Shawn Siegele looks at the first round of his 2023 dynasty startup and helps you avoid the mistakes that effectively eliminate squads from both short- and long-term contention.

Bjorn Yang-Vaernet and I are currently involved in a dynasty startup in the RV TriFlex format at the FFPC. Since this lineup and scoring format have become the default for new dynasty leagues across the industry, these RV TriFlex startups are a great place to begin your research whether you’re about to take the plunge into high stakes or you’re preparing for a home league draft.

Today’s Dynasty Workshop will be Part 1 of my 2023 Dynasty Blueprint. I’m going to be breaking down the all-important first round – with full player analysis – but I’ll also be working through the foundational concepts that either set you up for a future empire or immediately set you on the path to abandoning your team as a broken orphan in just a couple of years.

For many new Superflex managers, the startup is almost exclusively about trying to land two stud QBs. This is probably the biggest and most straightforward mistake. FFPC redraft and dynasty guru Monty Phan recently profiled a startup where he’d followed the opposite approach, a QB punt strategy that earned him an instant title in 2022: How to Build an Instant Superflex Dynasty Contender by Fading QB and TE in the Startup.

I’m going to take that idea a step further and ask: Is there ever a good time to take a QB in dynasty superflex startups? If that seems like a crazy question, read on as we look at a variety of elements that raise concerns about the new default strategy.

The Shocking Backstory

I’m in 15 dynasty superflex leagues, and they’re split almost evenly between expert leagues and RV TriFlex leagues. This isn’t a wild huge sum. (There are dynasty degens out there with 50 such teams.) But I do enough teams and enough yearly startups to have a good feel for what has been working across leagues and how trends are evolving across years.

For example, I think back to the Black Crown startup in 2020. Curtis Patrick’s experts league features many of the top analysts in fantasy, and began just three years ago. Here are a few facts that seem bizarre:

• The startup featured only five QBs in Round 1 and only 11 in the first five rounds.
• Carson Wentz, Matt Ryan, and Baker Mayfield all went among the top-10 QBs.
• Sam Darnold, Drew Lock, Ryan Tannehill, Drew Brees, and Gardner Minshew all went among the top-20 QBs.

Again, if we want to think this through from a humility perspective, this wasn’t a recreational league where people are drafting off something they saw in a magazine two years prior. These were the most tuned-in analysts in dynasty.

Contrast that with where we are in 2023.

RV TriFlex Startup ADP

By the time you get to the 2.01, drafters are pulling the trigger on almost as many QBs as we had in five rounds of that 2020 startup.

The relationship between QB ADP and QB scoring has tightened considerably over the last decade, but our overconfidence is outstripping even that dynamic. It’s easy to think back to 2020 and make fun of drafters selecting Darnold, Lock, Minshew and retired QBs, but just last year Russell Wilson and Trey Lance went ahead of Trevor Lawrence and Jalen Hurts.

Dak Prescott is currently QB11. This is a 30-year-old QB who no longer provides rushing value, just finished as QB16 in points per game, and had to watch as his dynamic young OC was fired. I don’t know how that story will end, of course, but I can tell you which direction the risk/reward is skewed.

Reverse Perpetual Reloading on Steroids

Drafters are still going to make mistakes when drafting startup QBs, and they’re now paying a higher penalty than ever. The flip side is perhaps even more crucial when we think about the mix of draft or trade incentives. This insatiable desire for foundation QBs affects the trade market to such an extent that you can often slide down from the 1.02 to the 1.08 and pick up an additional first-round pick. In our current startup, two different drafters gave up a future first to essentially move from the 2/3 turn to the 1/2 turn.

Our dynasty strategy is based on Perpetual Reloading, a technique that allowed us to control rookie drafts this spring and load up on breakout talents even beyond Round 1. Throwing away your depth and your future with the quixotic goal of locking down QB isn’t just the opposite approach; it’s reverse perpetual reloading on steroids.

In Part 2 of the Blueprint, I’ll look at our 12 startup trades and explain why Trading Down Is Your Dynasty Superpower. Here’s a teaser for that piece: as this goes to publication, we have more than one-third of the picks in the first three rounds of the 2024 rookie draft.

3 Critical Mistakes That Manifest in Round 1 and How to Avoid Them

In putting together our strategy, Bjorn and I are emphasizing his recent research piece, A Data-Driven Approach to Dominating Dynasty Startups. Can we get creative enough to flourish from the 1.11, a slot where the QBs will be gone and the obvious trade-down value has plummeted?