With just one week left in the fantasy season, most are shifting their focus back to the NFL and away from their redraft teams in the season's closing weeks. For dynasty GMs, it is time to get back to business - improving their roster through trades, rookie draft strategy, and proper player valuations for next season and beyond. Here are some lessons learned from 2024 and strategies for 2025:

2024 Lessons

Contend Until You Are Eliminated

One of the bigger mistakes by dynasty GMs is throwing in the towel too early. Some lose in September and are already looking for the exit on the season. Others double-down on not contending in the offseason, viewing being stuck in the middle of the standings as the worst potential outcome and avoiding it even at the expense of contending seasons.

My take: Contend until you are officially eliminated. This is a very NFL-type take. Two games to play and need two wins? Try to win the first one and go from there. Need some wins and some help with a month to go? Take it week by week. Do things look rough in July? Wait until October to assess things, at the minimum.

The best team in a dynasty league does not always win the title. Fellow Footballguys staffer Adam Harstad has broken down the math of winning a title in a variety of circumstances in previous articles. In short, the 'field' has a better chance than any singular team, even once the playoffs start.

In a previous installment, I outlined a 2021 example of a team overcoming the categorical slow start to contend and finish in the money:

"To include one 2021 glaring example of not throwing in the towel from my own dynasty portfolio, one of my weakest teams is in the championship game this week. This team finished 7-7 with a tepid 60% all-play record. I needed a win in the final week to scrape into the postseason. After 10 weeks, I was 3-7. After Week 6, I was 1-5 and 0-4 after the opening month. These are woeful season starts. It is also easy (or easier) to throw in the towel in a devy league (with Superflex and 2TE with premium scoring dynamics) as the trade options are vast to acquire future picks or devy players in exchange for current production.

Instead, I held firm with Matt Ryan and Ben Roethlisberger as notable quarterbacks; James Conner and Alexander Mattison provided timely starts with point-per-carry for the stretch run. Mike Evans and Amari Cooper did the same as I rose in the standings. Having a strong corps of tight ends had a major impact as well, with Mark Andrews and Dallas Goedert, plus Zach Ertz, providing a punch at arguably the most important position in the format.

In both weeks of the playoffs, I had the highest score, including taking down the top seed in Week 16, ultimately finishing second in the league with a quality payout."

While it may seem eight months early for the "Contend Until You Are Eliminated" advice and reminder, there are typically 1-2-3 teams in any given dynasty league who have already thrown in the towel to the the season not yet started in terms of vying for the postseason. Rarely are there deep rebuilds where multiple seasons are required to pull out from the wreckage. However, finishing poorly this season should not limit a team from improving enough to think playoffs during the offseason and at the beginning of the season.

Seek Elite

One of the themes Jordan McNamara and I discuss regularly is seeking elite results. This is on the micro-level of players, profiles, lineup settings, and the waiver wire. However, it also applies to your dynasty portfolio. More to come on this topic in future installments, but research into my results has unearthed a huge edge for teams with a bye week in the dynasty postseason in the semifinal round. There is a substantial edge by merely avoiding playing in Week 15, as any head-to-head matchup is an opportunity to lose, regardless of the opponent. However, my results also show a significant edge for the bye week teams in the Week 16 matchup as well. Picture the first and second seeds in a dynasty playoff bracket. They were better than the rest of the league for more than three months to earn the bye. They are likely still decently (or more) better once the win-or-go-home matchup in December's postseason comes around. In short, the bye teams have a double benefit of avoiding a matchup in Week 15, plus they are hearty favorites most of the time in Week 16. Add those two factors together, and shooting for a bye should be the primary focus for our dynasty teams, as emerging through two rounds as a wildcard team to get to the finals is a low-probability play. As a wildcard team, you are likely somewhere in the 50/50 to 60/40 range of outcomes in Week 15. If you win, you are likely 40% at best and more likely a deeper underdog than that. Compare that to sitting on the sideline with a bye in Week 15 and being a strong favorite in Week 16. These are divergent pathways and probabilities to a title and/or strong prize money ROI.

