Keith, Commish
A Fantasy Season with THE Dynasty League is a behind-the-scenes look at one commissioner’s journey through a homegrown dynasty fantasy football league. Each week covers trades, roster moves, rookie updates, league drama, and more — all from the perspective of a manager playing the long game. It’s fantasy football with history, strategy, and just the right amount of chaos.
Week 1: From Rookie Fever to Full-Blown Dynasty
The Idea
It was the Summer of 2018. Another fantasy football season was right around the corner, but one thing was keeping my excitement at bay. See, there had been this one thing over the past few seasons that had been bothering me. Each off season, I put in so much research and effort to try and find an edge among the incoming rookie class. Then, once that season ends and that rookie plays well, someone else gets to draft them highly the following year. The end result always left me feeling like I put in all that work for nothing. The previous year had so many young guys that would eventually turn into fantasy monsters. CMC, Dalvin Cook, Leonard Fournette, Alvin Kamara. 2016 had Zeke, Derrick Henry, Tyreek and Michael Thomas.You get it, we know when all the NFL stars of today were drafted, and I had dreams of owning them all while running the table on a yearly basis. But how? After a lot of time spent on google, the answer was clear. I’ll start a dynasty football league – and that is how THE Dynasty League was created.
Finding Owners
The first step was to find a group of people that I knew would be in it for the long haul. I had come across so many horror stories in my research where leagues had lasted one or two seasons and fell apart due to multiple owners leaving the league. I had planned to draft young, so in order to take advantage of that roster one day, I needed to find the most committed of owners. Then, of course, I made an error. I invited coworkers. Be more careful than I was! People leave jobs, lose contact and stop caring. I was fortunate to have a good group already together so replacing them was not an issue but take this as a potential warning if you’re not in a league already! A vast majority of the league were close friends either from high school or college and it’s become a great, competitive bunch over the years. Since this league was starting so late in the Summer, a low buy in was set at $25.00.
The Draft
This has to be the best part of this article, reviewing our old startup. We set the draft order by using a random draw on some website that I cannot remember the name of. The draft also took place on some excel sheet we created because we just didn’t know what we were doing. After finalizing our roster and scoring settings: 1 QB, 12 team, start 9 – standard with a 1 point per first down, we were ready. For the sake of heading down memory lane, I’ve included the top 3 rounds of picks below.
It’s definitely difficult to follow and I apologize for that, but I thought it might be interesting to see what the first 36 picks looked like in 2018. If you’re wondering, my first three picks were Todd Gurley, Joe Mixon and Derrius Guice. Gurley was fun for 2018-2019, Mixon ended up being traded away (in a package for Ruggs, Dobbins and a pick that would one day become Jaylen Waddle), and I don’t believe I ever had a line up featuring Guice. Nope, not even for that one start against Carolna so many Sundays ago. My last remaining player from this draft, Derek Carr, will be released once our Rookie Draft begins in August, officially marking the end of that era.
The Purpose
Over the course of the 2025 fantasy season, I plan to take you week by week covering trades, key free agent pick up and scores from around the league. We’ll cover everything from the Rookie Draft down to the Championship weekend while introducing brief snippets of league history so some of the items discussed make sense and don’t leave you wondering.
I’m going to treat this like the real thing. Providing a Rookie Draft preview, team needs, the works. One big difference is that I will not be publicly degrading leaguemates for not taking Shadeur Sanders in the first round. I mean, it is a one quarterback league after all.
I’m hopeful this series can provide you with some insight on rookie rankings, start/sit decisions, real time trades and more!
As Ja’Marr Chase once said, no one cares about your fantasy team. While that may be true, I think it may also be fun to follow the league transactions knowing that you have nothing at stake. Bonus points if you can identify the league taco.
The Goal Line Grind 