Expanding the Dynasty: How My Dynasty League Successfully Added Two Teams

By Will Harper

Fantasy Football is fun. I started playing fantasy football back when I was a senior in high school. I came across an article about it, so I decided to join a random league on ESPN. I ended up drafting LaDainian Tomlinson #1 overall, one season after his 2,300 yard, 31 touchdown season. He didn’t quite reach those heights again in 2007, but he was worth the draft pick, and a love for Fantasy Football was born. Since then, I’ve participated in many different types of leagues with different types of people. I’m in a league that started with some college buddies 10 years ago that is still going strong. This past year, I participated in a guillotine league where the lowest scoring team during any given week is cut from the league, and the remaining teams used their FAAB to bid on those players.

With all of that being said, my new favorite type of Fantasy Football league is Dynasty. My friend Nick and I decided that we wanted to be in a fantasy football league together back in the Spring of 2019. We tossed around the idea of doing a normal redraft league, but I had heard rumblings of a Dynasty league format, and I was very interested. In a Dynasty league, the participant (Manager) takes on more of a General Manager role instead of a coaching role. This is because you don’t draft a new crop of players each year, your rosters carry over from year-to-year. The only way that a player leaves your roster is if you trade or drop them. So instead of picking who you want to start each week from your 12-14 players on your roster and going for it each year, even if your team isn’t built to win a championship, you start to think more year-to-year. You have managers that have lots of talent at their primes, so they trade a young, potential stud for a guy that they know will help them win this year. Maybe your roster isn’t built to win right now, so you try to acquire as much young talent as possible, hoping that your time is right around the corner. There is a lot more thought and strategy involved in this format, and it has stolen my heart. I am now a Dynasty truther.

When Nick and I started the League of Ordinary Gentlemen (LOG), we each concluded that we could get 4 guys each to join with us. So Nick + Nick’s 4 + me + my 4 = 10 managers for our Dynasty league. We rounded up our guys, I created the LOG on Sleeper (in my opinion, THE platform for Dynasty), and set a start-up draft date in July of 2019. I held a draft party at my house, ordered a draft board from Amazon, and the LOG was officially born. We had a successful first season. Nick ended up winning the league, and we had one guy drop. I had a guy in mind to replace him. He accepted that invitation, and we rolled into the 2020 season. However, ever since before the beginning of this league, I always felt like it should be a 12-team league. There’s just something perfect about 12 teams, and I knew that I wanted my league to have 12 teams. I didn’t think that we would have enough interest at launch for 12, which we didn’t, but we did now. It was time to add two expansion teams to the LOG. But how? How do you add two teams to a Dynasty league without making existing managers mad about losing players? How do you add expansion teams without setting them up to fail from the jump? There is a fine line there, and I think we hit it. The reason that I’m writing this article is to explain how we did it, and provide a blueprint for other leagues that are looking to add expansion franchises to their Dynasty leagues.

Roster Limits

Dynasty leagues have bigger rosters. This is inherent since there are many different ways to structure your team in a Dynasty format. You need more bench spots so that you can stash players. The first two years of the LOG, we had 25 player rosters. In addition to those active roster spots, we had 3 taxi slots for each team. For those unfamiliar, a taxi slot is similar to a redshirt in college athletics. The player is on your team, but they aren’t on your active roster. Essentially, it’s a way to stash a player that you aren’t planning on using this season. We also have IR slots, but for the sake of math, I’m not including those in this illustration. So, if everyone carries the max roster limit of 25 and uses all 3 taxi slots, there are roughly 280 players on rosters at any given point. The last 2 years, our starting slots were 1 QB, 2 RB, 3 WR, 1 TE, 2 FLEX, 1 DEF, and 1 K. Even before it was decided to add two new franchises, it was decided to drop 1 WR slot, drop the kickers, and add a Super FLEX spot. So if every team swapped out their kicker with a skill position player or a defense, we would have still have 280 players rostered at any given time. With expansion, I knew that we couldn’t leave those roster limits as they were. There weren’t 56 additional players out there that deserved roster spots. So I made the decision to set a new roster limit of 22 (with the same three taxi slots). Now if everyone has a full roster and uses all taxi slots, that means that 300 players will be on rosters, an increase of only 20 players. This is a much more manageable number.

