Dynasty Fantasy Football is a complicated game with a significant amount of strategy.  Retaining a roster season after season adds a dynamic that requires deep player knowledge, long term planning, foresight and patience. 

There are a few important things to remember as you enjoy our Strategy Session Articles:
1) Every league is structured differently, so apply our strategic viewpoints accordingly;
2) Every owner within your league is going to implement their own form of strategy - some better than others; 
3) While most people reading this article are likely experienced Dynasty players, sometimes it is nice to refresh your fundamentals.  Enjoy.

Main Entry: ¹up·side
Pronunciation: ˈəp-ˌsīd

1 : an upward trend (as of prices)
2 a : a positive aspect b : promise, potential "a young star with lots of upside"

Dynasty football is all about youth and upside...
...and everyone that has played in a Dynasty league craves it!  Properly evaluating youth and upside is arguably the most important skill in Dynasty Fantasy Football.  Successful Dynasty owners must have the insight to make an early distinction between legitimate upside; and above average talent tagged with "potential."  Often times Dynasty players invest so much time into waiting for a player to emerge, the upside they are waiting for becomes a limiting factor.  Championship Dynasty rosters are built around a core group of elite talent.  Acquiring Beastly talent at a low price is the only way to efficiently maximize returns.  The value of elite talent is widely understood, and making moves for established-elite players through trade is expensive and most of the time counter productive to long term roster building.  High upside players must be found in the earliest stages of their careers prior to their emergence onto the fantasy scene.   Players with youth and upside also provide the greatest amount of long term roster flexibility.  Continually making upgrades by packaging good talent for great talent (especially to rebuilding teams) will ensure a competitive Dynasty roster season after season.  

Beast Rules: A 30 year old perennial 1,200+ yard, 8-10 TD wide receiver is not a Top-10 Dynasty WR.  While this type of players redraft value remains very high, his limited career span has his Dynasty value on the sharp decline.  Instead, we would rather roster younger players with stud potential and future trade value (again, youth and upside). However, a highly productive aging player can be used as the catalyst to take a strong team and make them a championship contender - highly beneficial when looking to put your team over the top without upsetting the balance of your roster.  A rebuilding team, likely out of championship contention is wasting their resources on acquiring a player with only a season or two left of high level production and no future trade value.  The best way to dominate Dynasty Market Value is 1) to have a solid understanding of the tendencies of the other owners within your league and 2) have a clear-unbiased understanding of your teams current status (rebuilding vs. contender).

Beast Rules: Beast Rules:

- Making moves is essential to long term Dynasty Domination.  Rarely will the same roster be a championship contender in back-to-back seasons.
- Understand value on your roster, and most importantly, that a player may be providing you more value on your roster than he would be on the trade market (common with productive older players).  Championship contenders can benefit by acquiring these types of players on the cheap from rebuilding teams.