Sometimes all you need is a little push and you are over the edge. Freefalling into a pit of fantasy despair due to your poor emotional choices on draft day. Below are a list of auction draft strategies that can get you in trouble if relied on too adamantly.
Overpaid stars and washed up scrubs:
Last year, fellow writer Nick Beaulieu touched on this strategy eloquently in his piece The Broto fantasy auction draft guide. The essence of the procedure is to nail down your top three dogs early on without any hesitation, in the hopes they will stay healthy throughout the season and one of them will have an MVP-level performance that can carry you into the playoffs.
If executed correctly, teams with three stars and solid players elsewhere are bound for success. This strategy, however, can be the death of a team before the season even starts if too much is spent on the stars. This is especially true when you don’t do previous research into late-round picks for the upcoming season. If your “scrubs,” aka anyone but your stars, wind up being players with notorious names that are not set up for success in the upcoming season, you are asking to fall behind quickly.
If you choose to test the waters, you’ll need a foolproof plan for drafting the back end of your roster after your favorite three stars are off the board. Looking at bye weeks for your top three will be critical, as you will not have any room for error during the season once your thoroughbreds are off and running. Bye weeks will need to be staggered for your top horses, with a calculated plan put together for how you will attack the waiver wire daily. Essentially, everyone you draft after your top three will be expendable, since you are paying next to nothing for all of them. If you are allowed a waiver wire budget of $100, you can attempt use that budget on your fourth star, based on who you fall in love with following Week 1. There is often a waiver wire darling following Week 1 and this approach has a bit of a nothing-to-lose mentality to it.
Visions of snagging Christian McCaffrey, Dalvin Cook and Alvin Kamara dance in fantasy owners’ heads as they envision cornering the market on running backs while sealing the deal on their FLEX position all season long. The injury-risk and need to play the waive wire adequately, however, make this a stress-filled option.
The one-up battle:
A common auction draft mistake is made when one gets into a bidding war with a rival fantasy manager over one player. The player’s name and draft position often become irrelevant and the emotional side takes over, with the managers hyper focused on one-upping each other just to gloat in the group chat.
With this strategy, your plan is to pay whatever it takes to win the bidding battle to prove that you were not going to be the one that backed down. Here’s a bit of advice: Know when to get out.
It can be soul crushing watching the player you targeted be stolen away by your nemesis but pay attention to both your budget and you opponents budgets the entire time. Allowing your opposition to pluck Kamara off the board at $60 could allow you to double up on Mahomes and Ekeler later on. Proving a point to your friend on draft day will be all but forgotten when one of you is holding up the trophy at the end of the 2021 fantasy season.
Bidding wars are often unavoidable when drafting out of desperation, so you’ll need to pay close attention to your tiers when drafting. Know when to spend on a critical player and when the well has run dry on a particular position. Drafting a fantasy roster can require a delicate balance of allowance, and if you get caught up bidding on one player just to spite another fantasy manager, your roster’s equilibrium can be thrown off and months of research can be wasted on one selection.
Waiting too long:
Waiting too long to strike can put your roster at risk of lacking the star power you’ll need to overcome tough matchups. If you spend your time saving money early on, make sure to keep track of which players are landing on which rosters so you are not left in the dust as your competition stacks chips.
Waiting can be advantageous but, in auction drafts, the bottom falls out quickly. Dictating the pace of the draft and having the most money gives you a sense of power only if you’ve specifically targeted certain players in the middle of the pack that you think will have an above-average season in 2021. A tip for executing the wait and see approach is to bid on players but get out early, making sure your opposition is drafting the players you’re uninterested in at a higher price. Make sure to have a batch of players circled in the middle rounds, and be ready to splurge on those players to fill your roster rather quickly.
The problem with this strategy, however, is that it leaves much room for error when selecting the critical players you’ll need to lead you to fantasy glory. The MVP-caliber players will all be gone at this point to the big money bidders.
Position chasing:
When auction drafting, you’ll notice there will be a ‘run’ on positions as you go along. One quarterback will come off the board and the entire draft room panics, scooping quarterbacks left and right. Before you know it, you are overspending for Derek Carr or you are adjusting your draft strategy and reaching for QBs that would have fallen if you trusted the process. You’ll need to be able to read the room but don’t get knocked off your game just because the person drafting next to you picked up three QBs early (let that be their problem). Have a system in place and pay attention to your tiers, that way you can be out in front of a run on a particular position and know when to select your guy.
Dumpster diving:
Many times, you’ll see a big-name player be put up for bid and nobody will bite. The seconds on the clock tick down and you think to yourself: “This is too good to be true. How can Melvin Gordon be going for only 20 dollars? I must have him.” So you grab Gordon, but you really needed Travis Kelce, and money is now tight. Stick to your board and trust your instincts.
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There is value to be found in these players but that doesn’t necessarily mean you have to grab that player. If you make this mistake or tweak your gameplan too many times, you’ll end up drafting a completely different roster than the one you’d hoped for entering the draft. Stick to the plan, trust in your notes. Believe in yourself. Don’t settle for a player just because they are going at Goodwill prices. If a player is going for cheap and you’re unaware as to why, make sure there’s not a reason why everyone else is staying away.
Hometown Bias/Bye week unawareness:
This one is simple: Keep an eye on bye weeks. This approach is important for homers who take three (or more) players from their favorite team and then barely have a lineup to fill when that team hits their bye. Don’t overweight bye weeks but don’t entirely ignore them either.
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By Kyle Berry (@KyleHighRadio)
For a second straight season, I am betting against Mahomes.