There has been a running joke in fantasy circles for years that dynasty managers are too ageist and just want to chase youth above all else. With this long running narrative, coupled with more players breaking out earlier in their NFL careers, I wanted to see if the market had adjusted and if the edge in prioritizing youth was now gone from a sharper dynasty market. To do this, I studied the last four year-to-year startup ADP changes for all players to see at what ages the value advantage a player has for being young fades, if players under that age are being appropriately valued, and if the market is being too slow to move off players once they pass the age cliff. I then looked at current dynasty startup ADP to see how the market is valuing these players in 2024.
The Dataset
The data for the study is all year-to-year dynasty startup ADP changes from 2020-2024. This is each player’s startup ADP in one offseason compared to their startup ADP in the following offseason. Each player’s production that season relative to their redraft ADP expectation was also studied to see if players at certain ages exceeded market expectations more than others. The main focus of this article is on dynasty value.
When does player age stop having a positive effect on value
To start, we will look at the data across all positions, then dive into a position by position breakdown.
To put some of these numbers in perspective, across all ages only 35% of players in the sample increased in ADP value from one offseason to the next. The dynasty market is a harsh one with recency bias negatively affecting players’ value and new players entering the league every year. Historically the only sure way to bet against this and consistently win more than you lose is to bet on youth. This may be an intuitive observation for most, but the age at which this advantage is lost and just how steep the dropoff is, is not.
Across all positions and players in the sample, more than 58% of players who entered the season at or below 23 years old increased in startup ADP by the next offseason. Again, very young players maintaining and increasing in value at a greater rate may be intuitive for most, but look at the difference between players who entered the season at or below 23 and those that entered the season at still just 24 years old. The number of players who increased in ADP by the next offseason went from 56% at 23 years old, all the way down to 38% for players who entered the season at age 24. This isn’t just an anomaly in the dataset either. This is across a four year sample and the decline continues linearly downward from there. This is a much larger dropoff and at a younger age than most would assume.
One note here, we are looking at up to age 28 because beyond that point the data gets quite noisy. The reason for this is two fold. One, the sample size becomes so small it is very susceptible to noise and two, the players at those ages mostly have lost so much value already that the changes to their values fluctuate more easily up and down. Players over the age of 28 are also far more susceptible to environmental changes as their value has long since been tied solely to what production they will provide this season. Even given all of these factors, the percentage of players over age 28 that gained in ADP was 31%, but again the data for this subset is noisy.
How player position changes the age-value graphs
We have now seen that over the average of all positions there is good value insulation and rate of value increase when a player enters the season at age 23 or younger. The data obviously smoothes out the curve when viewing the aggregate of all positions together, but what about each position individually?
Running Back
The main takeaway when looking at the chart for running backs is that it mirrors the all positions graph shape almost exactly other than at age 20 which is merely a function of the total sample size only being 3. It would make sense for the dynasty running back market to have followed the NFL market and to devalue the position as a whole, but at least as of yet that isn’t actually bearing out in the data.. It was actually quite shocking for me to see that running backs hold their value in such a similar fashion to other positions. The second takeaway here is that age 23 is still the cliff. If what you want is to maintain or increase in value you should be moving off of running backs after their age 23 season.
Wide Receiver
There is a little bit more to unpack with the wide receiver chart. The sample of 20 year olds can be somewhat dismissed as it was again small with only four, but it is worth noting that all three 20 year old RB’s lost dynasty value and three out of the four 20 year old WR’s went up in value. The very high rate of value increase carries into age 21 though with 75% of 21 year old wide receivers increasing in value. In addition to this, a full 58% of these increased in ADP by over a full round. They weren’t simply increasing in value at a high rate, they were also doing so with great magnitude. An important note to remember throughout this piece is that this is an increase in value from the players previous baseline we are looking at. It is easy to think that these players are already highly sought after, but their value increases regardless of where they were valued to begin with. This makes 21 year old wide receivers one of the best bets in all of dynasty.
The next two data points are somewhat correlated. We have had several higher profile 22 year old wide receivers fail to live up to expectation recently and the data shows how this has played out in dynasty value. Being young provides greater value insulation as well as greater value gains when production follows. There have just been too many 22 year olds recently that underperformed their value expectation and too few exceed expectations. This is shown clearly in the performance versus ADP expectation data.
| Age | Exceeded ADP expectation | Underperformed ADP |
| 20 | 75% | 0% |
| 21 | 41.67% | 29.17% |
| 22 | 23.33% | 36.67% |
| 23 | 41.18% | 32.35% |
Here performance over ADP expectation is defined as a positional finish at least ten spots higher than preseason redraft ADP or ten spots lower for underperforming players It is clear to see why 22 year old wide receivers in the sample have a dip in percent of players gaining in value. The way to view this is actually a positive for this subset though. Even with massive underperformance, 50% still increased in ADP value and only 30% of those that lost value did so by a full round or more. This is actually a somewhat rare proof of concept that these players can underperform and still beat the market with regards to dynasty value.
