How fast does your dynasty roster turn over? (1 Viewer)

[ZWK]

What is the decay rate of your dynasty roster? What fraction of the players on your roster right now will still be on your roster 1 year from now? Or - the version of this question that we can currently check - what fraction of the players that were on your roster a year ago are still on your roster right now?

I want actual numbers, not guesses. So pick a dynasty league that you're in, go check who was on your roster a year ago, and count how many of those players are on your roster today. Put the answer in the poll. IR & taxi squad count as "on your roster", and if a player left your roster and then came back let's count that as "still on your roster".

(In MFL, you can do this by going to last year's league site, then on your team page go to "Scoring History". The players who do not have an X in the week 1 column are the ones who were on your roster for week 1, and that's the week to look if you're doing this right after I posted this.)

What about the guys who were starting for you a year ago? How many of your starters from a year ago (2018 week 1 as I post this) are still on your roster today and how many are gone? (In MFL, those are the guys whose with an S in the week 1 column.)

If you're feeling extra curious, or extra generous with your time & data, then you can go back 2 or 3 years and see how many of those guys are still around on your roster. No polls for that; you can just post and discuss.

I am curious to see how quickly rosters turn over, how much of it is just churn at the bottom of the roster and how much is turnover in starters, and how closely in resembles exponential decay.

 

[ZWK]

I checked the numbers for 2 leagues that I'm in.

League A

from 1 year ago: 67% of players still on my roster, 82% of starters from then still on my roster
from 2 years ago: 47% of players, 64% of starters
from 3 years ago: 25% of players, 36% of starters

League B

from 1 year ago: 44% of players, 50% of starters
from 2 years ago: 28% of players, 38% of starters
from 3 years ago: 16% of players, 13% of starters

This does look close to exponential decay. In League B about about 1/2 of my roster turns over each year, and in League A about 1/3 of my roster (and 1/4 of my starters) turn over each year.

 

[EBF]

Picked  one random team.

17/24 still on the roster (~71%)

8/9 starters still on the roster (~89%)

The only starter I dropped was the Seahawks D. Since I tend to juggle defenses during the season, I almost don't want to count them.

This was probably my best overall team last year though, and I suspect the turnover would be a lot higher for my worst team.

A lot of factors can influence turnover. Generally, I'd think shallower rosters = more turnover. Owners who like to trade = more turnover. Weaker roster = more turnover, as you're probably going to be taking more waiver flyers and juggling more bodies for depth/bye week cover.

Most of my leagues are deep, I don't trade much, and I'm very patient with my draft picks. I'm guessing I have lower turnover than a typical owner, but can't be sure.

 

[barackdhouse]

I kept K and Defense out of mine. But for the one team I looked up I have 5/20 still on my roster today. 4/8 starters. I won the ship with this team and this exercise next year may yield much higher than 5/20. I'm going to look at one of my other teams that struggled. 

 

[barackdhouse]

Struggling team made the playoffs but petered out bad:

2/20 still on roster

1/8 starters

 

[az_prof]

I think it was EBF who convinced me that in dynasty you should churn the bottom of your roster regularly.  I do that.  But the top of my roster, my starters, doesn't change much.  I churn the bottom because it is easy to get attached to guys with potential that you THINK will break out, and they often disappoint. On the other hand, if you are turning over your starters you either don't have very good starters or they are too old as a group.

82% of my roster is the same--I added Boykin, Jakobi Meyers, Mattison (to back up Cook), and OJ Howard.

90% of starters are the same--only change was OJ Howard at TE.

 

[Dezbelief]

Start 7 IDP and a PK

Starters 8/16, roster 25/40

I churn the bottom of my roster and made 3 trades. 

 

[EBF]

I think it was EBF who convinced me that in dynasty you should churn the bottom of your roster regularly.  I do that.  But the top of my roster, my starters, doesn't change much. 

Hmmm...not sure that was me, but I'm happy to take the credit.

If you look around the league, there are quite a few solid dynasty assets who likely began life as waiver pickups. Thielen, Tyreek, AB, Lindsay, Ekeler, Edelman, Kittle, and even Brady qualify. That's a rare outcome for a waiver claim. Most will be long-term useless, but I definitely like to have a spot or two available so I can take a chance on these guys if they appear. When they hit, it's like found money and it can massively elevate a team. If your roster is clogged then you can't take flyers on these guys.

That being said, my ownership style is pretty static for the most part. I draft the players I like, hold them for a long time, and rarely make big trades. Maybe 1-2 significant trades per league per year, excluding rookie draft posturing. I'll sit on players for years if I think they have talent.

