I like the challenge of trying different things and wondering whether it’s going to work or whether I’m going to fall flat on my face.
-- Johnny Depp

How many of you have ever done an auction draft? Heard of them sure, but have you done one? Maybe you’ve done them for years in fantasy baseball but never in fantasy football? Now is as good a time as any to embark on a new journey, a new direction, as you grow your love of fantasy football. This piece will by no means be the definitive article on auctions, but it will be a nice introduction for those of you who have never challenged yourself with this type of league. Hopefully it will also serve as a nice refresher course for those of you that have done auctions for years. You can teach an old dog new tricks.

LEAGUE RULES/FORMAT

There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult.
-- Warren Buffett

One of the most frustrating things I deal with, other than trying to decide which slippers go with my pajamas (I work from home), is why fantasy football has no standardized setup? One point for 10 yards, one point for 20 yards, one point for 25 yards. PPR or non-ppr. One point per reception for runners and wideouts, but 1.5 for tight ends. Four points for a touchdown or six. Bonus points for 100/300 yards etc. Fantasy football has an insane amount of rules that can cause your head to spin right off your neck. So for the sake of this article I’m going to simplify things. Here is the standard setup leagues should use (I’m the Oracle, so I know what I’m talking about). In essence, this should be the “standard” setup in fantasy football.

1 QB
2 RB
3 WR
1 TE
1 Flex (RB/WR/TE)
1 Kicker
1 Defense
Bench six players

Once we have the setup down, we can get to the amount of money we will have at auction to spend on players. Traditional leagues use one of two numbers - either $100 or $200. Your league can use either, but I would posit that the $200 setup is better. Why? It allows more flexibility in spending for the simple fact that you have twice as many units to throw about. That allows you more freedom, wiggle room, to spend on a player. If you have 16 players and $100 to spend that’s an average of $6.25 per player. Obviously if you have $200 to spend you can double that number to $12.50. It allows more freedom to spend. When you’re toward the end of the draft, your almost limited by the player you call out to round out your roster in $100 leagues whereas in $200 leagues you still might have a few dollars spend so that you can go that extra dollar if you really want a player. Personal preference of course, but I see no reason why using $200 as the amount to spend at the auction is a bad idea. Now on to the strategies you can employ. There are two main directions you can go in while constructing your team.

STARS AND SCRUBS

I can do whatever I want - I’m rich, I’m famous, and I’m bigger than you.
-- Don Johnson

Everyone wants Peyton Manning, Adrian Peterson, Dez Bryant and Jimmy Graham on their fantasy squad. In traditional snake drafts, it’s impossible to get all four on your team. In an auction you could get all four of these guys on your team. It would be costly no doubt, but you could do it. An approach that would accomplish this goal is called Stars and Scrubs. The approach is described as building your team around a handful of the best players in the game and then filling in around them with inexpensive players. You pay whatever it takes to get the best of the best, the guys you just have to have, and then hope that the guys you take late for a buck or two are able to break loose. Let’s follow through with our example. With $200 to spend, here are the cost of the players: Manning ($47), Peterson ($49), Bryant ($42) & Graham ($39). Those four players would cost $177.

That would leave you with $23 to spend on the other 12 roster spots (provided you have 16 like mentioned above). That leaves you roughly two dollars to spend on each of the remaining 12 roster spots. Would you feel comfortable with an average of $1.92 cents to spend on each remaining roster spot? Maybe you would, maybe you wouldn’t. Can this approach win? Absolutely it can. No doubt about it. However, there are two inherent risks involved: injuries and lack of blow up potential. It’s kind of like putting all your money in Apple or buying a mutual fund. In this situation you’re buying all Apple. What happens if the Apple CEO turns out to be a rapist? The Apple stock would tank, right? In fantasy football, what if your “CEO” comes down with an injury? Who do you turn to? Since you spent so much of your money on your board of directors, you’ve got less than ideal options to step up if an injury were to occur.

Second, you are completely dependent on those $2 players performing like $20 players. Players do this every year, some $2 players give $40 in value, but inherently this is obviously a risk since cheaper players are cheaper players for a reason: they aren’t as good or don’t have advantageous roles.

One other issue. When it comes to the end game, if you have little money left to spend, you’re at the mercy of the others in your league. Let’s say you want to roster Markus Wheaton for $2 so you yell out “$2.” What is someone else says $3? Are you really going to go to $4? More importantly, do you have enough funds to go to $4? Maybe, maybe not. Without enough funds to control the end game you’re somewhat at the mercy of others.

This is certainly the sexy way to approach a draft, and who wouldn’t feel good if they walked away from the draft with Manning, Peterson, Bryant and Graham?

