Dynasty, in Theory: The 5 Position Paradigm

There's a lot of really strong dynasty analysis out there, especially when compared to five or ten years ago. But most of it is so dang practical-- Player X is undervalued, Player Y's workload is troubling, the market at this position is irrational, take this specific action to win your league. Dynasty, in Theory is meant as a corrective, offering insights and takeaways into the strategic and structural nature of the game that might not lead to an immediate benefit, but which should help us become better players over time. (Additionally, it serves as a vehicle for me to make jokes like "theoretically, this column will help you out".)

Another Way of Looking at Paradigms

For our first entry after a long hiatus, I wanted to talk about paradigms. Paradigm is simply a fancy word for "way of looking at reality". For instance, I have a paradigm that governs all of my interactions on the internet:

Modified principle of charity:
If a statement has two interpretations and one means the speaker is an idiot or an asshole, choose the other.

— Adam Harstad (@AdamHarstad) October 30, 2017

The thing about paradigms is they don't actually change anything. I can believe with all my heart that people aren't jerks, but that belief doesn't change the underlying reality that some people are jerks. Paradigms need to be evaluated not by whether they are true-- paradigms by definition cannot be true or false-- but by whether they are useful. In this case, it's a lot easier to engage when I believe that everyone else is well-meaning and any conflicts are accidents in the common pursuit of truth than it is when I believe I'm beset on all sides by enemies seeking to bring me low.

My favorite example is one of the most famous paradigm shifts of all time. For most of human history, it was believed that the sun revolved around the earth, a position known as geocentrism. Some were proposing as early as the 3rd century BC that the earth was not actually the center of the universe, but the position wasn't widely adopted until the Copernican Revolution starting in the 16th century AD. You undoubtedly learned the fact as a small child that the earth revolved around the sun, a position known as heliocentrism.

But this is not actually true. In actual fact, there is no such thing as "absolute motion"; all motion is relative to a frame of reference. I could tell you right now that I am sitting stationary at my desk while I type this, and that statement would be accurate relative to a frame of reference consisting of my immediate surroundings. But to an observer on Mars, I'm not sitting still, I'm hurtling through the void of space at 67,000 miles per hour, and my desk and computer are hurtling alongside me.

We model our solar system as having a stationary sun at the center that everything else orbits, but in reality, our sun is itself orbiting the center of the Milky Way, and the Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxy are both orbiting each other, and on and on down the line. Heliocentrism was a good paradigm not because it was true, but because it was useful. If you want to predict where heavenly bodies will be at some point in the future, both a geocentric model and a heliocentric model can accomplish the task, but the math on the heliocentric model is substantially easier. It's not wrong to say that the sun revolves around the earth. It just makes things harder than they need to be.

This property, the idea that paradigms can't change anything and can't possibly be correct, makes them a perfect launch pad for a fantasy football column whose tagline could be "practically useless".

The "Five-Position" Paradigm

In a relatively standard dynasty league, most managers opt to evaluate their teams based on strength and weakness at the four main positions: quarterback, running back, wide receiver, and tight end. Managers who are strong at running back and weak at wide receiver might look for a deal trading away one of their running backs and getting a receiver back. There is, of course, nothing wrong with this, but I personally prefer to evaluate my teams based on strength and weakness at the five main positions: quarterback, running back, wide receiver, tight end, and prospect. Prospect, in this paradigm, is its own position.

Quarterbacks are any players who put points into your starting lineup at the quarterback spot, running backs put points into your starting lineup at the running back spot, wide receivers at the wide receiver spot, and tight ends at the tight end spot. Prospects, by exclusion, are all players who do not put points into your starting lineup.

Some players exist on a continuum. If you have six middling wide receivers, you might assume that some of them will break out and start for you this year, but you cannot know in advance which ones will and which ones won't. As such, it makes sense to treat all six of those receivers as some sort of Schrödinger's Wide Receiver, existing as some half-receiver, half-prospect until observation collapses him into one reality or the other. Similarly, your top backup at running back is not merely your top backup, he's also your bye-week starter and injury fill-in. You can look at your roster today and make a best-guess estimate for how many times you'll start a given player this year, and the percentage of the time that you won't start him is how much of a prospect he is.

