Close HelpSubmit Support Ticket

Advice For Retaining Keeper/Dynasty Fantasy Football Players

Forty-eight hours before your league's annual draft begins, you must choose which players to retain from last year's team. The commissioner will drop all players from your team that are not selected on this page.

So how do you decide who to keep and who to let go? It all depends on the type of league you're in.

Selecting Keepers For Fantasy Football Dynasty Leagues

In Dynasty Fantasy Football leagues, you're allowed to retain as many players as you wish from year to year. How do you decide who to let go? The trick is to look over the depth of the available players, expecting that no team will drop anyone worth drafting. (Drops from other teams are also available for drafting.) You may discover that the draft is about six rounds deep before the quality of players drops below the quality of players you'd have to drop after retaining all but six players. Common sense, then, says to drop six players. That'll let you pick up six new players in the draft.

In practice, the draft is always just a little deeper than you think. This happens for two reasons:

1. Other teams may err, dropping players they probably shouldn't, or else their teams are so deep they have no choice but to drop quality players in order not to sacrifice their early draft picks.
2. Players dropped from other teams are often drafted (even if you don't want them yourself), so the list of quality players for drafting goes deeper than anticipated.

Remember, the latter rounds of any multi-year draft are for evaluating potential talent. It's where you take a chance on sleepers and untested rookies. Don't hold on to a marginal veteran, robbing yourself of a chance to take a flyer on an unknown.

Selecting Keepers For Fantasy Football Keeper Leagues

In standard keeper leagues, you're only able to keep five players from last year. Here, it's simple: You keep your five best, drop the rest, and proceed in the draft as if it's a normal start-up league.

Selecting Keepers For Salary Cap Fantasy Football Leagues

Because players escalate in salary each year (DataForce rules increase each player's salary $5 plus 10%, rounding to the nearest dollar) you can't just hold on to your talent forever. Escalating salaries iS the "balancing factor" that keeps one over-talented team from running away with the league every year.

The annual auctions in salary cap leagues are notoriously hard to judge. Who will be dropped and who will not? Is there any reason to drop players so that you'll have more money available if there's very little talent to be bought on the auction block?

The simple (rather naive) answer is, drop any player that is overpriced on your roster according to normal fantasy football auction values. But what if the talent level of auctioned players is rather low (such that they'll be overpriced in the auction) or rather high (such that bargains will be available)?

Perhaps you need to adjust the standard auction values up or down a bit before deciding who to keep and who to drop. But here's where it gets tricky: who will the other teams drop? Imagine a scenario where nobody drops any players of value, and thus nobody has more than, say, $30 to spend in the auction. Won't you be kicking yourself that you didn't drop your stud $50 player ... and buy him right back for $31?

The bottom line, especially if you don't know your opponents well, is that anything can happen in these auctions and you need to be ready. Drop players also on the fringe of their value, so that you have money available to play with. It pays to be flexible. Keep only those that are clear bargains at their salary.

Selecting Keepers For Contract Fantasy Football Leagues

Boy, do I wish it were possible to lay out a can't-miss strategy for contract leagues. Unfortunately, no such thing exists. Each league is its own anomaly, and it's very hard to know who will be dropped and who won't ... and thus how much money you should put back in your pocket to carry to the auction.

Like salary cap leagues, you'll be kicking yourself if bargains are to be had and you didn't keep any money to bid with. You'll also be kicking yourself if you lock in a player on a salary and it turns out you could have dropped him and bought him back at a cheaper price. Finally, you'll be kicking yourself at the end of the season if you dropped your sleeper running back, whom you could have put on contract for a very low price (say, $8 for three years) and he turns into a stud.

With far more possibilities for regrets than jubilation, I'll leave you with this advice: flexibility is usually a good thing.

Close Help