BALANCED APPROACH

Beware the fury of a patient man.
-- John Dryden

This is the mutual fund approach. Instead of putting all your money in a stock or two, you decide to spread it out, to spread your risk. Think of it like this single guys. Saturday night at the bar. You’ve got a good buzz on. You’re on the prowl. Do you get target lock on one lady, the hottie at the end of the bar in the slinky dress, or do you make the rounds and talk to a few different ladies? Personally I float around. I take the temperature of the room. You never know if the hottie will like you, if she’s a prude, if she’s gonna get an emergency call from her friend who got drunk, fell and broke her ankle. Making contact with three, four, five ladies gives you a better chance of doing the horizontal boogie at the end of the night. I’ve said too much, I always do, and from this little digression you can easily discern that I’d rather go with the Balanced Approach over Stars and Scrubs (this is likely a better way to approach an auction if you’ve never done it before – spread the wealth). The Balanced Approach doesn’t mean you can’t spend $47 on Peyton Manning if you want him. You still can. However, instead of spending $49 on A.D. and $42 on Bryant maybe you drop $34 on Le’Veon Bell and $32 on Alshon Jeffery. Clearly those two players aren’t as good. But think things through. The Stars and Scrubs team had $23 to spend on the rest of their roster. If you drop $111 on those three players you still have $89 left to spend on your final 13 players or $6.8 per player. That’s more than three times as much as the other club. Stars and Scrubs can only go a couple of bucks on players. You can go well above that.

This plan also insulates you a bit from injury – at least a little bit. Your backups aren’t elite players (duh) but your depth players are more likely to be viable weekly starters if you’re spending $6 on them versus in the Stars and Scrubs approach that is basically going to limit you to $1 and $2 players on the bench that no one else wanted. Would you rather have a top heavy team or one that has strong talent throughout? You have to make that decision.

ASSIGNED VALUE DRAFTING

Everyone has a plan ‘til they get punched in the mouth.
-- Mike Tyson

You need to have a plan if you want to be successful in auctions. Moreover, you should actually have two plans since no draft is the same and it’s always possible that your initial plan won’t work. However, there’s a way you can feel pretty comfortable about a draft and that’s by using the Assigned Value Drafting method. This is particularly useful for folks doing an auction for the first time.

In this model, you assign each roster spot a dollar value. That value can be whatever you want. I’ll get back to that in a second. Let’s lay out the model first. Here’s a basic setup you could utilize if you had a 16 person roster with $200 to spend (obviously if you have $100 to spend you can just cut the numbers in half).

1 QB - $20
2 RB - $30, $30
3 WR - $30, $20, $10
1 TE - $10
1 Flex (RB/WR/TE) - $25
1 Kicker - $1
1 Defense - $2
Bench six players: $22 left to spend

You can switch up the dollar amounts any way you’d like. Take five dollars away from that top wide receiver and add it to the third one if you’d like (the WRs would then become $25, $20 and $15 slots). Take the five away from the wide receiver position completely and add it to the tight end so you can spend $15 on a tight end, leaving you to spend $55 on receivers (for that matter you can predetermine whatever values you would like to use for each position). You can amend this model to fit whatever plan you have. You can also easily modify it once the draft starts. If you planned to spend $20 on a QB and went to $25 to get your man then just take the $5 quickly away from another spot (maybe you just choose to spend $5 on your tight end as an example). This method helps you to stay on a budget without having to have spreadsheets and computers spitting numbers out at you continually as you try to figure out how much you have to spend. Again, this is extremely helpful to do if you’re a newbie to auctions.

DRAFT DAY TIPS

It is our attitude at the beginning of a difficult task which, more than anything else, will affect its successful outcome.
-- William James

Let’s get down to some of the in-draft issues that you need to be made aware of.

Don’t drink hooch. Can’t tell you how many folks I see downing Natty Light at drafts (I hang out with classy folks). Don’t be that guy. Don’t drink. Get blasted all you want after the draft while you hang with your homies talking about the draft, but don’t cloud your mind during the draft with intoxicants.

Pay attention. Don’t be on your cell phone setting up a tee time for golf tomorrow. Don’t be talking to your wife about who is going to take the kids to the park to play on the jungle gym later. Don’t get caught in small talk with your leaguemates. Focus on your job. Your job is to draft. Your job isn’t to make friends or have fun. You can do that after the draft.

Have one source. Obviously I’m going to recommend that you use the Fantasy Alarm Draft Guide. However, I’m not dense enough to think that you aren’t also going to check out other sources. At the same time I would strongly recommend you follow one source at the draft. If you’re flipping through three magazines and searching two websites while the draft is going on, you’re not paying enough attention to the draft. Stay focused. Have one source you trust. Auctions aren’t like snake drafts where you might have 10 minutes between picks. They are unpredictable. You have to be ready on every name that is nominated. You don’t have time to be distracted.

Know the value of all the players. When Aaron Rodgers is nominated it’s easy to know how much he will cost since he’s an elite player. However, how much should you be willing to spend on Eli Manning? By the time you rifle through your sources, he might have already been sold. Having an idea of what an average QB2 will cost will help you to have at least a ballpark idea of what you want to spend.

