Todd Gurley is a top pick for dynasty purposes

For many fantasy players accustomed to redraft formats, the thought of joining a dynasty league can be daunting. And for those first-time dynasty leaguers now entering their second season, preparing for a rookie draft can also be tough, as unlike standard leagues there is simply not an abundance of dynasty-specific draft prep tools and cheat sheets out there. After all, we’re talking about projecting rookies who have never played an NFL regular-season snap.

Do the other owners value Player X the same as I do in the first round? Will Player Y be available in the second round or is that still too early? Too late?

Having just wrapped up another dynasty draft this past weekend for a league now in its fifth year, I thought I’d allocate this space to shed some light on those kinds of questions. Below I’ll walk through each round of the draft, provide observations, and even take you inside my thought process. So if your dynasty draft is coming up this weekend, hopefully you can use this piece as a preparation resource and come to your draft equipped with a solid understanding of what to expect. Some quick notes about our league format:

It’s a 10-team league with owners keeping 16 players of a 20-man roster following each season, and then it’s a four-round, non-snake draft at the outset of the new league year. In addition to incoming rookies, any player who was not kept is eligible for the draft along with any veteran free agents leftover from the previous season. We also use a weighted lottery system to determine draft order, which is an event in and of itself (the first iteration involved a makeshift vacuum, a bucket full of ping pong balls, and some markers for color coding).

After four years, franchises have risen, fallen, and then risen and fallen again. So just keep in mind that teams all have different needs and circumstances, carry different baggage and have a varying range of draft picks after the dust has settled from a year’s worth of trades. It’s a fun league with hometown buddies – one of whom managed to mail his picks via the penal system – and it gets better with each passing year.

Without further ado, let’s walk through how our draft unfolded this past weekend.

Round 1

(* = via one trade, ** = via two trades, etc.)
(bold = my picks)
(DFW ADP = Dynasty Football Warehouse post-draft rookie average draft position)

OBSERVATIONS
The first round was a nearly even split of running backs and wide receivers, with only a single quarterback taken. … Ameer Abdullah has risen into position to possibly end up being the top rookie, so I was a bit surprised he lasted until the seventh pick. … I thought perhaps Kevin White and/or DeVante Parker might fall given their injuries, but it just goes to show how the first round of a dynasty draft is truly for the long-term outlook and not the here and now. … Sam Bradford is this year’s top instance of a leftover veteran rising from waiver wire fodder to hot commodity following one offseason transaction. … Over the course of the previous year, there were eight total trades executed involving first-round picks, which is one of the great draws of dynasty leagues as long as you have a committed crew. … The first round stayed pretty true to the DFW ADP board with the exception of maybe Nelson Agholor going ahead of Abdullah and T.J. Yeldon – whatever, we’re from Philly.

MY PLAN FOR ROUND 1
My plan was to grab an extra slice of pizza, as I did not have a first-round pick this year. Prior to last season’s trade deadline, I packaged two first-rounders along with Russell Wilson and Zac Stacy in exchange for Le’Veon Bell, Andre Johnson, a 2^nd and a 4^th (he was out of contention and needed a QB, I was gunning for the playoffs and needed a RB).

Round 2

OBSERVATIONS
Jameis Winston and Marcus Mariota were off the board with the first two picks out of 256 players in the NFL draft, but both are going in the second round of dynasty drafts. That speaks volumes to the current QB landscape, and hence the growing popularity of the streaming QB strategy in redraft leagues. When it comes to dynasty, I don’t mind taking it a step further by rostering a third QB, a young potential future stud or, just as well, a coveted trade chip to flip for another position of need – acquiring assets that figure to appreciate in value is the name of the game. … Breshad Perriman generated quite a bit of pre-draft buzz and then landed in a Marc Trestman offense, but a recent ankle injury lowered his perceived value. He could provide nice return at 2.08.

MY PLAN FOR ROUND 2
I was kind of hoping one of the first-rounders would slip, but when that didn’t happen, I went with Jaelen Strong at 2.01 because I only counted about eight WRs on my draft board worth rostering (you’ll see how that plays out when we get to the fourth round). I suspect most folks might have taken Tevin Coleman, and that’s ok. But as someone who picked Devonta Freeman in the back end of last year’s first round, I decided to stick to my guns there and accept however the Falcons backfield unfolds. As for Strong, despite his recent touchdown streak, I don’t expect I’ll use him in a single starting lineup this season. He’s sixth in the pecking order among the six WRs on my roster. Maybe in a couple of years when I’m not counting on WR1 production from Calvin Johnson, he’ll be ready to step into the mix. Maybe I’ll trade him down the road, or maybe he’ll flop and I’ll end up dropping him. That’s the beauty of dynasty leagues, you plant seeds and hope they blossom over the next few years, but should they fail to sprout, be willing and able to scrap the initial plan and adopt a new one.

