You know the toy ball that expands and collapses? That is called a Hoberman’s Sphere. I could spend hours, amazed that a sphere could grow so large, only to compact itself into a tight ball. Watch as it opens and closes from one angle; spin the sphere and repeat. I struggle to comprehend how someone came up with that idea. What does that have to do with dynasty roster construction? Everything. Dynasty rosters are always either a rebuild or contender. Roster value is constantly growing or contracting.
Dynasty roster analysis has stagnated, bucketing teams into “Contender”, “Rebuild”, or the dreaded “Middle-of-the-Pack”. How can you change your thought process and get a leg up? Think in terms of Hoberman’s Sphere.
Hoberman Sphere
Visualize your roster as a sphere. When you rebuild, the goal is to acquire assets to expand the sphere. You want to increase overall roster value. As you maximize roster value, you hit a tipping point. You then contract your roster value into useable assets. The tipping point signals for you to flip from rebuild into contender. Start to look for ways to condense your roster value into fewer, higher-value assets. Maximize the output you can insert into your weekly starting lineup.
Dynasty fantasy football is just a series of actions opening and closing the Hoberman Sphere – when you have enough value on your roster to acquire pieces for current production to compete, you are just contracting the sphere into its most compact form. When you rebuild, you’re just gathering pieces to gain as much value as you can (growing the sphere).
Dynasty Rebuild Strategy
While you aren’t in a state to compete, you should consider yourself to be in a rebuild. I distinguish between two main types of transactions that can quickly improve your roster value: 1) Tiering down while charging contenders a premium and 2) Filling your bench with cheap speculative players.
Tiering Down
Tiering down can hurt. No one likes to give up studs like Justin Jefferson, Bijan Robinson, Brock Bowers, etc. However, the allure that these names have can force your league mates to pay a premium for the ownership rights to these elite assets. If you get an interested party, don’t be afraid to note something like, “The offer is close, but I just really struggle to give up someone as good as _______”. I would look to get about a 10-20% value increase from your elite players when tiering down. People understand the opportunity to acquire these guys does not come around often. Elite players rarely change rosters more than once or twice.
The common move from my dynasty teams is to trade an elite established player for 2 up-and-coming options. These offers don’t always work, but often enough the name brand player is enough to earn the overpay – think Ja’Marr Chase vs Brian Thomas Jr. and Ladd McConkey or Justin Jefferson vs the pair of Puka Nacua and Drake London as examples.

You don’t have to restrict these transactions to the elite assets, either. You can trade down from any tier, perhaps selling a backend RB1 for a pair of RB2s with upside. Look for guys where perception does not match actual production. If you can’t identify players that have a worse perception than their performance, look for players who are ascending. Get players ahead of their breakout seasons. Many of these are not hard to predict. The upside can be baked into their cost to some extent, but the risk of unknown usually keeps their price below their true value.
Speculating For Dynasty Value
There are a few no-lose situations in Fantasy Football. Managers need to be constantly taking advantage of these opportunities, but for some reason, fail to do so with much regularity. We can see predictable patterns in common situations, but because of the time-limited nature of a fantasy football season; managers are willing to ignore the long-term trends to get instant gratification.
The Time To Buy Is When There’s Blood In The Streets
Injuries provide an excellent buying opportunity. Immediately after the injury, player value drops before slowly rebounding as the player recovers. Depending on the duration, the drop could be slight, or it could be significant for season ending injuries. If you are not contending, speculating on injured players is a lucrative strategy. You absorb the short-term value loss when your goal is not to score points anyway. You can sit back, let the player recover and watch the player’s value grow as each week passes and they creep closer to a return.
The same concept can be applied to draft picks. Future picks are the most stable asset value in fantasy football – no matter what happens there will always be draft worthy players in each draft class. However, draft picks do absolutely nothing for you in terms of winning the league, and winning is the ultimate goal. You should not hoard picks any longer than necessary – spend one season accumulating draft capital (and minimizing roster production to earn a better draft slot). During the rookie draft, convert those picks into stud rookies or current production. You are not required to use a late first round pick on a speculative rookie that won’t contribute to a championship this year – trade the pick!
Shopping The Bargain Bin
There are also opportunities to buy players at their floor. For some reason, the fantasy community just doesn’t properly value certain players. KeepTradeCut shows Jayden Reed’s valuation to be WR42. His positional finish in his first two years? 25th and 29th. There is no way that a healthy Reed fails to deliver at that price, and his value likely increases when he does.

