Despite the countless hours of consuming online fantasy football auction content, formulating my own painstakingly researched positional tier rankings, and finally hammering everything home by writing a 5,000-word article condensing everything I learned, I still felt as green as ever during my first auction last week.
Even though I might have been the best prepared, the second the auction started, I felt as though I was thrown into the deep end. After experiencing my first fantasy football auction, one thing is certain: I will never snake draft again.
When the dust settled, the dollars spent, I was immensely pleased with how my team turned out. That being said, I was freaking out for most of the draft. It took time for me to settle, and there’s a heap of advice and recommendations I wish I could go back and tell myself before the auction started.
Like, for example, to not worry about the auction taking six hours. The reality was the whole event barely took two, way more comparable in length to snake than people realize!
Unfortunately, I can’t help myself anymore, but maybe I can help you. Using my first auction as our case study, my goal for this article is to provide some general takeaways, lessons learned, and things to look out for to help you crush your next auction draft. Let’s go.
Nail Down the Basics
This is pretty generic fantasy football draft advice, yet it somehow evaded me throughout my preparation process. It all starts with knowing what platform you’re drafting on, which for me was ESPN. I’ve only ever played on ESPN during my 12-year fantasy career, but this year, I never once looked at their rankings or Dollar Values during my prep for one main reason: the website is responsible for virtually none of the auction discourse online. If you look up ‘ESPN Dollar Value Rankings,’ the first result is an article over five years old.
Instead, I entrusted other websites like FantasyPros, which offered a wide range of up-to-date auction content as well as Dollar Value tier rankings that I generally thought were more accurate. Even though I entered the auction with a physical sheet of my values and tiers, Fantayspros tiers and rankings acted as my backbone. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize until after that I had missed out on understanding a crucial variable of the auction equation. This was best exemplified when Rhamdonre Stevenson was the 10th player nominated.
Context: three nominations earlier, James Cook went for $30, the exact value FantasyPros assigned him. Rhamondre then goes up; I first check my rankings and Dollar Values and see Stevenson and Cook in the same tier. Considering Cook just went for $30, I decided in the moment my number for the Pats back was ~$20.
I immediately put $10 on Stevenson, expecting to gauge interest and bid accordingly. Well, nobody bid because ESPN gave the Patriots back a projected value of $8. The room erupted with laughter since I had started the bidding higher than ESPN projected him to go for. Someone else went $11, and I let him go cause after only ten nominations, I didn’t want to commit.
The moment I saw Stevenson’s ESPN projected value, I realized I missed out on identifying dozens of players whose ESPN values greatly differed from mine. Most of the people in your draft room will rely on Dollar Values given to them by the site, which is something you can take advantage of. Even if you don’t use them for your own rankings, it is paramount that you have a sense of how the website you’re drafting values players.
Thinking Critically About Your Roster Spots and Budget
My next piece of advice falls into the same bucket of ‘duhhh,’ and it’s knowing your roster structure and league settings. Yes, this is general fantasy 101, but in auction, you need to be rigorously thorough in this department.
My home league is a great example of how your format will impact your draft strategy. Our league is PPR 2RB, 3WR, and Flex, so naturally, wide receivers get boosted up in this format, and you should be aiming to start four to give yourself a true advantage. I went into the draft knowing I should target as many values at the position as I could. Zooming in even further, understand how a player’s value can drastically change across different scoring.
Alvin Kamara is a classic example of a player I’m snatching in PPR and fading in outside of it. Kamara has almost 0 touchdown equity but figures to be a lock for six catches for 40 yards a week. Add a modest 30-yard rushing per game in a backfield he has all to himself, and you get a 13-points-per-game floor, good enough for RB18 in 2023. People forget Kamara was 5th in points per game basis last year, now going outside the top 15. It’s not just those starting spots we need to pay attention to, but also the number of bench spots.
This year, my league voted to cut down the bench from eight to six players. This might not seem like much, but it means the waiver wire is 20 players deeper. I prefer deep benches and the ability to stash players, but was intrigued by the strategy of having fewer spots. Going into the draft, I developed a unique strategy that I believed would give my bench an advantage over my opponents.
According to Fantasy Pro, 70% of players drafted in the last three rounds of fantasy drafts end up on the waivers by Week 3. Yes, I know this is snake stat, but the lesson is there: a majority of players going for the smallest draft unit end up on the waiver wire, especially when your benches are small.
Operating under this pretense, I went into the draft knowing I would 1) avoid taking a backup quarterback and tight-end to preserve roster spots for high-upside RBs and WRs too good to ever reach the waiver wire and 2) avoid $1 players who are more likely than not getting dropped after a few weeks, at all costs. If there’s a player you really want that might go for a $1, be aggressive in securing them.
