With the fantasy season complete, most are shifting their focus back to the NFL and away from their redraft teams in the season's closing weeks. For dynasty GMs, it is time to get back to business - improving their roster through trades, rookie draft strategy, and proper player valuations for next season and beyond. Here are some lessons learned from 2025 and strategies for 2026:
2025 Lessons
Contend Until You Are Eliminated
One of the bigger mistakes by dynasty GMs is throwing in the towel too early. Some lose in September and are already looking for the exit on the season. Others double down on not contending in the offseason, viewing being stuck in the middle of the standings as the worst potential outcome and avoiding it even at the expense of contending seasons.
My take: Contend until you are officially eliminated. This is a very NFL-type take. Two games to play and need two wins? Try to win the first one and go from there. Need some wins and some help with a month to go? Take it week by week. Do things look rough in July? Wait until October to assess things, at the minimum.
The best team in a dynasty league does not always win the title. Fellow Footballguys staffer Adam Harstad has broken down the math of winning a title in a variety of circumstances in previous articles. In short, the 'field' has a better chance than any singular team, even once the playoffs start.
The 2025 season was yet another example, specifically a co-owned team with Jordan McNamara. At various points in the season, we were 2-2, 3-3, and 5-5. Through 10 weeks at 5-5, our all-play was 45%. We were a weak team with a myriad of injuries. We ended up with James Conner, Joe Mixon, and Tucker Kraft on injured reserve (2TE with premium scoring, and we were thin at running back). We also lost David Njoku in the closing weeks, miring through Tony Pollard's slow start despite Tyjae Spears missing time. Midseason, we traded for a then-injured Joe Burrow, giving Michael Penix Jr. and J.J. McCarthy, both healthy at the time, in this 2QB format. At that time, we made a macro-view dynasty trade, which we assumed would prevent us from sneaking into the playoffs (our best-case scenario).
One thing to remember about being in the middle of the power rankings of a dynasty league is that there will invariably be 2-3-4 teams actively trying to miss the playoffs and secure a better draft position, thinking, "This is not my year." With that in full effect, being 5-5 gave us a legitimate chance to make the playoffs. Joe Burrow returned, surprisingly, to the lineup. So did Brock Purdy. Tony Pollard had his two best games of the season in the final month. Tyrone Tracy Jr. added a 24-point outing. Mike Evans, Terry McLaurin, and Chris Godwin Jr. returned from injuries.
We slipped into the playoffs as the No.5 seed. Our opponent had a house of horrors week with Patrick Mahomes II's dud (plus leaving late with an injury). Isaiah Likely put up a goose egg. No player hit even 20 points for their lineup. We advanced to the semifinals by drawing the right matchup. We were throttled by the No.2 seed in the semifinals, but won the third-place game against a strong team. They had just one player hit 20+ points and had down games from Jahmyr Gibbs and TreVeyon Henderson.
We scraped together a third-place finish despite being middling for a huge chunk of the season simply by continuing to compete. We did not sell off older pieces or try to improve our draft position by a spot or two. In the past seven years, we have had first, second, and third-place finishes in the money.
Seek Elite
One of the themes Jordan McNamara and I discuss regularly is seeking elite results. This is at the micro level: players, profiles, lineup settings, and the waiver wire. However, it also applies to your dynasty portfolio. More to come on this topic in future installments, but research into my results has unearthed a huge edge for teams with a bye week in the dynasty postseason in the semifinal round. There is a substantial edge by merely avoiding playing in Week 15, as any head-to-head matchup is an opportunity to lose, regardless of the opponent. However, my results also show a significant edge for the bye week teams in the Week 16 matchup as well. Picture the first and second seeds in a dynasty playoff bracket. They were better than the rest of the league for more than three months to earn the bye. They are likely still decently (or more) better once the win-or-go-home matchup in December's postseason comes around. In short, the bye teams have a double benefit of avoiding a matchup in Week 15, plus they are heavy favorites most of the time in Week 16. Add those two factors together, and shooting for a bye should be the primary focus for our dynasty teams, as emerging through two rounds as a wildcard team to get to the finals is a low-probability play. As a wildcard team, you are likely somewhere in the 50/50 to 60/40 range of outcomes in Week 15. If you win, you are likely 40% at best and more likely a deeper underdog than that. Compare that to sitting on the sideline with a bye in Week 15 and being a strong favorite in Week 16. These are divergent pathways and probabilities for a title and/or strong prize-money ROI.
