You Wanna Win Your Auction Draft? Here’s How…….
$3.
That’s all it cost me to pick up a top five player in one of my auction leagues last year. Back up running backs can cost more than $3. We had a defense go for $11 and a kicker go for $7, so how did I get my guy for $3? Planning, patience, scouting and luck.
Carson Palmer was injured most of 2014. He played in only six games in one of the toughest divisions in football. Living in Ohio, I’d seen Carson Palmer come so close but never achieve what was thought to be his ceiling. And he isn’t getting any younger.
There were signs of life though. In those six games, he posted the second highest QBR of his career. During the 2015 season he was surrounded with talent. Larry Fitzgerald, John Brown and Michael Floyd, and a stable of running backs equipped to both pound and catch out of the backfield. Upgraded the offensive line. There were many markers to present him as a “comeback kid” prior to the season.
So there I was, waiting on a QB, hoping no one nominates Palmer. Watching one by one as people took QBs like Stafford, Bridgewater, Bradford and Kaep, hoping to hit it big. I threw the occasional bid in to drive prices up but stayed away from any serious scratch. Once all the money was gone and most people had two QBs, I went for it. There was a quick $2 bid, but my $3 won the day and the rest is history.
Carson Palmer had the best season of his career. I had him in a few leagues and he was my highest value per pick/dollar spent. Obviously you can hit the lottery on Free Agents, but winning in the draft is paramount to success. There’s always a Carson Palmer out there. Are you ready to go get him?
That brings us to point number one: RESEARCH. You don’t have to spend hundreds of hours if you look in the right places. Use your time efficiently. The high dollar guys have a ton of media coverage. if Aaron Rodgers gets a hang nail, we will hear about it. Tom Brady stubs his toe at a red carpet event, it’s front page news. Don’t waste your time digging on these guys. For the most part, the writing’s on the wall.
Spend your time researching the mid-tier guys. You will have more of these guys on your roster (assuming you don’t go superstar superstar and a bunch of lottery tickets) than high dollar players. Odds are the guys below $5 are going to be similar enough in media exposure and their potential outcome as a big winner is more about an injury or something else unpredictable. You can find running backs with line upgrades(see Devonta Freeman), receivers that have a new role that fits their skill set (see Sterling Shepard) and TEs who have switched HOF caliber QBs, but their new one has a penchant for throwing to them (see Coby Fleener). You can also eliminate players based on downgrades to these ancillary items. I typically put around 20 mid to high level players on my “Do Not Draft” list every year. I’ll bring that list out next week.
The next step to success is KNOWING WHO YOU ARE DRAFTING WITH. Are you in a room filled with Browns jerseys? Then you should win every time! But, seriously, fans will place more value on players from their favorite team than you will, and you can leverage this fact to get a couple extra bucks out of them by bidding up. Look at past years’ drafts and you can determine trends. Does this guy love high end RBs? Does he lean towards a specific style of player? Is he biased towards a specific team? Know your room and you can more effectively judge the market for many players.
This is the part that makes it so difficult to utilize mock draft results in real life. You can obviously determine what this group of people with no real tangible interest is attempting to do with their line-ups, but unless you are entering a random league, the information is not always transferable. Know how serious the guys you are going against are, their biases and preferences, and any historical data you can find and you can use their strategies against them.
A simple rule that most people overlook is DON’T NOMINATE A PLAYER YOU WANT WHILE PEOPLE STILL HAVE THE BUCKS TO OUTBID YOU! This is just asking for a bidding war. My first four to five nominations are always defenses and kickers. Good ones that I’d gladly take for the dollar I bid but I know I have no chance to get them. Get rid of as much competing money as you can so you have the upper hand on the players you actually want. Such a simple strategy that if employed correctly will win the draft for you (see $3 for Carson Palmer. I nominated QBs the two rounds before I got Carson).
Here’s the hardest thing to do: DON’T OVERSPEND!!!!! When you come into the draft you should have a rough estimate of what you are willing to pay for most players and that should slide a little depending on market volatility. Unless you really, really, really, REALLY want someone in particular, don’t step outside of that comfort zone. It can ruin your whole draft. For example, I was bidding someone up one year. I didn’t really want the guy and he had already passed the soft-cap I placed. It was a three-way race for a while, but then it was down to myself and the guy I shared the most trash talk with. I wasn’t going to let go easy. We went back and forth waiting for the “going once, going twice….” before throwing out another bid. I was having fun basically robbing this guy of money. The problem is, I went $1 too far and I “won” the player. I gave him a glance after we moved on to the next player and he was all smiles. He knew he got me, and he knew I knew it, too. After that, I stayed too tight, missed on a lot of players I shouldn’t have, ended up with $24 left over at the end and missed the playoffs by one game. Don’t be me! Have a “soft-cap” and a “hard-cap.” Soft cap moves with volatility, hard cap keeps you from making those mistakes.
Whether it’s an auction league or not, you should KNOW THE LEAGUE RULES!!!! Whether it’s roster size, free agent budget/waiver process, scoring system, payouts, cost for roster moves, etc., know what you are dealing with. Nothing more embarrassing than waiting a week after your rosters lock to try and replace some injured players and reaching out to your league commish to find out why it won’t work. Also, if you are in a PPR/0.5 PPR, standard scoring makes a big difference when weighting player values. Four points per passing TD and six points per passing TD is another scoring deviation I’ve seen win people their leagues. Make sure you are drafting correctly for the particular league you are in.
The last thing I’ll leave you with is a quality piece of advice from the movie Rounders. Matt Damon’s character, Mike McDermott, recites a famous quote about poker that I find holds true to an auction draft. “Listen, here’s the thing. If you can’t spot the sucker in your first half hour at the table, then you ARE the sucker.”
Use what I’ve given you, keep your fingers crossed, and DON’T BE THE SUCKER!
Feel free to reach out to me on the FANTASY LIFE APP or via Twitter @IHEARTCARAVANS with questions and comments. All stats and info from ESPN.
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