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09-11-2010 As I post this on 9/11, I am reminded of the many freedoms we enjoy in this country. I also think about concepts that are so elegant at their core - things like democracy and capitalism. If I told you I could combine the open market and a level playing field, in both the economic and fantasy football sense, is that something you might be interested in? If so, the next time your league drafts, you must use an auction-style draft. You may be wondering how an auction draft differs from the typical "snake" draft. This is a common question, as ESPN, Yahoo, and the internet as a whole have very little information dedicated to this topic. Probably less than 1% of the draft strategy articles that pop up over the late summer months deal with auction strategy. Everyone is familiar with the draft process in a snake draft. You have your draft position, and that's that. Picks wind from first to last position, then last to first. If you have one of those slots on the end, you can make a sandwich or take a catnap in between selections. Boooorrr-rrring! Also, in a snake draft, if you're stuck at the end of the first round, you cannot get an elite player (at least one deemed elite by preseason rankings). In an auction draft, every owner has a shot at every player. That's the ultimate in fairness! Every owner starts with an identical draft budget - typically $200 - and the draft order is really just an order for nominating the player up for bids. After the draft, there are no dollar amounts assigned to players. If you have money left over, it disappears. Any players undrafted go into the free agent pool. In other words, after the draft, game play is identical to what you're used to in the snake draft. So how do you ace your auction draft? I'm going to attempt to break down different phases of an auction draft, and hopefully by the time next year rolls around you'll be able to convince your league owners to step into this brave new world of drafting. At the bottom of this page, I will post results from the draft I recently (9-8-10) participated in. Since personal draft commentary is often boring and hard to follow anyway, I will also post some of my thoughts on this particular draft, but after the draft results. For now I'll just throw you one tidbit to keep you reading: I landed both Chris Johnson and Ray Rice without any trickery. No trading draft picks, no keepers, nothing up my sleeve - I simply manned up and bought them both. Can anyone who participated in a snake draft say that? Didn't think so. Pre-draft: Research Time At this point, of course you should be looking at the normal stuff - your league scoring, league rosters, NFL depth charts - to get a feel for the players that might have more or less value in your league compared to the average league. But instead of just ranking players, you'll want to start thinking about your budget and draft strategy. The strategy in an auction league is much more advanced. Think about allocating a certain percentage of your budget to each position. Think about how deep of a bench you would like. "Stars and Scrubs" is one popular theory of auction drafting where you're free to blow a bunch of your money on stars and then fill in the remainder with low-cost talent. Other owners like to have a more balanced roster and a higher quality bench. It is almost essential while doing your research to target some low-cost guys with high potential. Don't I mean "sleepers"? Yes. And no. There is a growing trend to kill off the use of the term "sleeper," and I'm all for it. Let's call these guys what they are. Jermichael Finley lost his "sleeper" status early during the rankings season. He's expected to do big things this year, and ended up around the 3rd-5th highest rated TE. Dexter McCluster: sleeper, or "guy who has an unpredictable value to everyone in the world, including the KC coaching staff"? Kareem Huggins: sleeper, or "guy who will likely get a break due to either ineffectiveness or injury to Cadillac Williams"? You get the idea. Anyway, sleepers are a thing of the past. We just have players you can jump on for cheap or in the late rounds of your draft because they have various reasons for their upside potential. My point is, identify several of these people and thank me later. And don't forget to target stars you feel are undervalued in their pre-draft rankings. Maybe the most important piece of advice: Be at the draft! Give a quick glance at the rosters below, look for the worst teams, and those are the ones who didn't show up and were auto-drafted instead. Balls Deep, JD Bench Warmers, and The Southern Dandies all missed the whole thing. balls showed up half-way through. These teams are not going to be contenders for anything other than the cellar. Balls! The last thing I'll say at this point is to take part in a couple mock drafts. You'll get a feel for the pace and flow, and you'll be able to employ a certain draft strategy and see how your roster stacks up to the other rosters in the draft. The Kickoff: Pass or Play Oh, and after all that planning, remember to be flexible. The beginning of the draft usually features the biggest names getting nominated early. You will quickly be able to identify how high players are selling for compared to their pre-draft values. This may influence your decision to go Stars and Scrubs versus a more balanced attack. Funny things happen during the early stages of an auction draft. Undoubtedly, you will get no further than the middle or end of your draft and easily start identifying players who were bargains or were severely overpaid for. (I'll list a couple in my commentary at the bottom.) This is what happens when owners are trying to get a feel for each other. Not too far into the draft, you will notice some owners' budgets dwindling while other owners have picked up one or zero players. This means you are nearing one of my favorite auction draft moments.... THE FREAK OUT!!! The freak out happens to everyone in an auction draft. If not, one of the following things is happening: A) You're a liar. B) You don't care how your draft is going. C) You are drunk or high. D) You are the most confident man in the world, and certain your team will dominate. People