After the auction concluded, I believe my hypothesis was proven correct. Take a look at some players that went for $1:
QB Kirk Cousins
QB Brock Purdy
RB Braelon Allen
RB Eric Gray
RB Antonio Gibson
WR Khalil Shakir
WR Brandin Cooks
Versus players who went for $2:
QB Jordan Love
QB Kyler Murray
RB Austin Ekeler
RB Zach Moss
RB Tajae Spears
WR Ladd Mconkey
WR Deandre Hopkins
WR Tyler Lockett
For me, there’s a clear difference in the quality of players in these two buckets. And the crazy part is some teams ended up with 3-5 $1 players, which could have amounted to multiple exponentially more valuable players. How? Because the trend continues with $3 and $4 players.
Forfeiting a few dollars in the starting lineup allowed me to grab real quality on my bench, best exemplified in my wide receiver six, Christian Watson ($5), and wide receiver seven, Xavier Worthy ($5). Most teams have 2-4 wide receivers cheaper than my two cheapest. While a majority of these guys will get dropped, I have two high-upside guys I know will never touch waivers.
While I would recommend this bold strategy for a shorter bench, I would advise the opposite if your bench is abnormally long! In these leagues, your waiver wire will be a wasteland; therefore, acquiring low-capital players who can sit and suddenly become valuable is the play. What’s important is knowing this information beforehand.
Read the (Scoring) Fine Print
I mentioned PPR, but what about other irregular scoring in your home league? Do you know how many points for a passing touchdown, or if there are bonuses for 100 yards? Knowing this information can give you a significant advantage against your opponents on auction day. Here’s an example, my home league has bonus points for kick and punt return yards, which has had little to no impact in the past.
On occasion, a forward-thinking manager has recognized this and exploited it in a pinch at wide receiver three, but we’ve yet to see someone gain a true Taysom Hill-like game-breaking positional advantage because of this scoring mechanic. But with the new kickoff rules, this could be that year.
One manager in our league noticed before the draft that WR Rashid Shaheed and WR Marvin Mims Jr. were both projected to finish the season as top 15 wide receivers. Shoutout to ESPN, who tailors its season-long projections to your specific league scoring. This makes 0 sense until you remember our unique scoring; ESPN thinks these two players have the chance to break our scoring system because of kick and punt return yards.
I think it’s safe to say no one else noticed this because the same manager got both guys for $5 a piece as his wide receiver, five and six. If you’re drafting on ESPN, take advantage of this feature to see if the algorithm identifies any odd-ball projections you can capitalize on.
Attacking Value at QBs and TEs
The more I researched auction, the more I realized how different a game you’re playing at the quarterback at tight end positions. In my 12-year snake career, I have not once committed to taking that top quarterback or tight-end in the first three rounds. I fundamentally can’t do it.
When you have to decide between Josh Allen and an ascending young superstar like Marvin Harrison Jr., Devon Achane, or Nico Collins, I’ll take the latter every time. But aha, this isn’t snake. In auction, you never really have to weigh these players against each other.
I looked at the values of guys who usually go in the Josh Allen (ADP 29) range according to ESPN; $24 Michael Pittman (ADP 29), $34 Davante Adams (ADP 26), $38 Achane (ADP 33), $30 Cook (ADP 32). At this point, Jalen Hurts had gone for $20 and Joe Burrow for $12. I didn’t like the Burrow value, but if the top-market guys were only going for $20, I wanted that advantage considering the value. So, when Allen was nominated, I won him for only $16.
For context, other players that went in the $16-$18 range included Zay Flowers (ADP 64), Stefon Diggs (ADP 34), Joe Mixon (ADP 31), Deebo (ADP 47), Kenneth Walker III (ADP 47) and Terry McLaurin (ADP 91).
I have never once owned Josh Allen in fantasy, yet in my first year of auction I felt like his Dollar Value was far more justifiable than five years of ADP as a top two fantasy quarterback. The same phenomenon applies to tight ends. I knew going into the draft I was targeting two tiers of players, one that consisted of Mark Andrews (ADP 45) and Trey McBride (ADP 53) and another of Dalton Kincaid (ADP 62) and George Kittle (ADP 55).
Notice how I included the ADPs and how pretty much all these players are going in a two-round range. Therefore, if you want a player in this tier, there’s a 14-minute window in the snake draft where you have to make that decision. That is not the case in auction, which makes attacking the position far more fun and a game of patience.
While only 14 minutes will elapse before you hear the first and last of those four tight ends, the span was two hours in the auction. Kincaid and McBride were nominated in the 70s and Kittle in the 110s. Andrews is the only player that appears earlier than he does in snake (he was nominated 30th), so I used his pricing as my measuring stick.
