How To Play Dynasty Fantasy Football

If you’re obsessed with fantasy football, getting into a dynasty fantasy football league is exactly what you need. Since it’s a bit more complex than a redraft fantasy football league, we’ll be going over the basics of what you need to know.

That will include how dynasty works, where you can play, and basic advice on how to play. It may sound overwhelming, but by the end of this article, you’ll have a much better understanding.

How Does Dynasty Fantasy Football Work

The best way to understand dynasty fantasy football is by comparing it to a regular league, which we call redraft. In a redraft league, you have a new draft every year that completely resets your team.

At the end of each year, none of the players that you had drafted carry over. Instead, you get a completely brand new slate to draft your team for the following season. After you complete the regular season, your league is over until someone makes a new one.

In dynasty fantasy football, you have one original draft called a dynasty startup draft. It’s typically longer than a normal fantasy football draft because this is the only time you’ll be drafting players that aren’t rookies again.

From there, you now have a roster that carries over from year to year. After one season ends, your roster doesn’t reset heading into the following year.

However, the way you add new players is from a dynasty rookie draft. In a redraft league, incoming rookies are mixed in with the entire draft pool.

In dynasty leagues, these rookie drafts consist of only rookies. That’s the only way you can draft new players onto your team.

The best way to think about this is that dynasty leagues are extremely close to a real NFL format. You don’t have a fully new roster each year, just like the NFL, and dynasty rookie drafts are the equivalent of the NFL draft.

Where to Play Dynasty Fantasy Football

There are a number of places where you can play dynasty fantasy football. Sites such as Sleeper, Fantrax and MyFantasyLeague allow you to run your own league.

How to Play Dynasty Fantasy Football

Without diving too deep, we’ll go over a few basic rules to help you get a brief understanding of dynasty fantasy football strategy.

The number one thing you need to know is that youth matters in dynasty fantasy football. Due to the fact that you’re never having a new startup draft, you want to get as many years of a player’s prime as possible.

For example, if you have Ashton Jeanty on your team, you can expect him to give you great production for the next six years. On the flip side, Derrick Henry is a great player, but he’s 32 years old.

Over a six-year span, Jeanty will likely end up scoring more total points because Henry will either retire and/or see a decrease in production as he gets older.

You can see this is true because Henry scored 16.4 PPG (PPR) last year, and he’s the RB23 on Keep Trade Cut. Jeanty, on the other hand, scored just 12.4 PPG, but he’s the RB4.

While there are a lot more nuances to dynasty fantasy football, this should give you a brief understanding of the fundamentals.

Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevebradshaw/2026/01/25/how-to-play-dynasty-fantasy-football/