I'm not sure low turnover is inherently good though. I've been in leagues with guys who just send trade offers constantly and are always looking to parlay two nickels into a quarter. It's not my style and I don't really like playing in leagues with that type of owner, but I've seen it work really well for some of them. If you are constantly turning over your roster and winning trades then you can stack up a scary team pretty quickly. It's contingent on getting other people to make mistakes though.

 

[Interseptopus]

from when I took over my main dynasty 1.5 years ago, I have 2 guys from that team still on my roster: Corey Davis and Justin Tucker

 

[LessThanZero]

Here's the numbers from my only remaining league, which I've been in for 20 years. Pulled rosters going back to 2014. League has a taxi/practice squad which allows you to you keep rookies/drafted FAs on it indefinitely, until you activate them to regular roster (max 10 players). That almost certainly reduces turnover; since you can only add players via draft, you can't really micromanage it. Usually players are either good enough to be activated, or wash out of the league entirely and get cut -- meaning mediocre players can linger there forever, because there's no reason to activate them (not startable) but also no reason to cut them (just makes them available to other teams, and you can't fill their practice squad spot with a wire pickup). Start 1 QB, 2 RB, 2 WR, 1 TE. (Also a K, but left them out because who cares.)

• From 1 year ago: 5/6 (83%) starters still on roster, 9/15 (60%) active players still on roster, 15/26 (58%) all (active and taxi) players still on roster
  
• From 2 years ago: 4/6 (67%) starters still on roster, 7/15 (47%) active players still on roster, 11/25 (44%) all (active and taxi) players still on roster
  
• From 3 years ago: 4/6 (67%) starters still on roster, 7/15 (47%) active players still on roster, 7/25 (28%) all (active and taxi) players still on roster
  
• From 5 years ago: 1/6 (17%) starters still on roster, 2/15 (13%) active players still on roster, 3/23 (13%) all (active and taxi) players still on roster
  

Despite (because of?) the churn, I've finished top 3 in points scored all five years (though only made the playoffs once, due to some staggeringly bad luck at head-to-head record). 

The only three players still remaining from the start of 2014 are Rodgers, Newton, and Kelce. WRs were also pretty stable over this time period; 3 of my current WRs have been on my roster for 3-4 years, and Antonio Brown would have made the 5-year cut but I just traded him two weeks ago. RBs, on the other hand, churn with quite some regularity, no matter how "set" at RB I might have thought I was at any given point. (LeSean McCoy, DeMarco Murray, Devonta Freeman, and Trent Richardson felt like a real good RB stable back in 2014; by 2015, I'd traded away all but McCoy, and only Freeman has much of any dynasty value today.)

My current roster is stacked to an almost unfair degree, and yet I'd still expect these turnover numbers to look similar if I did this again in 2024. More things change, etc. etc.

 

[Ironman2131]

My dynasty league has max four-year contracts, so there's a certain amount of natural turnover.  We have rosters of 32 players and of the players I had on my team at the start of the year, 16 are still on my team.  As for starters, here are my week 1 starters last year:

QB:  Luck (traded last season for Greg Olsen and Dion Lewis in a deal that didn't age well until a couple of weeks ago)

RBs:  Chubb and Fournette (both still on my roster, as is LeVeon Bell, who wasn't a week 1 starter for me last year for obvious reasons)

WRs:  Antonio Brown (traded last year for a draft pick since he was in the last year of his deal) is gone, but Cooks and Watkins are both still around (although Watkins is my WR4 and not starting this week)

TE:  Rudolph (traded away in the AB deal)

K:  Lutz (left via free agency)

For further color, here are my week 1 starters this year and whether they're new or not:

QB:  Jackson (drafted a year ago but he was on my bench for most of last year)

RBs:  Chubb and Bell (see above)

WRs:  Julio (free agent pick up), Cooks, and Boyd (traded a draft pick for him)

TE:  Andrews (picked up as a rookie during pre-season free agency) or Olsen

K:  Myes (free agent pick up)

 

[az_prof]

Hmmm...not sure that was me, but I'm happy to take the credit.

If you look around the league, there are quite a few solid dynasty assets who likely began life as waiver pickups. Thielen, Tyreek, AB, Lindsay, Ekeler, Edelman, Kittle, and even Brady qualify. That's a rare outcome for a waiver claim. Most will be long-term useless, but I definitely like to have a spot or two available so I can take a chance on these guys if they appear. When they hit, it's like found money and it can massively elevate a team. If your roster is clogged then you can't take flyers on these guys.