As mentioned, for quarterbacks, running backs, wide receivers, and tight ends, the primary job is putting points in your starting lineup. Because of the nature of the "prospect" position, the number of points it scores is entirely irrelevant; instead, a prospect's one and only job is to hold or gain market value. If a player is likely to be worth more three months from now than he is today, he is a good prospect. If a player is likely to be worth less three months from now than he is today, he is a bad prospect. I sometimes summarize this concept as "Adam Thielen is a great WR3 but a terrible WR5". If Adam Thielen is the 3rd-best receiver on your roster, that's a solid advantage, so you'd think having him as the 5th-best receiver on your roster would be an even bigger advantage. But if Adam Thielen is not cracking your starting lineup, his only job becomes holding or gaining value, and 32-year-old wide receivers have historically been terrible at that.

Why do I like this paradigm so much? Because it helps me make better decisions about what to do with my roster. If I had three running backs but ten wide receivers, should I trade a receiver for a running back? The four-position paradigm would say yes, I should balance the talent. The five-position paradigm says I have enough running backs and receivers, plus a bunch of prospects (who all coincidentally happen to have the letters "WR" next to their name). Should I trade one of those prospects (with a "WR" next to his name) for another prospect (with an "RB" next to his name)? Only if I think the other prospect is going to do better at the one and only job prospects have, holding or gaining value.

Why is this the case? Because why should I trade a player I'm not going to start today for another player I'm not going to start today if the first player is going to be substantially more valuable two months from now? Even if I really wanted the other player, why wouldn't I just wait two months until I could get that other player plus extra in trade?

The five-position paradigm also leads to unconventional insights. My dynasty teams tend to be far more likely than most to feature two or three good, young quarterbacks at a time. Many managers get uncomfortable being too "strong" at quarterback and will move their backup for a player at a different position. But young, talented quarterbacks hold their dynasty value extraordinarily well. I don't need to trade one of my young quarterbacks for a receiver or running back today when I could just as easily hold them for months or even years and still trade them for a receiver or running back when I needed one down the road. The position of my depth doesn't matter nearly as much as my ability to convert it into production when I need it.

The other useful insight from the five-position paradigm is that a player's success or failure as a prospect has little to do with age or inexperience. Many read the word "prospect" and immediately imagine someone young and unproven, but old and proven players can excel at that core job, too. At the beginning of the 2020 season, I embarked on a total rebuild of one of my dynasty teams. Of the 24 players on my roster at the beginning of the process, 22 were gone within thirteen months. The two exceptions were Justin Herbert, who I had just drafted with my 2nd-round rookie pick... and Leonard Fournette, a 25-year-old backup running back for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

I didn't set out to hold on to Fournette; in fact, he was one of the first players I tried to trade when rebuilding. But ultimately for every offer I got I asked myself "is the other side of this deal more likely to hold or gain value than Fournette?" and for every offer I got I decided the answer was "No." So Fournette remained on my squad, and it's a good thing he did because he was a phenomenal prospect in hindsight. In the months after he was cut by the Jacksonville Jaguars, Leonard Fournette was frequently ranked as the 35th-40th best running back for dynasty. Today he's closer to the 20th-25th best. Even ignoring all of the production he's provided in the intervening years (and he's done quite well as a "running back" in addition to as a "prospect"), anyone I could trade Fournette for today will help my team a lot more than anyone I could trade Fournette for two years ago.

Anyone who is underrated by the market today naturally makes a good "prospect" because of the pending market correction. Similarly, anyone who is overrated by the market makes a bad prospect because the bottom will fall out at some point. This is true even if the former guy is an aging veteran and the latter is an unproven rookie. I have Michael Thomas buried on the depth chart of one of my dynasty teams. Normally 29-year-old receivers make for terrible prospects, but given Thomas' performance history, it's easy to imagine a large spike in value if he looks healthy and productive through the first few weeks of the season, which makes him an interesting exception.

Again, it doesn't matter whether this paradigm is "correct". All that matters is whether it's a useful way to evaluate your roster. We want our dynasty teams to score as much as possible not just today but in the future, and this framework maximizes the value we'll have at our disposal to acquire points down the line. Trading for points is often a game of getting the numbers to work, and the five-position paradigm, like the heliocentric model of the universe, greatly simplifies the math.