Running Backs: A Weekly Game
Think of running backs like puzzle pieces. It can be difficult to see how they fit together in the offseason or even in September and October. The running back position is fitting together 14 weeks of lineups with two (or more as applicable) quality (and clarified) starters. While having the same options each week would make that puzzle easy to solve, the NFL regular season of matchups and injuries is far from simple with the information of August. This dovetails with the above contend-until-eliminated mindset. Rostering a significant volume of backup running backs requires patience to actually benefit from evolving depth charts and injuries around the NFL running back water cooler.
This is why looking at the seasonal PPG of running backs or their aggregate finish only tells part of the story and, frankly, only for the declared starters for most of the season. What about the rest of the position? These pockets of clarity, whether a single game or a handful of weeks, are hyper-valuable to the mechanics of navigating a successful dynasty season.
- Bam Knight had seven games without James Conner and Trey Benson in the lineup for clarified opportunities. Michael Carter added another two games at the end of the season without even Bam Knight active.
- Rico Dowdle had two glorious games without Chuba Hubbard early in the season, surging to the lead role even when Hubbard returned from injury.
- Kyle Monangai had one clarified start without D'Andre Swift in the lineup. Monangai had 196 total yards in the game.
- RJ Harvey turned into an auto-start option in the six games to close the season without J.K. Dobbins active.
- Emanuel Wilson had 125 total yards in the lone game Josh Jacobs was inactive on 30 touches.
- Jawhar Jordan had 20 touches, 70 yards, and 12 PPR points in Week 16 without Woody Marks.
- Kareem Hunt had three games without Isiah Pacheco active, scoring a touchdown in each of those games and surpassing 10 points in each contest.
- Kimani Vidal had seven games without Omarion Hampton in the lineup, hitting 100 or more total yards in four of the games.
- Jordan Mason had four games without Aaron Jones Sr., finding the end zone four times over the span and surpassing 10 points in all of them.
- TreVeyon Henderson had three games without Rhamondre Stevenson in the lineup and hit 25 or more points in two of the outings.
- Devin Neal had three games without Alvin Kamara, posting a touchdown in two of the games and having 17 touches in the other.
- Kenneth Gainwell had a glorious Week 4 without Jaylen Warren in the lineup, posting 134 total yards and two touchdowns on 25 touches.
- Rachaad White had seven games without Bucky Irving, collecting 14 or more touches in all but one of the contests.
Pay Attention to the Details
Whether in one league or 20, the weekly player churn through the waiver wire and first-come, first-served avenues are critical to improving your team. To use one league as an example where players are unlocked when dropped through waivers, etc., and available for pickup, here are some of the adds and flips as a result in the shallow-moderate rosters and attention to detail.
Acquired, from September forward, in one league (24-man rosters)
- Daniel Jones
- Aaron Rodgers
- Mac Jones
- Kenneth Gainwell
- Chris Rodriguez Jr.
- Kimani Vidal
- Michael Carter
- Bam Knight
- Emanuel Wilson
- Parker Washington
- Chimere Dike
- Juwan Johnson
- Jake Tonges
- Gunnar Helm
One takeaway is that a starting lineup built solely from the waiver wire at certain points of the season can be competitive by itself, especially at running back and tight end. This particular league did not have Michael Wilson available, but others did. Grinding on the waiver wire on a weekly basis can pay big dividends.
This is the final New Reality installment for the 2025 season. Thank you for following along! In the offseason, my dynasty content is available through free podcasts 'Under the Helmet' and 'Dynasty Think Tank' on all podcasting platforms, plus written content at UTHDynasty.com. Enjoy the NFL postseason, and welcome to NFL Draft season. Dynasty teams are officially on the clock!
Check out all of Chad Parsons' content at Footballguys.