You can overspend, but within reason. Let’s say you’re willing to go to $38 on Julio Jones. Can you go to $39? Sure. $40? Probably. Once it starts to get $3 or more above your target it’s probably a good idea to back out. At the same time, if you need a WR1 and Jones is the last WR1 on your board then maybe you do spend a handful extra to get him. Ideally you’ll want to stick to your values as close as possible, but don’t be afraid to toss a couple extra dollars out there if you have to in order to get your guy.

Keep track of your funds. This is the biggest mistake newbies make. They end up overspending on players on player early, and by the time the end game comes around they are out of funds to compete. Keep a close eye on how much money you have left to spend and how many roster spots you need to fill. To help you with this it would be wise to use some form of the Assigned Value Drafting method that was listed above.

Try to have at least $2 for every player on your roster. Honestly this isn’t needed, may not even be smart, but it’s the way I like to play. I always like to be able to go that extra buck on end game players. If I only have $3 left for my last three spots I can only get three players no one else wants. If anyone is able to go to $2 I simply can’t bid on the player. If I have $6 left for three spots I can nominate three players at $2 a piece. Is someone going to be willing to go $3 for a player that’s left at that point?

Don’t be that guy. Who is that guy? He’s the guy who says things like “Peyton Manning for $1” or “Adrian Peterson for $2.” Believe me, there are more of these guys around than you believe (I know experts, guys that do this full-time, who do this. Why?). We all know that guys like this wont go for a dollar. Hell, saying Manning for $11 or A.D. for $12 is embarrassing enough, but at least it’s not $1 (like the idiots on The Price is Right who want to be the low bid and always go $1. Why can’t someone be creative and say $43 for once?).

Be unpredictable. Don’t always throw out for bidding players you want. Don’t always throw out players you don’t want. Don’t always up the bid by only a dollar, don’t be hesitant to do a “jump” bid. When someone says $1 the immediate reaction is to say $2. If you plan to spend up to $5 on the player why not immediately say $3 jumping over $2? If someone else goes to $4 you can still toss out the $5 bid that you were always willing to go to on the player.

Change up your nomination process. Building off the above idea to be unpredictable, don’t always just say Giovani Bernard and Vernon Davis early in a draft. It’s totally acceptable to toss out there Stevie Johnson or Heath Miller. In fact, nominating a lower level player early will often result in a bit of a stunned look from many as folks try to get their bearings. Maybe this can lead to you getting a solid player at a cheap price. Also, you can toss out a kicker for $1 early if you want. Is someone really going to bid $2 on a kicker as their first or second player?

Follow your opponents bidding style. Maybe the others in your draft aren’t as smart as you are. Maybe they are predictable. Maybe they only like East Coast players. Maybe they only like guys who are in their first or second year. Maybe they always toss the name out of player that they want and are relatively quiet whenever everyone else is nominating players.

Follow your opponent’s rosters. This is one of the biggest mistakes made at auctions. People get tunnel lock on their own roster and neglect to pay attention to what everyone else is doing. An example. Let’s say you’re in a 12 team league and 11 of the clubs, all but you, have rostered a tight end. Your natural inclination is to say – I gotta get my TE so I’m gonna nominate one right now. Why? Do you really think someone is planning to spend top dollar to get a backup tight end? That’s unlikely. Why not try and build the rest of your roster up knowing you can pretty safely wait on that tight end? Remember it’s an auction. Even if someone else nominates the tight end you want, you’re free to spend whatever you want to get him on your roster. Another way to look at this - let’s say you already have your starting TE and QB but you notice six teams still don’t have a QB and eight are without a tight end. What you should then do is start nominating all the quarterbacks and tight ends. This will cause others to spend their money on players you’re not really interested in anyway.

Push rookies early. Folks love their rookies in fantasy sports. In an auction, this mindset can often lead to intense bidding wars for guys who have yet to play an official NFL snap. There’s someone, maybe a couple of folks, in every draft that are usually willing to drastically overpay for potential. It can’t hurt to toss those names out early and watch people spend their funds to acquire players that are likely to be overbid.

Don’t be afraid to bid early. Sometimes people wade slowly into drafts, and the result is that you can actually get a good bargain early. Maybe the market hasn’t been set up running backs yet so when Marshawn Lynch comes up, you grab him for $41. Ten picks later, Zac Stacy comes up for bid and maybe he goes for $45. Most would take both runners in the top-20 picks of a snake draft, and you just saved $4 by being aggressive early with Lynch. This can also work in the other direction though where Lynch goes for $45 and Stacy $41. You never really know which is why it’s so important for you to know the value of players, what you are willing to spend on players, and how to judge the ebb and flow of how the draft in front of you is progressing. The bottom line is if your guy comes up don’t be afraid to bid. Also, don’t be afraid to spend early if the price is right.

Don’t dwell on mistakes. We all screw up (you have no idea how many times I wake up Saturday morning thinking to myself... did I really do that last night?). You can worry about your mistakes after the draft. Brush them aside. You can use them as a learning experience after the draft. Stay focused during the draft. You’ve got a job to do.

So give an auction draft a try if you’ve never done it before. If it’s already your thing, keep on keeping on.

By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.
-- Benjamin Franklin