Dynasty Trade Value Chart: June

Photo: USA Today Sports

With the rookie draft season winding down, we are entering the months of the dynasty calendar in which most startup drafts occur. I recently drafted a couple of startups and have spent extra time in the past week collecting and analyzing startup ADP for dynasty leagues (with a focus on the Superflex format) that kicked off after the NFL Draft.

The entire focus of this month’s article will be on startup strategy, including the players at each position you should be targeting.  Specifically, I want to highlight the top values at each position and detail my thought process on how best to build a roster to dominate your new league for years to come. 

We will cover the following topics in depth:

1. The NFL and dynasty trends you must take into account in a startup draft.
2. The three key goals you want to achieve when building your dynasty roster.
3. An update on content and tools to expect the rest of the summer.
4. An early look at the 2025 class and how you should treat 2025 picks in your 2024 startup drafts.
5. The overall positional strategy and top startup draft targets at every position.

Quick Note on Dynasty Tools and Content

As detailed in-depth last month, I am transitioning away from including huge tables with hundreds of players in them inside the monthly Dynasty Trade Value Chart article. Instead, you can see all of the trade values you would in past years inside the Dynasty Trade Value Chart tool. It allows you to customize values for your specific league format, rosters, and scoring. It also includes an option to download the custom values in a spreadsheet and a trade calculator. More fun tools are on the way. 

You will also be getting more dynasty content from me this summer. I recently got approval to write a weekly article exploring dynasty topics from a data-driven perspective. I am incredibly excited about the opportunity and want to have a new article up on the site every Friday morning for the rest of the summer. 

Dynasty Trends You Must Consider

Several NFL and fantasy trends point to one overarching dynasty strategy – make building quality long-term depth your top priority. Let’s look at those trends:

1. More games. More byes. All signs point to the NFL eliminating one or more preseason games and moving to an 18-game schedule in the near future. When this expansion inevitably happens, the players will bargain for concessions (in addition to their split of a larger financial pot). One of those concessions sought is likely to be a second bye week for each NFL team. If these bye weeks continue to occur in the middle of the season, we would see a scenario where each team has two byes within a 12-week stretch. For fantasy purposes, this would mean an average of one-sixth of our rosters would be on bye in any given week. Some weeks would be worse than others. It is going to become increasingly difficult to build a successful “stars and scrubs” dynasty roster that can actually win your league.

2. More fantasy starters. I have been writing this article for a decade and have played in dynasty leagues for nearly twice that long. The unmistakable trend is that each season, the standard for the number of total offensive starters has risen slightly. In the early years, most leagues required seven or eight offensive starters (and often included defenses and kickers for nine or ten total starters). It became common practice for existing leagues to do away with kickers and team defense and replace them with flex spots and very few startups in 2024 include defense or kicker in the starting lineup. The Superflex format continues to rise in popularity every single season and has become the standard for new startups. In searching for potential startups to join, most I see posted or advertised in 2024 are now Superflex leagues with two or more regular flex spots (10-to-12 total offensive starters). In the past, you could get a few elite players and dominate your league. Format changes have made that an impossibility in most newer leagues.

3. More fantasy turnover. The NFL went 60 years without a rookie having 1,400 receiving yards. It has now happened three times since 2020 (Justin Jefferson, Ja'Marr Chase, and Puka Nacua). Prior to last season, only two tight ends in NFL history had 70 receptions as a rookie. We saw two catch 70+ in 2023 (Sam LaPorta and Dalton Kincaid). At every position, players are entering the NFL, ready to make an instant impact. The corollary to this is that we are also seeing players have shorter productive careers. Seeing elite wide receivers falling off a cliff around age 30 has become the norm. Fewer and fewer running backs are seeing second contracts. You have to be constantly replenishing your roster every season with rookies or you will get left in the dust. 

4. Deeper dynasty rosters. I do not have hard data to back this up, but the dynasty trend is towards deeper rosters. Ten years ago, having 18 to 24 total roster spots was most common. Some startups today still have relatively shallow benches of 24 or fewer. The vast majority are now allowing you to roster 25 to 30 players. Plus, with no defenses or kickers, these are all skill-position players. It is increasingly difficult to improve your dynasty roster via waivers. You had better build your depth through the startup and future rookie drafts, or you will have a hard time.