in category D, see category A. And group C, you're just a fun subsection of group B. The freak out is awesome. It comes in two forms, depending on how you've handled the first 20-30 nominations. "I'm broke!" This is more likely to happen when you've employed the Stars and Scrubs theory. Example scenario: You have four players purchased, around 12 roster spots left to fill, and only about $53 to make that happen. If this is the case, don't freak out! Rely on your training, son. Remember all that research you did to find the men who will not be called sleepers? Start targeting some of those guys. Maybe pick up a couple more decent players and then sit back for the scrubs. In any case, you have a formidable core that will have your opponents shaking in their booties when they face you. Again, who wants to see my freight train coming at them with both Chris Johnson and Ray Rice as co-conductors? No one, that's who. You may have to camp out and let a few players go by, but use this time to mock other owners in the chat room, especially as they are trying to manage their own freak out. Mocking is so money during a draft. "I have no stars!" This is the freak out I try to avoid. An example would be if you don't have an RB yet and all that's left on the board are 2nd tier and time-share guys. You should be looking forward, but all you can do is look at what players sold for, wishing you would have just stepped up and bought one or two of them so you could have some exciting firepower on your team. At this point, you have to use that big bank to bully some folks off their mid-round selections, forget about the fact that you're paying as much for a lesser quality player than someone did for a star earlier, and do the best you can. balls did a decent job employing this strategy. You'll see that he had zero players through the first 52 picks, then busted loose and snagged 11 of the next 22 nominated. He overpaid (relative to what better players had sold for earlier) for guys like Philip Rivers and Jerome Harrison and Michael Crabtree, but still filled out a decent, yet unspectacular, roster. (Unless I didn't do my research and our league heavily favors tight ends...) In any case, I love love love the Freak Out. You can't blame anyone but yourself. You didn't get screwed by the draft order. None of this "There was a run on quarterbacks!" No one selected the guy you were going to pick right before your turn. None of that happens in an auction draft. It was your money, you had the same opportunities as everyone else, and you spent it how you spent it. Or didn't. It's a beautiful thing. The Lull: Filling out your roster This isn't an exciting stages, but is still important. It's when all the top talent is gone and you're searching for guys who might be a little undervalued, underpriced, or can be had a little cheaper because some fool owners have spent all their money on Chris Johnson and Ray Rice. Some of the owners who aimed for a more balanced attack will have a field day here, picking up solid performers in the $5-15 price range. (See: Portis, Winslow, Matt Ryan, Lee Evans, etc.) The End: Dollar Dance Except for a few teams who still have huge bankrolls (who obviously never watched Brewster's Millions), most owners are going to fill in the remaining four to seven spots on their roster with player who are $1 or $2. In fact, owners willing to throw around $2 or $3 (gasp!) are considered big spenders. Just look for guys with some upside at this point, and don't forget to pick up a defense and kicker! Draft Results - as you may have guessed, my squad is The Fantasy Factory:      *Sorry, Yahoo crunched some of the bid amounts on a couple teams. Notes: You'll see that it's a 14-team league. We have a 0.5 PPR, which influenced some of the WR and TE values. From reading above, it's obvious that I was very pleased to land Rice and Chris Johnson. Johnson had been going much higher in mock drafts, even some with 12 teams. I had no plans to draft/purchase him, but thought he was a steal right off the bat. I had Rice targeted (especially in a PPR league), and once the precedent had been set with RB values, I felt he was cheap as well. Thus, my nod to flexibility. I intended on allocating most of my budget to RBs, although some experts are turning their nose at focusing on RBs this year. But I thought I would be able to pick up more mid-range WRs in the $8-14 range. Guys like Welker, Garcon, S Moss, Ward, S Smith (NY), but after the big WRs went off the board, a lot of the 2nd/3rd tier guys stayed relatively high-priced. Bargains: Tim Hightower ($7 - by the time he was nominated, I was tapped out), Portis ($10), Flacco ($11), Big Ben ($2), Laurent Robinson ($1) and many elite WRs like Calvin Johnson ($30) - evident as the remaining wideout prices remained high. Overpriced: Favre ($17), Crabtree ($21), Harrison ($27), Wells ($35), Best is shaky at $30, Keading ($10 because of Balls Deep auto-drafting and not changing his pre-draft values), Berrian ($10 - I didn't want to do it, but he was the best semi-quality WR left and I threw the rest of my shekels at him). Crazy auto-draft will also take three (or possibly more) kickers for you. Like I said, best be present at the draft. And finally, my own Freak Out. It happened early, right after purchasing Romo. First off, I don't like the Cowboys, but I was looking at the remaining QBs and saw after him there were only mid-range guys like Schaub, Cutler, Flacco, Ryan, Rivers, etc. left. I didn't want those guys! I wanted someone with a ton of legit targets, and I talked myself into the run game in Dallas being questionable at the goal line (if, let's say, Barber gets hurt), so I got into a mini-bidding war on him. You'll see at this point that I had $55 left to fill 14 roster spots. That's a tigher budget than I wanted to have to fill out the entirety of my starting WRs, TE, and flex position, but I think I ended up doing pretty well. Landed Moss and Ward, solid yet unspectacular. I scored with Shiancoe, who I have in another league as well. touchgoal did the ultimate Stars and Scrubs. Ditka 4 Mayor and Morganisms were great bargain hunters, and I especially like the drafts both of them had. Have fun! -T |
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