In August 2019, I got my first ever invitation to a dynasty fantasy football league.

I had been an avid fantasy football player since 2009, my freshman year of high school. Over the years, redraft leagues I was in came and went, and the game of fantasy started to lack something I was severely missing – but I didn’t know what it was until I started playing dynasty.

At the time, I had never considered playing dynasty before. I was a standard vanilla fantasy player, and any terms like “keeper,” “dynasty,” and “IDP” frightened me as something new to learn. But I knew the learning curve wouldn’t be too steep, so I said yes.

What has followed is six years of falling in love with the game mode of dynasty, and it’s became far and away my favorite way to play the game. I’m in several dynasties that have remained closer in contact and competition than my dear home league has. It’s for the same reason dynasty filled that thing I was missing.

I needed trajectory.

Trajectory is exactly what it sounds like – a goal, a path, a story.

This is what dynasty fantasy football filled that my typical leagues weren’t doing. It’s also what makes dynasty such a beautiful game. You get to keep all your players instead of drafting them again and each year you draft rookies only. To the new dynasty player, this sounds inflexible or a trap for a bad player – but it offers redemption in that you get a new chance to set your trajectory throughout the year.

Ironically, my dynasty leagues offer – and complete trades – at an astronomically higher rate than my home redraft league ever did. It’s because of these trajectories intertwining with your two main assets – players and picks (FAAB is a distant third. Offering a night of intimacy your spouse in a deal for Christian McCaffrey did not make this list).

In the six years I’ve been a full-blown dynasty degenerate, I have come to understand these trajectories as key for setting the stage for your team’s story. This framework comes from a video game of a completely different sport I played a decade ago.

In college, my friends and I constantly played NBA2K. Our game mode of choice was Association (more recently called MyLeague and MyGM. It’s changed a lot over the years). It was the greatest. The startup draft and frequent trading made for team-building strategy we couldn’t get enough of, and it translated exactly to dynasty fantasy football when I began.

One feature you were able to do in MyLeague was set your team status, and you had four options: Contending, Buying, Selling, and Rebuilding.

Through years of blood, sweat, and tears – I discovered the hard way these team trajectories are crucial to understanding your dynasty fantasy football team and your ability to win titles.

Let’s dive into each trajectory. We’ll cover the basics, strategies, and the best/worst tactics you’ll find at each.

Overview: Contending is the basic win-now trajectory. You have decided your team shouldn’t just hope for a playoff run, but that the next title better be yours.

If you ask me, every dynasty fantasy football team should eventually reach this point. What’s the point of playing the game if you don’t eventually feel it’s time for a championship? We’ll cover this plenty in this article, but not choosing a trajectory is how you get stuck in dynasty purgatory. Never going on a playoff run, never picking top 3, and doing this for half a decade is not the goal. The goal is to one day be in this trajectory.

Example: You’re playing in a dynasty Superflex League (2 QBs can start if you have them) and it’s Tight End Premium (the position gets 1.5 points per reception). You have acquired a deep roster with elite talent at multiple positions. You make a trade mid-season to send away Marvin Harrison Jr., Drake Maye, & Your Next 1st Round Pick to acquire Jared Goff, Davante Adams, and George Kittle. These extra points get you enough in December to win your title. You successfully contended and won your league. Congrats!

This is just an example. Don’t kill me for losing this trade so badly on KeepTradeCut. Goff scored 31 points each in the semifinal and final weeks of fantasy in 2024 and Kittle had >100 yards in both, too. Adams was a monster the back half of the year, as well. This deal could very well have gotten you 50-75 extra playoff points and a ring last year.