That being said, my ownership style is pretty static for the most part. I draft the players I like, hold them for a long time, and rarely make big trades. Maybe 1-2 significant trades per league per year, excluding rookie draft posturing. I'll sit on players for years if I think they have talent.

I'm not sure low turnover is inherently good though. I've been in leagues with guys who just send trade offers constantly and are always looking to parlay two nickels into a quarter. It's not my style and I don't really like playing in leagues with that type of owner, but I've seen it work really well for some of them. If you are constantly turning over your roster and winning trades then you can stack up a scary team pretty quickly. It's contingent on getting other people to make mistakes though.

Right on. The guys who constantly churn their whole roster from my point of view have no plan. I have guys that I believe in. I drafted Brees the first year my dynasty league started--maybe 2003???--and I still have him. Drafted Gates on that team and kept him until he retired basically. 

But on the other hand, you want to churn the bottom of your roster because most of those guys are not sure things. Andyou don't want to hang onto Jamaal Williams if you have a chance to get a better player. Last year I dropped Mitch Trubisky and it was a great move. I also traded away Tarik Cohen because it was clear to me his ceiling was limited and I had a good offer that would offer better value. I learned this lesson partly because I held onto some guys I drafted way too long like Robert Meachum.  You have to figure out if a guy is worth hanging onto or if you can parlay him into something better. I did that last year with Anthony Miller.  

 

[Devil_Dog]

I think it was EBF who convinced me that in dynasty you should churn the bottom of your roster regularly.  I do that.  But the top of my roster, my starters, doesn't change much.  I churn the bottom because it is easy to get attached to guys with potential that you THINK will break out, and they often disappoint. On the other hand, if you are turning over your starters you either don't have very good starters or they are too old as a group.

82% of my roster is the same--I added Boykin, Jakobi Meyers, Mattison (to back up Cook), and OJ Howard.

90% of starters are the same--only change was OJ Howard at TE.

This

 

[Devil_Dog]

It really depends if you are rebuilding or not...if you asked me 3 or 4 yrs ago it would be very high churn but I've moved into contender position now so just the bottom few guys get moved.  

I've been in this league for 17 yrs....allow me to brag a bit about the team I assembled...but believe it or not I didn't win it all last season

Rodgers, Goff, Mixon, Barkley, Chubb, Gordon, Hopkins, Adams, Thomas, JuJu, C. Davis, Kirk, Engram, Njoku 

I have some other ancillary players but I'm not planning on moving any of these players for the foreseeable future unless it's a crazy good offer.  And next season I have 2 first round and 2 second round picks so I plan to continue to bank some young talent.

For full disclosure, my other leagues don't look anywhere close to this good but I'm in more of a rebuilding mode in them.  My hope is to replicate what I did in this league...time will tell.

 

[ConnSKINS26]

Unless you have a massively stacked, young roster, if you aren't making trades then you aren't putting in the work to win. To me it's that simple. Not trading, and more importantly actively and constantly seeking trade opportunities in order to be the guy who knows what's going down and who's available...it's like just throwing the Phillips head screwdriver out of your toolbox. Yeah, maybe it's not THE most important tool, but it should see heavy usage. You need to be a good communicator who keeps a dialogue open with every owner, and you need to constantly be on the lookout for opportunities. You also want to be the guy who is unbiased and honest in his value assessments so your leaguemates ask for and value your opinions, but that's getting more into the psychological aspects rather than just trading or not trading, so that's for another post. 

Anyways, there are always gains to be made on the trade market, value differences to take advantage of. The more engaged and opinionated the owners, the better. 

Obviously trading doesn't happen as much in less active leagues, but I wouldn't stay in a league like that, where on the whole it didn't have an active trade market. Even within active leagues there will always be owners who don't want to trade much, and that's fine. 

But I have never, ever seen someone who just drafts "their guys", believes in them, and sits on them win a championship. I would be curious to hear if you've found success that way, @EBF. 

I've whittled my number of leagues down to 2--my most active ones were unsurprisingly my favorite, and I created and commish one of them. Both devy leagues. One has been around for 9 seasons now, the other 6. The trade activity in the older league that I started is good, but the other league is insane. Hundreds of trades every season. Partially I think because we have a GroupMe chat that is extremely active every day, people are always chatting sports and wheeling and dealing. Only 2-3 of the owners know each other IRL, we just put together a group of really active owners who enjoy making deals. 