There is a rebound back up to a 58% increase in value with the 23 year old subset. When this is considered alongside the fact that 41% of 23 year old wide receivers exceeded ADP expectation, this is a very interesting group to acquire at cost. Here we have data backed proof, from both the ADP value side AND the exceeding production expectation side, that the second and third year breakout for wide receivers is both alive and well, and also still not being valued by the market as it should be. The earlier the players ADP, the more difficult it is for that player to gain in value. If the market had learned, and the edge in young players was gone, the 23 year old wide receivers ADP values entering the season would have been pushed up to a point that far fewer than 58% would have had the ability to increase in value. These factors put wide receivers that are 23 years old when entering the season right up there with 21 year old wide receivers as some of the best players to acquire in dynasty.
We again see the large drop off in percent of players gaining value at age 24. From there the trend is mostly the same. There is a slight bump at age 25 but the change is only 4%, not a statistically significant enough change to consider it a meaningful trend. The value dropoff for any position is staggering in both magnitude and the super young age it occurs, but the fact that over the last four years 63% of wide receivers who entered the season at age 24 lost value is one of the most shocking facts in the data. The market absolutely in no way assumes this or factors it into player value in startups or trades.
There are currently six wide receivers in the top 50 picks of dynasty startup ADP that will enter next season at age 24 and all of them can be traded for any number of 23 and under wide receivers who haven’t broken out yet with a plus on top or mid to early first round picks, and almost all of those managers you trade them to will think they are getting a young, value insulated asset when the data shows that is actually unlikely to be the case.
Tight Ends
With there being far fewer tight ends in the sample than wide receivers and running backs, and fewer entering the NFL at a super young age, we only have four in the sample under the age of 22. There are two ages for tight ends that are the most actionable from the data. 88% of tight ends that entered the season at age 22 increased in ADP value by the next offseason. Not a single one of these underperformed their redraft ADP expectation. As we saw with 23 year old wide receivers, this shows that from both angles they are being undervalued by the market. The earlier tight end breakouts of the 22 year olds are the most actionable, but it should also be noted that it is worthwhile to allow tight ends an extra year compared to other positions as most still break out at a later age and the value insulation extends to age 24 for tight ends.
Quarterbacks
Quarterbacks are seen as having a certain number of value insulated years to begin their careers given the investment teams make in them. While the data does confirm this up to age 23, what is most interesting is what happens at ages 24 and 25.
You do typically get two years of value insulation, unless there is a Bryce Young level of fall from grace, but just as we are seeing NFL teams do now, the market moves on quickly if a quarterback isn’t either producing for fantasy or playing well enough in real life to keep a starting job. Holding a quarterback into their age 24 season when they haven’t proven to be a real life star is a terrifying prospect given the amount of value it takes to roster most of them. At this point it is usually best to move these players into a proven veteran quarterback and a rookie pick or other young asset. In the 25-28 age range most of the quarterbacks who aren’t going to make it have been thinned out or relegated to backup duties and year-to-year value is tied strongly to performance and situation each year more than age. Because of this, and quarterbacks playing at a high level until more advanced ages, the age based value cliff beyond 24 does not hit until age 32.
Current startup ADP observations
- 11 out of the first 24 picks in current startup ADP are under 24 or rookie picks. Most of these players are already at peak value and either already broken out in the NFL or are the elite top incoming rookies
- 32% of all rookies and players under 24 going in the top 100 picks go in the first 24 picks
- There are 75 picks between 25 and 100 and only 23 rookies or players under 24 go in that range by ADP across all positions.
- Having nearly half of players drafted in the first two rounds being under 24 followed by more than 5 rounds where less than 25% of players are under 24 suggest the market is still only buying young players for the wrong reasons and not buying youth where it should
- Rounds 3-7 are very high value rounds of startups and the players taken in these rounds represent significant capital investment from their managers and yet the young players are still not being prioritized.
- The players in this range that are the most likely to increase in value, as well as the ones most likely to increase in value by the greatest amount, are still not being targeted aggressively enough in current dynasty startups. This further backs the research that these players are still being undervalued in 2024.
Overall takeaways
Age was obviously going to be a major factor here, but I expected the market to have narrowed the advantage of targeting young players. Instead the data clearly showed that dynasty managers are still not valuing players 23 and younger nearly enough and when they are, it’s mostly after they have already broken out and had their initial value spikes.
What is even better, is that managers are also too slow to move off of players and hold them for too long assuming they are still young enough to be value insulated. At every position acquiring a player young, rostering them and riding their value up through their age 23 season, then trading them away in the offseason before their age 24 season is still a winning strategy backed by the data in 2024.