Running Backs: A Weekly Game

Think of running backs like puzzle pieces. It can be difficult to see how they fit together in the offseason or even in September and October. The running back position is fitting together 14 weeks of lineups with two (or more as applicable) quality (and clarified) starters. While having the same options each week would make that puzzle easy to solve, the NFL regular season of matchups and injuries is far from simple with the information of August. This dovetails with the above contend-until-eliminated mindset. Rostering a significant volume of backup running backs requires patience to actually benefit from evolving depth charts and injuries around the NFL running back water cooler.

This is why looking at the seasonal PPG of running backs or their aggregate finish only tells part of the story and, frankly, for only the declared starters for most of the season. What about the rest of the position? These pockets of clarity, whether a single game or a handful of weeks, are hyper-valuable to the mechanics of navigating a successful dynasty season.

• Zach Charbonnet: Ken Walker III missed four games this season. Charbonnet averaged more than 23 PPG in those clarified starts.
• Chase Brown: Zack Moss started missing games in Week 9. The seven games since produced five games of at least 19 points for Brown, and every game was at least 11.
• Jerome Ford: Nick Chubb missed six games to open the season, plus Week 16 (and upcoming Week 17). In those six games, Ford produced three games of at least 15 points, including 24 points in the fantasy semifinals in Week 16.
• Tank Bigsby: Travis Etienne Jr. missed two games midseason, and Bigsby averaged 16 PPG in those two clarified starts.
• Tyrone Tracy Jr.: Devin Singletary missed Week 5 and Week 6, fueling Tracy to average 18 PPG in his absence. Tracy kept the job for the rest of the season after Singletary returned, hitting 15+ points four more times.
• Jordan Mason: In Christian McCaffrey's early-season absence, Mason hit 17, 22, and 24 points within the opening month to boost fantasy lineups.
• Bucky Irving: Rachaad White missed Week 6. Irving hit 18 points and started to be a confident lineup play after that point in the season.
• Austin Ekeler: Brian Robinson Jr missed three games this season, resulting in 15 PPG for Ekeler in those clarified opportunities.

Pay Attention to the Details

Whether in one league or 20, the weekly player churn through the waiver wire and first-come, first-serve avenues are critical to improving your team. To use one league as an example where players are unlocked when dropped through waivers, etc., and available for pickup, here are some of the adds and flips as a result in the shallow-moderate rosters and attention to detail.

Acquired, from September forward, in one league (24-man rosters)

• Isaac Guerendo
• Cam Akers
• Kareem Hunt
• Kimani Vidal
• Sean Tucker
• Ameer Abdullah
• Isaiah Davis
• Sincere McCormick
• Patrick Taylor Jr.

Early 2025 Regression Candidates

Geno Smith: A career-low (with Seattle) Touchdown Rate of 4.6% this season (through Week 16), and his Interception Rate jumped to 9.5% (per incompletion). Smith will be the classic older veteran to have a crashing market value in the offseason due to a down season.

Kyler Murray: A career-low Touchdown Rate (5.1%) and his Interception Rate is up from the previous two seasons. Yet plenty of Murray's non-counting stats like QBR and Success Rate rival his best seasons to-date. Murray's touchdown drought, averaging around one score through the air per game, is connected to another regression candidate, the touchdown-less Trey McBride, through Week 16.

Tony Pollard: Contract allegiance for Pollard is there for 2025 to be the starter again in Tennessee, and he has just five touchdowns on 279 touches through Week 16. Also, Tennessee's offense generally languished with Will Levis starting.

Malik Nabers: The rookie phenom is set to eclipse 100 receptions and is stuck on four touchdowns. Nabers has mired through poor quarterback play throughout the season, and the Giants are on track for the 1.01 draft position with two games to play.

Trey McBride: One of the top tight ends in fantasy, even without a touchdown over his first 92 receptions on the season. The trend is growing for McBride to be on the lower band of Touchdown Rate tight ends with only four touchdowns on 202 receptions in his career. Even a handful of scores in 2025 can vault McBride to TE1 overall.

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