Entrance Strategy

Now that I knew how many players would be on each roster, I had to think about the best way to actually bring in the new guys. I immediately starting ruling out ways to introduce the new teams. I ruled out making the new teams only draft from existing free agents. That would put the expansion franchises in a hole that they could potentially never climb out of. I ruled out doing a complete redraft. This doesn’t reward the guys in the league already for joining from the jump and pouring in two years of strategy. There was a happy medium somewhere in the middle, and here’s how I found it. I looked over the rosters, and I decided that each current team could “franchise tag” 10 players each. I let them know ahead of time to rank them from 1-10 because there may be a chance that not all 10 would be safe, and it may only be the top 8, 9, etc. These players would be safe during the expansion draft, and would be guaranteed to remain on their roster going into 2021. I did set roster limits on these 10 players. You could keep a maximum of 2 QB, 4 RB, 4 WR, 1 TE, and 1 DEF. Those are 12 different slot options to keep 10 players. Once I received everyone’s lists of 10 players, I met with three other league managers to talk about the fairness of which players would be available, and if that number of “tagged” players should drop. In looking at the players available if everyone kept all 10 players, I felt confident in the QBs, WRs, TEs, and DEFs that were available. While there were no true superstars available at those spots, you could compete with what was available. The RB position was a completely different story. Just like in every Fantasy Football league, the RB position is the hardest to figure out. They are the most valuable position in redraft leagues because there are so few that have guaranteed workloads and production. If you have a good RB, you hold them as tight as possible. I knew that not everyone could keep all 10 players going into the meeting because the RBs available would be too weak. The others agreed, and we made a decision to let everyone keep their top 9 players, with the exception of any manager that kept 4 RBs, and their fourth RB was not ranked 10th (3 guys in the league were effected by this, and 2 of them happened to be in the group that made the decision). This added 6 quality RBs to the available player pool. So now, the 10 returning teams have 9 players and we’re ready to have our expansion draft.

Expansion Draft

I’m not sure that there is a definitive right or wrong way to do the draft. You could have them fill up their maximum roster spots, you could have them draft the maximum roster spots minus the rookie draft spots (we have a 3-round rookie draft, so in our case they would have drafted 19 players each, leaving room for the 3 round rookie draft), or can do something completely different. It all depends on the makeup of your league. I decided to go with the last option, and go for something completely different. I decided to let the expansion teams draft 12 players each. They could draft from any of the players available with no roster limits. The only limit was the number of players that could be drafted from one team. I set a limit of 4 players, so that the deep teams wouldn’t be completely ransacked of talent. They could be rewarded, if only slightly, for building deep rosters. Once the expansion draft concluded, the returning 10 teams were able to “franchise tag” 3 additional players not drafted from their rosters so that all teams would now have 12 players. No roster limits were placed on these additional spots. I used my “commissioner powers” to force-drop all other players from rosters. So now, at this very moment, all teams in the LOG have 12 players. These 12 players are locked in until the draft, and any player not on a roster at this point will be ineligible to be picked up off of waivers until draft day.

What’s Next?

Later this summer, after the NFL draft and before training camp, we will have our draft. This year, it’s going to be a little different. It’s not going to be a 3-round rookie draft like we had last summer. It’s also not going to be a full-out startup draft like we had the summer before that. It’s going to be a hybrid between the two. The first 3 rounds of this year’s draft will be rookie-only selections. Starting in round 4, any remaining player currently not on a roster will be draft-eligible. Our draft this year will be a 10-round draft, so that by the time that it’s over, every team should be at 22 players. I know that there will be trades of draft picks and players, so some will be over and some will be under, but everyone will be around that magical roster-limit number of 22. After the draft, all undrafted players will be free game to add. I’ll make quick use of my taxi slots and fill out my roster as fully as I can. Starting next season, we will go back to our normal 3 round rookie draft.

Other Changes

In the past, we had two divisions (based on geography), and an NFL-style playoff. The top team from each division would get a first-round bye, and teams 2 and 3 would play each other in the first round. The Crown Cup (our version of the “Big Game”) would always feature teams from opposite divisions. The bottom 2 teams from each division would be entered into a lottery to determine draft order. We utilize a linear draft in rookie drafts similar to the major sports leagues. The champion will always pick last, runner-up second-to-last, and so forth through the teams that made the playoffs. The lottery determines the non-playoff teams draft order to prevent blatant and obvious tanking. In 2021, the number of teams that will make the playoffs isn’t changing, but the divisions are. We will have 3 divisions this year, each consisting of 4 teams. The 3 division winners from the regular season will be guaranteed playoff spots, and the other 3 spots will be filled by the remaining 3 teams with the best records. The two byes will be granted to the 2 division winners with the best records. We landed on 3 divisions because of scheduling. The NFL is expected to move to a 17-game regular season schedule while retaining one bye week, so that means that one game can be added to the fantasy slate (please, if you’re reading this, DON’T PLAY CHAMPIONSHIP GAMES DURING THE FINAL WEEK OF THE REGULAR SEASON. STOP WITH WEEK 17). Our league opted to add a week to the regular season instead of having a 2-week championship, so we will play 14 regular season games, and have 3 weeks for the playoffs, ending in Week 17. With 12 teams, that means that each team will need to play 3 opponents twice, so 3 divisions of 4 teams fits nicely into the scheduling change.

Dynasty Fantasy Football has quickly become my favorite format. I love the offseason trades. I love the risk/reward of giving up and acquiring players before and during their primes. I love the excitement of watching the NFL draft, hoping that the rookies that I’ve had my eye on end up in a favorable spot. I love the fact that it’s year-round football. If you’re reading this and you aren’t in a Dynasty league, a few things: 1) thanks for reading! You must really love fantasy to read this far into an article specifically about the Dynasty format that you currently aren’t involved in, 2) go join a Dynasty league! Preferably, find a group of friends that want to be members of one as well and start from scratch. However, if you know of a league that’s already playing and looking to add teams, you can provided them with this blueprint of how to introduce expansion teams. For all you commissioners out there, be on the lookout for more content from me over the offseason as I write more articles for Backyard Catch in the new, Commissioner’s Corner!