Every league isn't like that and not everyone would even enjoy that, of course. It's not for everyone. Along those lines, I created a no-trade best ball league years ago just to test draft skills. Every year after the startup we drafted college, rookie, and FA players in three separate drafts throughout the offseason, and then you just sat on "your guys" and watched how often you were right in a format where you were stuck with your decisions. Positional need played a bigger part in drafts, of course. It lasted 5-6 years and was an interesting experiment, but once a few less reliable owners started ducking out bc they were leaving the dynasty hobby, it wasn't worth the effort to fill those open spots--the point had been to pit talent evaluation and roster planning skills against a group that shared other traditional leagues together, and without the appeal of trading to re-make the roster in their image, it was hard to find replacements. 

 

[EBF]

But I have never, ever seen someone who just drafts "their guys", believes in them, and sits on them win a championship. I would be curious to hear if you've found success that way, @EBF.

I had many years as a donator, largely because of dumb trades. That was probably my biggest leak. I would draft reasonably well and then make stupid deals. I've largely cut that out and my rosters are generally in good shape now. I feel like I'm much better at FF than I was 5-10 years ago because I've made every mistake in the book, and have learned a system that works for me. Now I just try to make good decisions and avoid the obvious mistakes. So far it's working pretty well.

I went 43-18 last year in dynasty and won 1/5 leagues. Playoffs in 4/5. The other was a .500 squad that finished #2 in total points, but got jobbed by the schedule (no total points wild card in that league).

I'm really selective with my player choices in startups and rookie drafts, so generally there are only a couple guys per round that I'm likely to draft. That means I end up getting mostly the same guys on every team. I have JuJu in 5/5 leagues, Mahomes in 4/5, Ebron in 4/5, Drake in 3/5, and Tyreek in 3/5. When you smash it out of the park with the same guys on 50+% of your teams, suddenly your rosters can be pretty juiced if you also have some other random stars mixed in there, which I do on all of those teams.

Given that I'm only interested in drafting/acquiring a small fraction of the player pool at any given time, you can maybe understand why I don't make many trades. A lot of the guys I want are already on my teams. Moreover, since my teams tend to consist of players that I value above the average owner, it's unlikely that my selling price will match their buying price. The reverse is also true. Since people also tend to roster players that they like more than the average owner, this means that the functional cost to acquire a player is often higher than the generic market price would suggest (for example, the market values Deebo Samuel at ~WR40-50, but since I might value him somewhere around WR30, you would have to "overpay" to interest me).

Add it all up and I'm just not out there trying to make a lot of deals. Generally my rosters already consist of players that I like more than the average owner, and I'd only move them if I could get a player I liked even more, but that requires the confluence of a lot of things (me having a player I'm eager to get rid of, someone else having a player I like, that owner being willing to move the player at a price that makes sense to me). It just doesn't happen that often. I make a small number of deals focused around a small pool of players. I am most active with offers during the rookie draft, when I am trying to posture to get guys before a tier drop. Once I get a player I like, I generally have no interest in trading him. Moreover, most trade offers that come through my e-mail are blatant ripoffs. People lowball you and try to do the 3-scrubs-for-1-star thing and I'm just not going to swallow that hook very often these days.

Now, I've seen the used car salesman type have success in some leagues. It especially works well if there are 2-3 weak owners in the league who are going to get fleeced every year. When you mix weak owners with the guys who are out there spamming lopsided offers every week, it can be a combustible situation. I try to avoid those leagues though, as my style is to "draft and hold" rather than to play stock broker. I don't think constantly flipping your roster is really the essence of dynasty. Once you have a Fitzgerald or Saquon, why would you ever trade him? I look for short-term thrills in DFS and redraft. In dynasty I'm more intrigued by the long-term process. It's kind of cool to draft a Jordy Nelson, sit on him for three years, and then all of a sudden watch him explode into a monster asset. It's fun to see a plan come together after years of groundwork.

 

[-OZ-]

Depends on the league.

Rebuilt in one, superflex 

29 players on my roster last year week 1. Goff, Barkeley, R Jones, penny, k Cole, Keke, doctson, Kirk, Parker, Pettis, everett, OJ Howard, falcons defense remain. So just less than half. I'll probably drop 3 of those guys by October. 3/11 starters remain (and will continue to start)

League 2, IDP

54 players on my roster last year week 1, 14 remain on offense, 14 on defense, so 28/54 total, so just over half. 14/21 remain starters. 

League 2 has been going over 16 years now. I used to turn over maybe 75% of the roster and more starters. I was among the most active. Lately I've become almost inactive as a trader but as assistant commissioner still active in the league. To the points made above, I was very competitive when I was more active. Now not so much.