Because the other players were nominated so late and had less money on the board, they were bought for great value. I have a hard time picking between Kincaid ($5), Kyle Pitts ($5), Kittle ($2), and Dallas Goedert ($1) for the best tight-end value, especially considering Travis Kelce went for $30.
Like snake drafts, managers are rewarded in value the longer they wait in the draft, but unlike in snake, the value can still be those top-tier guys in the auction. Instead of being forced to make a quick decision on an exciting tier of quarterbacks or tight ends, the auction draft comes at a far slower pace, allowing you to weigh the value of every player with far more data points.
You Need a Par Sheet
Every veteran of the format that shaped my understanding admitted the auction itself was a frightening animal that would make you very uncomfortable. However, these experts also promised and even suggested measures managers could take to alleviate some of this discomfort. The best of these for me was the Par Sheet.
Yes, a Par Sheet only captures a snapshot of one auction Plan, but that doesn’t mean you can’t adjust your target prices as your strategy develops. The auction happens at a nauseatingly fast pace, especially the early rounds; the Par Sheet will keep you judicious and grounded in your plan while giving you the flexibility to pivot off your initial budget.
A must-have for veterans and first-timers alike, the Par Sheet should act as a live document - one I annotated and adjusted as I won players - that helped you easily visualize every spot on my roster. Emphasis on every spot.
Without a Par Sheet, it’s hard to visualize how much you want to spend on, say, your wide receiver four, or, say, your running back three, and what about those last spots on your bench? It wasn’t a coincidence that I ended up with almost no $1 players; it’s because I planned it that way with my Par Sheet. Without the Par Sheet, naturally, you’re going to build your roster from the top down. I think this can be incredibly dangerous and will inherently mean you miss out on deals.
Auction drafts are all about making little adjustments to give yourself a marginal advantage. Eventually, they add up; coming into the auction with a Par Sheet will make you feel like you’re more on top of all 14 positions, as opposed to just thinking about your top positional players. Here’s an example: only one manager didn’t purchase a +$30 player as one of their first two buys. Taking another step back, all but one manager went +$30 with two of their first three purchases, and five went all three +$30. Take a second to process that.
I was the manager most reluctant to spend top dollar, and I also happened to be the last manager to buy their first player. And, as you can probably tell, it wasn’t my wide receiver or running back one. My Par Sheet told me to look for a $17 wide receiver four, so when Terry McLaurin looked to be going in that range, I was delighted that he was my first player. Many would be too scared to start their team with their wide receiver, but having a Par Sheet allows you to visualize your roster more holistically.
Early Spenders vs Patient Approach
I didn’t plan on being the last manager to get my first player, but I definitely did plan on being patient and avoiding the players going for top dollar. It’s crazy to think some teams had five players before I had one, but then again, this is an auction.
Aside from me, there were two other managers - we’ll call them X and Y - who were clearly using the strategy of patience. Team X and I did this very similarly, best exemplified in the fact that we won eight of the 11 players nominated between 40-51. I’m fascinated by the fact that we used this range to attack such similar areas of our roster.
Here are my picks:
40 Nico Collins Hou, WR $28
43 Marvin Harrison Jr. Ari, WR $34
44 Josh Allen Buf, QB, $16
46 Christian Watson GB, WR $5
And here is Team X:
45 Drake London Atl, WR $30
47 Chris Olave NO, WR $31
49 Tyjae Spears Ten, RB $3
51 Isiah Pacheco KC, RB $31
Interestingly, despite being the last two teams to win our first player, we were the first two to spend our last. We also had the least $1 players, with 60% budgeted wide receiver heavy builds. There is a clear strategy there, and ultimately, its success will depend on whether we hit on the players or not.
Attacking this early middle portion was the anomaly, as most managers spent big dollars on early nominations. Money quickly left the room, seeing a vast amount of bargains fly off the board nomination 90+, rewarding the manager who had saved their money.
Every manager will value a player differently, but for me, Puka Nacua for $40 (nomination 15), Mike Evans for $32 (nomination 27), and Drake London for $30 (nomination 45) were all inflated compared to Deebo for $16 (nomination 91), DJ Moore for $13 (nomination 101), and DeVonta Smith for $13 (nomination 95). For me, it comes down to how much you like these players, but if you’re willing to wait for this range of guys, they could be available at exceptional prices.
Closing Thoughts
In my initial article, I boldly claimed the reader should ‘Forget (Almost) Everything You Know About Snake.'’ I couldn’t have been more wrong. While we’ve learned auctions differ in so many facets from snake drafts, they are still connected at the hip. Even though it was the first-ever auction for all ten managers in my home league, our 12 years of fantasy experience prepared us more than we realized. The truth is, if you love playing fantasy football, transitioning from snake to auction draft will feel less like a leap and more like a step.