Tips For Contending:

• Understand who would benefit the most from youth in your league, and target their high-producing veterans when your team has an immediate need.
• Trade away your next 1st round pick at the right time. It’s valuable in the spring when everyone prizes the next rookie, and less valuable in November when you need a 15ppg WR and nobody feels like helping out the 11-1 team that beat them by 40.
• Target alternating draft classes with your draft picks. You’ll eventually need to rebuild, so pick and choose which years you’ll need more picks. Don’t need anything this spring, but still have your 2nd rounder? Move it for a random 2nd round pick two years from now and you’ll have multiple 2s (assuming you kept next years’) in a draft class where you have a stronger need for youth. This can help you move up in the draft or add depth after your playoff run.
•  Be careful when going “all out.” It’s tempting to continue to throw picks and youth at the immediate producers, but fantasy football will always be one of the most random contests mankind has ever created. Don’t forget a win-now roster can still win with rookies and for multiple years.

Overview: Buying is when you see the light at the end of the tunnel. You’re acquiring some key pieces and a title run is very likely within the next 1-2 seasons for you. You’re likely a fringe wild card team, and there’s always that sliver of chance you catch fire in December and make a playoff run.

This is the trajectory with the most excitement, if you ask me. Buying teams typically have a healthy balance between production and draft capital. Maybe you’re down a 1st or 2nd round pick somewhere in the future, but you’re starting lineup has filled out nicely and you have depth to compete through a tough season. There are a lot of different ways to go when you find yourself in this trajectory. You’ll need to pick a year or two you feel serve you best to compete and you’ll need to wisely spend your draft capital when you’re ready to make a serious title push.

Example: You’re in a 12-Team IDP Superflex Dynasty League and you find yourself 8-4 after multiple years of struggling. With your dynasty league’s trade deadline approaching and your team lacking depth for the next couple years, you spend your upcoming year’s 2nd round rookie pick on Detroit’s Jack Campbell. He’s filling a position of desperate need for your team, but you wisely hold on to your upcoming 1st round pick for flexibility in the spring. Your team strikes in the playoffs and reaches the semifinals. In the spring, you wait until you’re on the clock and trade pick 1.09 for James Conner and Keon Coleman. You’ve sacrificed some rookie excitement and turned your team into a contender, all without sending away future draft picks.

Tips for Buying:

• Keep an eye on the top teams in your league and their rosters. How likely is a title run for you? Will you need a complete miracle to beat them even if they have a down week?
• Find veterans with down years in recent memory that have proven success and acquire them cheaply. You don’t have to sell the farm for Christian McCaffrey, Cooper Kupp, or Mark Andrews anymore but it wouldn’t be insane to think they have 1-2 years left of high upside.
• Strike a delicate balance between production and picks. Contending teams might position themselves to have a down year or two, the perfect chance for you to take their place is in the gaps where they have sacrificed too much youth and draft capital.

Overview: Selling is a soft rebuild. It’s losing a couple stars to shore up risk and re-open a winning window down the road.

Selling is a dangerous game in dynasty fantasy football, but when done right can yield excellent results. This isn’t a complete tear-down, but by taking an honest look at your team you realize a championship is extremely unlikely the next year or two. But not all hope is lost. You have some high-upside rookies and a healthy amount of draft capital, but shipping them away probably won’t get you enough points for a title. You decide to start “Selling” and look to the future.

Example: It’s just before Week 1 and you’ve tragically lost your RB2 to a season-ending knee injury in practice and your starting TE has a nagging hamstring pull. The reports aren’t good, and he’s probably not going to be himself most of the season. Without enough pieces to recover from the situation, but enough talent a complete rebuild is unwise, you decide to sell. You trade Tyreek Hill for Chris Olave and a 2026 3rd Round Pick, then again move breakout candidate (and your TE2) Brenton Strange for a 2027 2nd Round Pick and Devin Neal. Sure, you very likely lose massive points from Tyreek Hill, but you’re safeguarded from any age or injury-related implosions from the 31-year old. Strange may be a great breakout call, but over the next two years you have added fresh draft capital to classes where you already had great picks. You didn’t need Hill or Strange to be great, but now you’ve got ammo to work with to turn the tide by 2028. You’ve also bet on the Saints improving at QB by then (nearly impossible not to do) which should help both Olave and Neal during what should likely be a rough 2025 campaign.

