The Half-Life of a Dynasty Pick
Finding better exit strategies
Last year, I wrote a piece about how the value of NFL rookies changes year-over-year in dynasty. The key thing about this piece was that it was concerned not with the hit rate of these picks, but rather, whether they would maintain their value going forward. That is to say, if you pick a guy in this year’s draft, what will his KeepTradeCut value be a year from now?
And while this concern is certainly secondary to our main focus—i.e., whether the guy is actually a good producer or not—it’s still illuminating as to the psychology of dynasty players. I’m certain that many of you in dynasty leagues have produced more-than-fair offers for a slumping second-year player, only to get rebuffed by a (perhaps delusional) manager who still believes the kid has a shot.
This might not be great process anyway, given how most players who don’t make it in year one often don’t turn into anything. Yet I think it still offers some value come draft time. If you’re choosing between roughly equal players (which is often the case), it might be useful to know which of these guys is likelier to maintain their value a year out, and which is lighting your pick on fire.
The rookie value arc
Now that we’ve defined our focus as meta-gaming the market, how do we actually gain an advantage over our fellow managers? The obvious angle is breaking out our data by position; if we can get an idea of how specific groups gain or lose value every year, then we have decent tiebreakers when it comes to making picks.
But first, let’s establish the parameters of our experiment. To get a rookie’s initial value, we use his early-June value from his draft year, thus giving it some time to stabilize as more and more people draft. For subsequent years, we use early-April data, since we don’t want the upcoming NFL draft to mess with things too much. As for the format this data is taken from, it’s still all single-QB, no TEP leagues.
Above you can see how this plays out by position. Somewhat surprisingly, the median WR or RB sees basically no change in value from year one to year two in the league, with only a slight decline heading into year three. Tight ends, by comparison, skyrocket after their first year in the league before falling back to earth, while the median QB’s arc is a constant decline.
That was in percentage terms, however; what about in absolute terms? Surprisingly, TE’s still hold up here, perhaps because fringe TE’s have nowhere else to go but up (in terms of value, at least). To be sure, this is pretty noisy data, given some small-sample concerns (not to mention some pretty good TE classes propping up the position). Still, this was also what I found last year, with the ‘25 class only further bolstering their value-positive reputation. Also note that this is all without including TEP leagues, which could boost their surplus value even further.
Factoring in ADP
This is all well and good, but still a bit coarse. We aren’t quite making apples-to-apples comparisons: by using data from single-QB, no-TEP leagues, those positions are obviously going to go later in drafts, and thus have lower starting values. Thus, if we look at how players from each round did, we might have a better reference point.
While we’ll tackle round-based data later, there’s something else I want to examine first. Research has shown that the value drop-off in dynasty drafts occurs in the middle of the second round, meaning late-rounders are, nominally, a crapshoot. This means that if we split prospects into early- and late-ADP groups, we’ll be making cleaner, more apples-to-apples comparisons.
The same small sample size caveat applies again, but the findings here are still pretty stark. Across the board, regardless of position, the ROI is unequivocally worse for picks in the early rounds of the dynasty draft (blue dots). Most early picks, it seems, are losing bets to retain value over a rookie’s first year.
Conversely, players taken at pick 2.07 or later seem to gain value from year one to year two. The takeaway, then, is pretty clear-cut: early-round dynasty picks are high-risk, high-reward assets. You take them because you want elite production. Late-rounders, by comparison, thus seem much safer, and while you aren’t as likely to find studs, they offer a high floor.
Now, I will say that KTC’s numbers are a bit warped. Truly bottomed-out players like Damien Martinez maintain some value, when they should be, for all intents and purposes, at zero. Still, I think the data above makes a pretty strong case for taking swings on the guys in the back half of your rookie draft, if only because there’s a decent chance you can still flip them a year later when things have gone south.
Round data by position
What if we got a bit more granular, and cross-section rookies by position and (dynasty, not real-life) round taken? QB’s have too low a sample for this exercise, so we’ll ignore them. Tight Ends, too, have a low-sample issue, but the overall pattern is still worth noting:
As the rest of our data implied, tight ends are a stable asset, regardless of which round they were taken in. The same caveats still remain, of course: the average TE is taken way later than other positions, which means that it won’t experience the same value shocks early picks do (both in terms of magnitude and percentage). Even still, almost no TE’s lost value during their first year in the league, which is pretty staggering even if you consider the small sample size.
When we next examine running backs, we see further confirmation of early-pick volatility. The logic is again simple: the expectations were already diminished for later picks, so the value of these RB’s is often sustained—often growing, even—over their first year in the league. Conversely, first-rounders have outsize expectations placed upon them, making it hard for them to consistently meet the hype.
Finally, we reach the WR’s. My analysis last year found them to be the hardest nut to crack, with little pointing to why, exactly, receiver value fluctuated the way it did. While this article refutes a lot of points I made in my earlier piece—I now think most prospects are more likely to maintain value, and not lose it entering year two, for example—the chart above shows that WR’s remain as slippery as ever.
