The first fantasy football (FF) league that I ever played in was an auction league. It has now been running for 12 years and we have our draft scheduled for Labor Day Weekend, like usual. Auction redrafts are so much fun and I highly recommend them! I am very thankful that I cut my teeth for a few years in such a league before eventually started playing dynasty.
Auctions Are All About Getting Your Guys And Not Holding The Bag
This translates very well to dynasty, in my opinion. Many analysts, maybe even most, will tell you that any player is worth drafting if the price is right. I could not possibly disagree more. Yes, there are values to be had and there are likely players you should take if the price is right. But I am a firm believer in avoiding certain players. The reasons I might put a guy in that category are undoubtedly flawed from time to time but avoiding landmines is almost as important in FF as hitting on the players you do take. This dynamic is never more clearly laid out than in an auction draft.
But You Need To Do Your Homework
I start with the known parameters in my league. Adjust accordingly if your league settings are different. That bears repeating. You need to adjust your auction cheatsheet according to your own league. Because auction drafts are a zero-sum game! There is a finite amount of bidding credits in play and every roster spot will be filled by the time the draft is done. Work backward from that number.
* 12-team league
* Nine starters (QB/RB/RB/WR/WR/TE/FLEX/KICKER/DEFENSE) and eight bench spots
* 17 players x 12 teams = 204 players to be drafted
* 200 auction credits per team x 12 teams = 2,400 credits to be spent during the draft (max)
Based on experience in this league, I can tell you that with those parameters the draft will breakdown as follows:
Note that these values are ~consistent from year to year regardless of the names involved
From here I did a bunch of spreadsheet data sorting. I started with Sleeper.com and selected for 0.5 PPR redraft ADP. I start a new column for auction values (AAV) and I erased the bottom 24 names from players 181-204 and assigned 24 kickers and defenses to those spots. This league requires you to roster both out of the draft. Some don’t. They will mostly go for just 1.0 auction credits (AAV) but some defenses and a couple of kickers will go as high as 3.0 or 4.0 AAV.
Then I like to go through the rest of the exercise by blacking out or hiding the columns that actually show the player’s names. Then I sort according to position and start assigning values based on the chart above. This will leave around 1,000 AAV to be assigned to the remaining 132 players. I try to be judicious about assigning these middle values but this is the area of the draft where there will be the most divergence from your plan and reality. This is where values will be found. A lot can change with these numbers. My next and final step is to break this new list into a (digital or paper) cheatsheet that I can use on draft day.
An Auction Draft Is Intense – Be Ready For It
There are major inflection points in an auction draft where the value dynamics change, the player tiers run out, and player nominations change. You can’t afford to blink, and you really don’t want to be left holding the bag on a player you don’t even want, so be cautious if you’re going to try and up bid players just to get the number higher. Here are several other auction pointers to consider:
* Early in the draft, nominate big-ticket players that you don’t want – get other drafters to spend their money
– Unless you draw the first or second nomination, in which case go for your very top player
– The first couple of players are often top tier players that go for less than what they would if they were nominated just a little bit later
– Drafters often get cold feet on those first couple of choices – discounts can be had there
* Adapt or Die
– Things will not go as planned. That is the only real thing you can plan on. That exercise I went through to list player AAVs was only meant to be a rough roadmap. You will need to be able to adjust on the fly.
– If top players are going for more than you anticipated on that list, be ready to gobble up big bargains later. Every extra AAV spent at the top is a number you have to take away somewhere else in your list. It is a zero-sum game. Guys you had already identified as values may be even bigger values than you already thought.
– If top players are going for less then you need to be buying them while you can, because those later discounts won’t be there. Build your team.
* Tiers dry up fast
– If there are only a couple of players left (looking at you Josh Jacobs and Miles Sanders), the price often skyrockets.
– Pay attention to other owners’ rosters. Are they fading RB? What is their max bid?
– You don’t get a bonus for having leftover AAV so spend it.
* Recognize the different phases of the auction draft
– Big money gets spent right away. But getting through 204 nominations and bidding wars takes a couple of hours at least. A lot of the big action happens right away.
– But then the slog that takes place after that can be exhausting, exhilarating, frustrating, tedious, and more. This is such a crucial period of time and you need to really be on your game. I consider this draft to be the most difficult and challenging of the year for me and I approach it like my own Super Bowl. I could hit my six-figure payday this year in other big national leagues and I would still be pissed off if I don’t win this one.
– The third and final phase may seem less important than the other two, but it is crucial to understand that at some point owners will start to be awarded the player they nominate and for just the 1.0 AAV minimum. And there are still great values to be had on the board. Take a look at your top 180 and realize the bottom 30 or so are going to go for 1.0 or 2.0 in these kinds of drafts.
– Look at your opponent’s budgets. You may want to nominate a player right out of the gate for 2.0 or 3.0 instead of just the 1.0 minimum so that your opponent is not capable of outbidding you. In the league I am describing the bidding is always top-heavy during the first phase. You can get league-winning players for 1.0 AAV here.
Here are a few players and where I project them to go within those middle-value ranges in this particular auction:
When I build my tiers (from this larger list), it is by position and price range and I have a column for “my guys” and one for “landmine avoids”. This is the way. Good luck in your auction drafts and good luck in 2021!
Thanks for reading! Feel free to reach out to me to chat about fantasy football on Twitter @Ship_Chaser and follow along with me on my journey as I chase six-figure paydays! Look for my new articles soon!
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