KTC also shows Kyren Williams at RB12, but since taking over the starting role in Los Angeles, he has produced back-to-back seasons finishing at RB7. The Rams did not significantly invest in running back (Jarquez Hunter was drafted in the 4th round, but Williams already held off Blake Corum who was a 3rd round pick the previous year). Everything points to Williams earning an extension with the Rams, which should lock in his role as long as he stays healthy.

Split backfields present another opportunity. We know that Jahmyr Gibbs and David Montgomery will both be productive in the Lions backfield. Montgomery is valued at RB24 but has NEVER in his six-year career finished worse than that. Take a second to think, what would Montgomery’s value would be if Gibbs were set to miss any time? KTC shows Tyler Allgeier is valued at RB52 but has never finished worse than RB43 – what would his value be if Bijan sprained an ankle… I won’t even speculate about anything worse.
Dynasty Stashes
Short-term in-season value spikes can also supplement a rebuild. You can load up the end of your bench with rookie WRs, backup/handcuff RBs or backup QBs. When injury strikes, as it inevitably will, you will be ready to pounce on the owners that just lost a starter. Frequently these nearly-free offseason acquisitions turn into 2nd or 3rd round rookie picks – not a bad return! Who knows, you may even unearth the next Puka Nacua or Kyren Williams.
Contracting To Contend For A Dynasty
The hard part is finished. You’ve managed to build the value of your team through a rebuild. Now what? It’s not good enough just to acquire value. Established dynasty strategy is to shift your roster from potential into production for the current season. Unfortunately, that isn’t enough to maximize your chance at winning. You need to not only transition from potential to current year production, but you also need to consolidate your scoring as tightly as possible into your starting lineup. If you have 2 WR spots and 2 flex (max 4 WRs in a given week), the production from your 5th or 6th wide receiver on a weekly basis is irrelevant.
Think of this process as filling in the center area of the Hoberman Sphere as it contracts. Get the center of your roster (the starting lineup) as dense as possible by securing as much current production as possible across the starting spots. You’ll end up with some extra pieces sticking out from the core of the sphere (your bench depth), but fill in as many holes in the starting roster as you possibly can.
This may involve shedding some overall value from your roster. Consider this the price of doing business. You don’t have to “win” every trade you make. Remember from earlier, it costs extra to acquire the elite assets in fantasy. Try to buy players at less of a premium than what you aim to sell for, but you can’t win without current production.
Dynasty Player Packages
Look for opportunities to bundle assets and make some two-for-one or three-for-two type trades. You can “tier up” in these trades and simultaneously shift from potential to production. Trade multiple speculative WR3s for a couple more established and safer WR2s. Make lateral moves to shift your roster to players you are more confident in rather than having to make projections or guesses about roles and production.
Buying On Credit
If you run out of packages to send, don’t forget to flip the script. Remember when you were rebuilding and acquiring picks – go ahead and sell your future picks to help round out your roster. The biggest sin in Dynasty is to get stuck in the middle. If you have everything covered except for a spot or two – trade away the future 1st and/or 2nd to fill the hole. You can get current production cheaply with aging veterans in good situations.
The champion in your league will likely get at least 70% of the league fees. That means that when you win, you have paid for your current year and SIX more seasons to rebuild. Trading away one- or two-years’ worth of picks to ensure that victory is well worth the cost. And remember, you may just be able to compete again the following year.
Convert For Roster Construction
During a rebuild, roster construction is not top of mind. There is no need to worry about whether you are weak at a certain spot on your roster, because you aren’t trying to score. Everything changes when you look to compete. You need to understand the positional landscape of your league and get as many positional advantages as possible.
Roster settings will play a significant role in the decisions you make at this stage. If you get too thin at a position, you are exposing yourself to injury risk. Convert and consolidate your roster into the starting line up as tightly as possible. If you have extra options at a position compared to what you can insert into your weekly line up, package the excess for upgrades at other positions. If you have positions where you can only start one or two (usually QB or TE), you can keep an extra productive backup to hedge injury risk.
No Mercy!
Don’t let current success result in complacency. As everything falls into place stay active. Continue acquiring pieces to help you in the current season, if not to use them in your lineup, to block your opponents. While you don’t get an extra prize for winning by more, you certainly get penalized for a close loss in the championship.

Unless your league has a flat payout – as Ricky Bobby would say, “If you ain’t first, you’re last”.