My best guess, then, is that there’s a pretty clear mapping between player quality and dynasty rookie ADP. That is to say, the reason the round-two fall-off is so big is because you’re going from receivers who were taken in the first round of the actual NFL draft to second-rounders or worse. The intuitive argument is that real-life first-rounders will see the field come hell or high water, while second-rounders will, almost assuredly, be eased in by their coaches.
Why, then, do these third-round dynasty picks hold value better than players taken earlier? Ultimately, it’s the same issue we just saw with early-pick RB’s, where their playing time or productivity often doesn’t match their draft capital. How many managers were likely expecting immediate contributions from the likes of Jack Bech or Tre Harris, for example, when pretty much the opposite occurred? While I still think opportunity is a huge part of why receivers succeed in fantasy (see: Ayomanor, Elic), it still can’t compare to the weight that a first-round pedigree provides young prospects.
The 2025 Class
Theory is great and all, but practice makes perfect. For historical data, you can look at my previous posts; I’m saving this space in specific to look at 2025 rookies. Note that some guys (Gadsden, Monangai) are missing from the upcoming tables; while I could include them, this analysis is based on guys who, at the time of writing last year, had an ADP of 48 or earlier.
I prefer to stick by the ADP values I used last year, since any 2025 values you can find right now are a bit iffy. Some of them were updated way into the dynasty offseason (with a few even leaking into the season proper), so I’m erring on the side of caution to keep as clean a record as possible
First, the fall-offs:
Many of these are quite obvious, with Kaleb Johnson and Travis Hunter boasting the highest-profile falls from grace. Their value drops are self-explanatory, as is that of Damien Martinez. Martinez in particular is a clear example of the holes in KTC’s system, and why I’ve grown to prefer FantasyCalc over time: that service does a much better job of properly rating guys who are, for all intents and purposes, fantasy non-entities.
Perhaps the most interesting remaining duo is that of Jack Bech and Jalen Royals, two receiver prospects with meaningfully different profiles. When I did my first receiver analysis last year, it looked like Jack Bech was a good bet to bust, given how much of his receiving production in college look like empty calorie work. By the same analysis, Jalen Royals looked to be a great prospect, catching nominally difficult deep targets at a high rate.
Yet when I ran my updated model, the narrative flipped, with Bech looking to be one of the very best prospects in the 25 receiver class. Royals, conversely saw his fortunes flip. My model disliked his profile quite a bit, even before considering how it penalized him for being a fourth-rounder.
I already wrote last week about why gimmicky deep threats like Royals are fool’s gold, so his value drop-off should come as no surprise to my readers. As for Bech, the picture’s a bit sunnier, with likely #1 pick Fernando Mendoza offering some tantalizing upside. Ultimately, I think it’s a fine strategy to buy low on Bech—the draft capital invested in him isn’t nothing—but I wouldn’t expect any miracles, either.
Arrow-up rookies
What, then, of the rookies who gained value? These guys feel very telling, being mostly fringe fourth-rounders who doubled their value. Using percent change obviously favors them in this regard, but even still, they largely outpaced (or at least matched) Emeka Egbuka in value gained, which is no small feat.
One thing to note is that while later-pick QB’s often don’t hit, the ROI can be massive, even in single-QB leagues, as Jaxson Dart demonstrates. The results here also bolster the notion the late-round RB’s and tight ends are great investments if you want to retain value. It’s again worth noting, too, that this analysis was not conducted using TEP league data, so there’s even more reason to invest in tight ends in such leagues.
The receiver picture, meanwhile, is a bit muddier. There’s an argument to be made, frankly, that the ‘25 class is the main source of the idea that third-rounders are a better investment than second-rounders at WR. Yet I think we also have enough data at this point to push back on that notion, nudging us in a different direction.
Ultimately, I think the name of the game for receivers is opportunity, which feels incredibly fickle. A lot of rookie RB’s will see the field in at least a minor capacity, while WR’s get frozen out to unprecedented degrees. To predict why this happens, though, is another question entirely, and is definitely something I want to dig into in the future.
Summary
More than anything else, fantasy football is about horse trading. The best fantasy managers aren’t necessarily the ball knowers, nor are they the analytic geeks with an impeccable model. Rather, the dudes who win championships are the guys who can flip a ham sandwich into a Corvette, always eking out more value than they started with.
Yet even this is an incredibly hard feat to replicate, with even the best managers burned by moves gone awry from time to time. This is why, no matter what kind of manager you are, it’s best to have some sort of insurance, an exit plan to offload your distressed assets when the time comes.
And that, I think, is the value add of this piece. It should serve as an investor’s guide for dynasty rookie drafts. What I’m not saying is to blindly take running backs and tight ends at every turn just because they’ll age better in terms of value. You should, all else equal, be taking the best player available unless you have a pressing need.
Yet whether you’re a rebuilding team or perennial contender, it’s hard to argue against the case made here for picking late round RB’s and tight ends. At the very worst, these are guys you can use as throw-ins for trades, when you need to add a little bit of spice to get a deal over the finish line. And at their best, these guys might be crucial handcuffs, or bye week contributor who helps you on your way to a championship. For late round afterthoughts, I’d say that’s a pretty good return on investment.