Roundtable: Offseason Dynasty Advice

The offseason is quickly approaching, granting Dynasty managers a chance to reset and plan their direction. We polled Dynasty staffers Jason Wood, Dan Hindery, Ryan Weisse, Andy Hicks, Tipp Major, and Matthew Montgomery for their best offseason advice.

What piece of advice would you give Dynasty managers for navigating the offseason?

Wood: I think the most important thing to learn about dynasty is to be brutally honest with yourself about the state of your team. Think back to what you believed about your squad in the summertime. Did things actually play out that way? Did you enter the year expecting to compete and end up near the basement? If so, did you course-correct and start making moves with an eye toward 2026 and beyond? Speaking from personal experience, I find that we are often not realistic about when a major rebuild is necessary.

The key takeaway is this: if an honest assessment of your performance shows that you are consistently unrealistic about your roster, force yourself to flip the script. I used to struggle with committing to a rebuild, until I finally dove in headfirst by shopping my elite cornerstone players. Removing the centerpiece of my team forced me to be bolder and more flexible in my decision-making.

Tremblay: If you're contemplating this question right now, there's a decent chance you're not currently playing for a title, which makes the first offseason job pretty simple: get honest about where you actually are. Look at your starting lineup and ask how many real difference-makers you're missing at each position. If you're more than a couple of starters away, lean into a real rebuild instead of living in that miserable middle where you're too strong to land premium picks but too weak to contend for a championship. One or two rough seasons while you reload is usually a better long-term outcome than finishing fifth forever.

When you rebuild, don't rebuild for a single all-in year three seasons from now. The goal is to line up a window you can keep open. That means stacking a core of players whose peaks overlap, so you're not finally ready to contend just as half your roster starts aging out. If your best assets are on different timelines, you're going to feel like you're always patching leaks instead of building something stable.

That's also why, in most formats, you want to build your foundation at quarterback, wide receiver, and tight end before you spend big on running back. Quarterbacks and top wide receivers can hold value and give you elite production for a long stretch, and tight ends tend to stick around longer than people expect once they hit. Running backs are the opposite: their peak is shorter, and the position churns constantly. If you lock in expensive running backs now while you're still assembling everything else, you're often burning their best years before your roster is ready. It's usually cleaner to build the durable core at other positions first, then add running backs when they're the last missing piece.

Once you've established a realistic timeline, let it guide your trades. Move veterans whose best seasons will be behind them before your window opens, and be willing to do it a year early rather than a year late.