round ADP in 2019.

Conversely, be on the lookout for when teams reach for a player in the Draft. Diontae Johnson was a projected fifth-rounder who ended up going 66th overall, only two picks into the third round. Owners who didn’t stay in love with Kelvin Harmon were able to draft Johnson instead, and they walked away better for it.

Lastly, guys who are expected to go undrafted but then get selected, such as Brock Purdy, Terry McLaurin, and Isiah Pacheco, are also guys you want to add to your target list immediately. McLaurin was selected in the third round, which was a shock to everybody at the time, but that should have been a message to all dynasty owners to target him early. Anyone who paid attention was handsomely rewarded.

Hold Your Picks & Acquire More If Possible

One thing that rings true in all dynasty formats is that the price of draft picks increases in value leading all the way up to the draft. This is because of the collective research that has been done, therefore putting a spotlight on an increasing number of players in the Draft.

Once a player is selected to an NFL team, most players will receive one final bump in value as we can now view them with their respective teams. Projections for Year 1 get everyone excited, which leads to owners looking for ways to move up or into the draft.

Because of this, I always retain my picks for as long as possible. I used to wheel and deal in the off-season, only to find that I ended up losing value each and every time I traded a pick away.

Acquiring draft picks, however, has almost always turned into a winning proposition since value has a tendency to increase. If you have a decent roster, assume all your selections are late picks and trade accordingly. If you have a bad roster, owners of other teams will be more apt to make a trade with you, and as a result, you may be able to acquire a mid-second for your future second-round pick, which is always a win in my book.

Lastly, you should know that your pick has its maximum possible value the moment you are sitting on the clock. You can use this to your advantage to make a trade back in the draft if your pick doesn’t match the tier of the players you arranged earlier. This will maximize your overall value, which is key to sustaining a championship roster.

Draft For Value, Trade For Need

Now that you’ve put in your prep work, how do you make the proper selection come dynasty draft day? My advice is to keep it simple, trust your pre-Draft process, adjust values based on NFL draft position, and draft for value, not for position necessity.

When it comes to rookie drafts, the best player available strategy (BPA) is king. We’ve all gone into drafts wanting to draft players to fill a specific position, and many times that is where our focus would lie when it came to scouting players. In reality, we all should be drafting the top player available at any given moment in the draft, and that player may not lie within the position you’ve been researching.

My lesson on this topic came in the rookie draft of 2014. My team was barren in the running back department and I wasn’t alone. Everyone was scrambling to acquire one of Bishop Sankey, Carlos Hyde, or Tre Mason, the three top backs of the time who were all drafted into quality landing spots.

The issue is that zero of these backs were ranked anywhere inside anyone’s dynasty top 10, but because so many people needed one, they were being pushed up the ranks across the board. As a result, players such as Odell Beckham, Davante Adams, and Allen Robinson fell two or three spots each.

For me, it was much worse. I sat in the second spot as I watched Sammy Watkins go first off the board, so I snagged Bishop Sankey second overall. I was ecstatic that I was able to get the top back in the draft, thinking nothing of it as I watched Mike Evans go third.

It was only a year later that I saw my mistake, and a different philosophy was realized. The best and only true way to draft in all dynasty drafts is BPA. If I have 11 wide receivers on my team and zero starting running backs, I would rather draft a 12th wide receiver I covet than reach or trade back for a guy out of necessity ever again.

This leads me to my next key philosophy: trade for need. If the draft is the best part of all dynasty leagues, then trading is the next best part. Why force a draft selection to fill out your roster when you can take the BPA and have fun looking for trades to fill out your position of need? Dynasty leagues are meant to be fun, so why reach on a player that devalues your team and simultaneously removes a key component of enjoyment?

I know this philosophy may feel redundant for many of you out there, but I feel it bears repeating every so often not only for the new owners but also as a reminder to those of us who blindly fall into the same trap year to year.

That being said, there is an appropriate time to draft for need, and that’s when your opinion of value for two or more players is not significantly different from each other. If you are trying to decide between two or more players when your pick is on the clock, that’s when you should select the player that fills the greater position of need, since it’s what you will have to do anyway through trading.

If there is a tie and you don’t have a greater position of need, the tie-breaker for me is always wide receiver. These players tend to have longer careers and sustain greater value long-term. Running back value fluctuates too often from year to year, so I like to load up on wide receivers to give myself the slight edge in long term value.

The Bottom Line

If you haven’t already done any of the above then you should get to it before it’s too late. There are other tips and pointers out there, but these are the main ones that work for me, and the same advice I’ve given to hundreds of fantasy owners over the years. You know what they say; if you fail to plan, then you are planning to fail. Good luck!