Late-Round Perspectives: Ryan McDowell

JJ Zachariason (0:00)

Ryan McDowell is a dynasty writer, commissioner and podcaster who co-owns Dynasty League Football. He's the architect of the productive struggle strategy in dynasty, he's a long-time teacher, he's a dad, and he loves the University of Kentucky. These are his late-round perspectives. Are you of the belief that the off-season is better than in-season as a fantasy analyst?

Ryan McDowell (0:35)

Yeah, I think so. I think so, I mean, you get the fun stuff, right? You get the free agency and the draft, but you also just get to relax a little bit more than the in-season grind. So yeah, for Dynasty guys, I think the off-season is where it's at.

JJ Zachariason (0:52)

It's not as monotonous at least, you know? I mean, this is my first perspectives episode of the off-season, so I haven't done a perspectives episode for a while now. And of course, got to bring on my Dynasty 101 here and Ryan McDowell. But yeah, man, it's such a monotonous grind in season. I'm not complaining about it. I don't think anyone's complaining about it, but it's nice to get a little creative and do stuff that you don't get to do all the time. We have this like two to three month period where we're not only like fixing our Dynasty rosters and stuff, which is fun, but also the scouting stuff, the prospecting stuff is a lot of fun too.

Ryan McDowell (1:33)

Yeah, for sure. My wife says, really when we have a busy schedule, my wife says every day has a name, right? And that's what it's like in the regular season. Every day has a name. It's you're watching games or it's waiver day or it's podcast day or whatever it might be. So yeah, it's just nice to get out of that. The prospect stuff, as you said, brings a whole sense of newness to the hobby, to the game. So a good little refresh there.

JJ Zachariason (2:07)

Yeah, no doubt. No doubt. So look, I like to open these shows up by just talking about you, the person, the analyst, but your journey and how you got to... I mean, you've been around as long as I've been around with this stuff. I think you've been around longer than I've been around, you know, with the fantasy football stuff. So tell people, you know, what you're all about, how you got the DLF, all that good stuff.

Ryan McDowell (2:32)

Sure, sure. So let's see, I started playing Dynasty, really started playing fantasy in like 05, 04, 05, something like that. A work buddy got me into it. I'd never played fantasy. I played Dynasty. A Dynasty League was my first league. So I really kind of got baptism by fire a little bit and fell in love with it immediately. You know, for me, it was just really, I was like aggressively active in everything I did. You know, whether it was just, of course, it started out in this one league that my friend got me in. I was sending trade offers all the time. Like, maybe it was more annoyingly active than aggressively active, or maybe more from one to the other. But I just kind of felt like I climbed the ladder from there. And, you know, I found, I mean, again, we're talking early 2000s. I found message boards. I found the football guys' message board. Basically became one of the more active members there, and having conversations and building relationships, and doing that kind of stuff every day. I mean, throughout the offseason and everything. And then Twitter was really the game changer for me. It just kind of carried that community building idea over to Twitter. And eventually that led to the guys at DLF reaching out and asking if I was interested in writing. I had done a little bit of writing. I had done some stuff for Sigmund Blum over at Football Guys. Just, I mean, like not even paid content. Just very, very low level stuff. So I don't know. I wouldn't, I didn't feel like it was something I was seeking out necessarily as far as getting into the content creation space. I was, I was actually, it feels funny to think about this now.

I was actually nervous that I would be able to come up with enough ideas to write about.

JJ Zachariason (4:32)

Yeah.

Ryan McDowell (4:32)

And like, Here you are 15 years later. Yeah, exactly. Is there enough content or am I creative enough to think of something to even write about? And you know, that wasn't really a problem once I got started. Yeah, that was 2012 when they brought me on.

So and have been there ever since. Kind of climbed the ladder there was again, super active. That was, I was one of the first paid writers that DLF brought on. That was right about the time that they moved to a subscription model like so many other sites did, you know, 10 or 12 years ago. So yeah, you know, it kind of just fell in my lap. But at the same time, I worked hard for it. Right? Like, I mean, I felt like I was always doing fantasy dynasty stuff for the past decade plus. Yeah.