This article is part of our Dynasty Strategy series.
The most important strategy for turning a dynasty contender into a champion is obvious: we trade our draft picks and young players for established fantasy starters. For some people, that's where the process starts and ends. And that's fine, but I also think there's something to be gained from a deeper dive into win-now strategy, giving it the same treatment we gave rebuilding/tanking teams and middle-of-the-pack teams in previous articles on dynasty football strategy.
If you're like me and meticulously search for every little advantage in fantasy sports (or really any strategic game), this is often the stuff that's not only helpful but also highly enjoyable to consider/discuss.
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Step 1 - Adjust Aggressiveness for Format, With an Emphasis on Byes
In leagues that utilize playoff byes, we should put the pedal to the metal from Week 1 through the end of the season, aggressively pushing for that first-round freebie. In leagues without byes, there's usually not much difference between finishing first and fourth — what matters is the strength of our roster (and luck) come Weeks 16 and 17. Depending on the strength of our team and our opponents' teams, we might be able to play out the regular season on cruise control in non-bye leagues, perhaps even making moves that hurt our chances in the current week but help set us up nicely for the playoffs.
This is something I'll consider from the very start of the offseason. If I have a decent team but don't think it has much shot at a bye, I may shift toward the strategies in the articles mentioned above, rebuilding or tweaking rather than pushing my chips into the middle. If I think my team has a strong shot to earn a bye, I'm going all out to get it, trying to build a loaded lineup before Week 1 and then treating each week like the playoffs (I'll then ease up and shift towards a playoff focus in November or early December if it becomes obvious my strategy has worked and I'm headed for a bye).
Step 2 - Determine Approach to Variance
If we know we have the best team in our league, it might make sense to reduce variance, i.e., try to avoid the type of knockout blows that can drop us back to the rest of the pack. Let's say we're relying on Bijan Robinson, Christian McCaffrey, Jayden Daniels and Patrick Mahomes in a two-QB league — instead of using bench spots on young WRs, maybe we roster Tyler Allgeier, Isaac Guerendo, Marcus Mariota and Gardner Minshew to ensure that we'll have startable players at QB and RB if our top guys get knocked out.
Another way to reduce the variance of a roster is avoiding team stacks. We just saw the massive upside of rostering Joe Burrow, Ja'Marr Chase and Tee Higgins on the same team... but that same team can instantly crumble if Burrow suffers a third major injury. If we have the second/third-best team in our league and are trying to unseat a juggernaut, it's great to have the upside a Burrow-Chase-Higgins trio provides. But if we're the juggernaut, it may be better to trade Higgins and/or Burrow for similarly valuable players that don't play for Cincinnati.
Step 3 - Trade for a Superstar
When league mates know we're all-in for the current year, they'll inevitably want to trade us guys like Mike Evans, Davante Adams and James Conner, and they'll probably want us to overpay. There's nothing at all wrong with Evans, Adams or Conner, but it's usually better to make a run at true superstars first, e.g., CeeDee Lamb, Justin Jefferson and Saquon Barkley... or at least guys like Derrick Henry and Tyreek Hill whose range of outcomes includes top-three scoring at their positions (without needing injuries to teammates). After we've added a top guy, or at least tried our best to do so, then we can go about searching for those lesser upgrades like 32-year-old WR2s and 30-year-old RB2s.
The trades for superstars might seem riskier because we're giving up so much more in terms of draft picks and prospects, but I don't think that's really accurate, considering the truly elite tend to hold a ton of value even when things go sideways (whereas guys like Adams or Conner are one prolonged cold streak or major injury away from having near-zero trade value).
Consider the case of Odell Beckham, who last put up WR1 fantasy numbers in 2016 (or 2018 if you want to prorate an injury-shortened season). He was still valued as a top dynasty asset well into the 2020 campaign, and he even retained considerable value through 2021 until his ACL tear in the Super Bowl kind of ended things. If you traded for Beckham in 2016-18, you obviously didn't get the production you expected, but there were plenty of opportunities to ship him back out and recoup much of what was originally lost. And that's one of the most extreme examples of a top player whose career feel apart in what should've been his prime.
My point here is that if we trade for someone like Lamb or Jefferson and it doesn't work out, we can just trade them away later and recoup most of the draft capital we lost. Even an ACL tear won't totally crater the value of an elite player in his prime; someone will give us a first-round pick (and something else) the following year, as soon as there are reports about how well guy's rehab is going and how great he looks running routes against air.
Step 4 - Use Redraft ADP as a Tool for Finding Trades
Comparing best-ball ADP or redraft rankings against dynasty rankings is one quick way to find reasonable trades that improve our outlook for the current season. Take the example of De'Von Achane and Omarion Hampton (a trade I recently discussed but didn't end up making). They have similar valuations in a lot of dynasty rankings or trade calculators, but Achane consistently has a top-20 ADP for redraft and best ball — flirting with Top 15 some places — while Hampton is mostly going somewhere around pick 50.
You'll find plenty of people who prefer Hampton over Achane long term, but most of them acknowledge some level of concern about Najee Harris' role and/or Hampton's adjustment to the pro game being potential limiting factors for the rookie's 2025 workload. For teams with a title shot this season, shipping out Hampton for Achane is probably the right move if it's an option.
Apart from rookies and second-year pros, some of the players who are often ranked much higher in dynasty than in redraft include WR Zay Flowers, WR Jaylen Waddle, WR Jordan Addison and TE Sam LaPorta.
For the reverse — guys ranked higher for redraft than dynasty — we're largely looking at players age 28 or older, but there are also some younger cases like RB Josh Jacobs (27), RB Jonathan Taylor (26), RB Kyren Williams (25), RB Bucky Irving (23), WR Tee Higgins (26) and WR Rashee Rice (25). These are good targets for win-now teams, capable of providing huge production boosts to our lineups without requiring multiple first-round picks as the acquisition cost.
Step 5 - Minimize Low-Level Prospects on the Bench
People often put these players in the "roster cloggers" category, i.e., they feel too valuable to release, but they aren't helping us at the moment and are probably long shots to ever do so. In reasonably deep leagues, common examples would include rookies drafted in Rounds 4-6, or maybe a Day 2 pick from the year before who struggled during his debut campaign.
There's nothing wrong with keeping one or two personal favorites that meet this description — examples for me in 2025 would include Titans WR Elic Ayomanor and Saints RB Devin Neal — but we don't want a handful of these types while trying to compete for a title. A bench full of long-term projects can lead to trouble when injuries strike, so it's better to have some mediocre veterans or handcuffs as protection against any issues that crop up with the starting lineup.
Step 6 - Tweak As Needed In-Season
I've mentioned my preference for trading for superstars rather than making smaller tweaks, but that's less true in-season when injuries end up forcing us to address specific weaknesses instead of simply trying to further build on existing strengths. Some of the older players mentioned above, like Conner and Adams, could be fantastic options if injuries leave us without a clear starter for an RB2 or WR3 spot. The situation where I don't want to trade for those guys is one where I already have a solid lineup and they'd mostly just be slight upgrades or depth; that's when we should push all our chips into the middle for a superstar who can boost our projection by a handful or more of points each week.
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