Photo: Gary A. Vasquez, USA Today Sports

A month into the dynasty fantasy football season is the perfect time to assess your team. This is a time to consider if you are contending for this season. After a month, you can consider whether you should use future assets or young players to contend this year or begin to rebuild your team for the future.

This article will help you make an informed decision on your team’s direction.

Decision Time

Too often, dynasty general managers enter a rebuild without thinking the decision through. If you entered the season planning to contend this year, four or five games into the season are a great time to evaluate the direction of your team.

The dynasty rebuild is a declaration by a dynasty general manager that the future is a more optimistic time to win than the present.

There are two ways to evaluate the performance of your team.

First, look at your power ranking. The easiest metric to use is all-play records, which is your record if you played every team every week. This is an easy baseline to get an idea of where you rank among other teams. There is less variance than your actual record, making it a better indicator of your team’s strength than just the record.

If your team is in the top half of the league, you are on the good side of the equation. You are on the bad side if your team is in the bottom half.

Second, look at your actual record. While an all-play record is a better indication of your team’s true strength, your actual record is your reality. Again, ask yourself whether your team is in the top half of the record or the bottom half of the record.

If your record is in the top half, your team is on the good side of this equation. You are a bad team if your team is in the bottom half.

These two questions create a combination of four mindsets that can be seen in the boxes below.

The true record is split into the Top 6 and Bottom 6 records in the league on the left side. The all-play records are likewise split into the top-6 and bottom-6 all-play records in the league.

Move Forward

Your answer to the question through four or five weeks should give you a sense of where your team is heading. Through four weeks, you are about 28% of the way through your dynasty regular season.

Put another way, you are like a college student who is just getting settled for your sophomore season. At this point, the sophomore should have a really good understanding of their trajectory. The sophomore with two 3.9 or better GPAs as a freshman is an excellent student. On the other end of the spectrum, the sophomore with two GPAs hovering just above 2.0 in their freshman year is in trouble and needs a reset.

For these teams, there is still time to make changes, but you need to be honest with yourself about your team’s direction. How does your team improve? What needs to happen for your reality to change? If you cannot convincingly sum it up in a couple of sentences, you cannot be confident your team’s trajectory will change.

For the vast middle of the spectrum, they should continue a similar trajectory toward graduation while trying to improve. If you find yourself in the middle of the spectrum, focus on making transactions that are good for your dynasty teams. These are not necessarily win-now or rebuilding moves. Instead, these trades improve your dynasty assets over the long term and give you flexibility as you learn more about your team going foward.

For the contending teams, think about ways to add elite players that can increase your floor and security. When doing this, have a strong preference for elite players with longevity. If you are going to make a trade to improve your team, you are better off paying more for an elite player with multiple years to contribute to your dynasty team’s success than a player who will just be a short-term addition.