As a Matthew Stafford and Ryan Tannehill owner, Mariota was who I anticipated taking at 2.09. Everybody in this league owns at least one bankable QB, so I was pretty confident he’d be there at the back end of Round 2, and I like the potential as a future QB1. If he wasn’t there, my fallback was to take a RB like Matt Jones or Cameron Artis-Payne, both of whom wound up falling to the fourth round.

Round 3

OBSERVATIONS
Round 3 tends to be the fill-your-need portion of the draft, as you can glean from the fact that seven of the 10 selections were from the veteran pool. … At the end of the day, you want to aim for talent above opportunity in dynasty formats, and you always want to consider the long-term picture. That said, if you do have a need to fill, the third round is a good place to do it. … Also of note in Round 3, not a single rookie RB came off the board.

MY PLAN FOR ROUND 3
Point blank, I wanted Eifert here (my one pick that drew some groans). With 30-year-old Greg Olsen as my only, yet capable, tight end, I was looking to add some depth with near-term upside. If Eifert wasn’t available, I would’ve taken Austin Seferian-Jenkins and been happy with it (although he wound up going undrafted). And if I didn’t land Mariota in the previous round, Eli Manning would’ve been the pick. Speaking of Eli, I’m not sure if it’s a Philly thing or what, but for a guy with two rings who can easily finish among the top-10 fantasy QBs this season, he’s clearly way underrated by our league.

Round 4

OBSERVATIONS
This is where it pays to have done your homework, as any of these guys could have gone a round earlier and no one would have batted an eye. Unlike the previous round, Round 4 was lottery ticket time for rookie RBs, with only one WR coming off the board. Cameron Artis-Payne, Jeremy Langford, and Tyler Lockett stand out as solid value picks this late in the draft. Jeremy Langford could be the heir to Matt Forte, who turns 30 in December.

MY PLAN FOR ROUND 4
I wanted an upside stash here, as did everyone else. Having already taken one each of QB, WR and TE, I also wanted to go RB, as did everyone else. David Cobb was a player I had my eye on all offseason, but his recent calf injury looks to have reopened the door for incumbent Bishop Sankey. Matt Jones is a player I’ve had my eye on for a while, and I was a bit nervous his productive preseason may have let the cat out of the bag (who keeps cats in bags, by the way?). I would’ve actually taken him in the second or third round if my other picks didn’t pan out. A big, violent runner with soft hands who has drawn Marshawn Lynch comparisons, Jones will be an integral part of Washington’s offense this season and beyond, as Alfred Morris is unsigned beyond this year.

CONCLUSIONS
According to the FantasyPros MyPlaybook feature, I’m now rocking a 100 percent overall ranking compared to my league-mates (based on expert consensus rankings). In the spirit of disclosure, I also missed the playoffs three straight years before finally reaching the title game last year. To reiterate, no picks were made with immediate need in mind. So that you can see the full picture, here’s how my roster looked after the draft:

With the exception of the one guy in our league who always shows up to the draft without so much as a pen and paper, or any kind of cheat sheet or list of available players on his smart phone, every other owner does their homework prior to the draft and enters with a plan. That said, a lot changes in dynasty leagues just like in re-draft, only the impact is more far-reaching, so you always need to be ready to adapt. And it’s important to keep in mind what may look great right now doesn’t always turn out so great later (my former first-round BFFs David Wilson and Montee Ball come to mind). I’ve seen an owner go from worst to first in a single season and vice versa. If you were counting along the * symbols, there were a total of 15 trades, most of them executed by the guy who came in last and traded himself in position to draft Gurley, Cooper and White. So if you’re someone who spends a portion of February watching college players run around Lucas Oil Stadium in Under Armour, a dynasty league may be right up your alley. If not, congratulations on your normal life. Give dynasty a try anyway.

Mike Castiglione is a correspondent at FantasyPros. For more from Mike, you can view his archive or follow him @RickDancin