Tips for Selling:

• Shoot for quantity over quality. A selling team will need additional draft capital and players to offset the high-point veterans they lose.
• Pick a year you think you’ll be able to become a buyer again. Rebuilding teams don’t have this luxury, and you’ll need a roster peaking again at the right time.
• Fantasy randomness can strike in this range, too! You may win or lose some games you weren’t expecting to. Don’t overreact and jump to contending or rebuilding if you see a short-lasting trend in success or failure.

Overview: Rebuilding, or “tanking,” is a hard reset. You are abandoning ship for the season and acquiring draft picks at all costs.

Rebuilding is extremely boring during the season. You will set a lineup that will lose by 30 barring a complete miracle in favor of draft picks for the next 3 years (or more, if your league allows it). However, it’s an absolute blast during the off-season. Arguably, it’s more fun than a playoff run. You’ll hold some of the most valuable assets in your league for several months, creating the best possible chance to go from worst-to-first if you do it right.

Example: Your team sucks. No way around it. You do happen to have multiple 1sts in the following year, so you go for more and leave no valuable points on your roster. You send Jordan Addison and Brock Purdy away for a 2026 1st, 2027 1st, and 2028 2nd Round Pick. Then you trade away Breece Hall and D.J. Moore away for yet another 2026 1st and a 2028 1st. Then you continue and trade Cooper Kupp and Brian Robinson Jr. away for a 2026 2nd, 2028 2nd, and $69 FAAB. No, you probably didn’t “maximize” the value to complete perfection, but you took what was available from contending rosters and now you have four 2026 1sts, three 2027 1sts, and a bevy of 2’s. Come next spring, you’ll have your pick of the litter at rookies, with options to move some picks back for even more 2027 and 2028’s or flip the script and send your four 1sts for Amon-Ra St. Brown and Drake Maye to start your buying process. Who knows, you’ll be the king of everyone’s favorite assets all spring.

Tips for Rebuilding:

• Aggressively rebuild. Make it clear you are sending away whatever it takes to stockpile future picks.
• Be okay “losing” value. Rookie picks become more valuable every day until they’re used. You’ll need to accept you’ll miss out on some great games/seasons, but also you’ll miss out on every injury, trade, and coaching change while your picks accrue value.
• Don’t cave in for timing reasons. What I mean is be okay going for later 1sts instead of immediate ones. If another rebuilding team has a good stockpile of 2026 picks, go get a bunch of 2027s or 2028s instead and wait for your time to shine.

Overview: I lied. There are 5 trajectories. The fifth is so shameful it doesn’t deserve to be included (but it still exists).

Floating is when you do nothing. You have no goals for your team, you don’t know where you stack up, you aren’t listening to the Dynasty Rewind podcast, and you consistently miss out on the best rookies or the best point-scorers. You pay your league dues and nothing good happens to you forever. Sound familiar?

Example: You finish 7-7 for the third consecutive year. You take a safe-floor rookie at the 1.06 (he’s decent) and make no trades all year. You owe your league’s commissioner $100 and there is no hope for you.

Tips for Floating:

• STOP IT. Pick a trajectory for your team! Analyze your assets and your league and decide where you’ll go.
• Listen to the Dynasty Rewind for trading tips and rookie analysis.
• Learn from your mistakes. You ARE going to make bad trades and bad picks. Understanding where you went wrong is how you improve over the years. The teams that float are the teams that don’t pick a direction and head to it.

Knowledge of the trajectories you can take and ideas for how to do it successfully are the pillars of dynasty success. Floating teams are ones to avoid. You should label out your assets and decide your best future course of action.

At the Dynasty Rewind, we pump out content on a weekly basis to help you understand the dynasty landscape. Knowing your trajectory can help you sift through the decision-making process.

You may even hear us say the upcoming class is great for dynasty and decide it’s time for a rebuild. You might hear us say your options at the 2.10 are not great. Push that pick back to another year, contender! We want to help you win, and trajectories are a great place to start. Now get to it!