Fantasy Football 2025 Strategy: 10 Tips For Your Auction Draft

​

  • There is nothing more fun and more stressful than doing an auction draft regardless of the sport.  Snake drafts are easy, you wait for your turn and pick somebody in your que or you reach for a player you really like.  In any auction you run the risk of blowing your stack too early or leaving money on the table, both sins that can cost you your league before it even starts.  No auction is ever the same and you have to be pragmatic and swim with the current instead of fighting it, but here are some inside trading tips to help you get a leg up on your friends and enemies over the  grueling 17-week fantasy football season.

    Know Your league settings

    Say it again for the people in the back.  Know your league settings, especially if it’s a new league.  Is it PPR, half PPR, are rushing TDs worth more than receiving TDs? Are there bonus points for reaching 100 yards rushing, 150 yards receiving.  How can you dominate something if you don’t know it?  Almost all leagues are different and it’s those differences that give great fantasy GMs the extra edges they need to come out on top. 

    Is it 3WR, 2RB, 1TE or 2WR, 2RB, 1 TE and a flex because if its only 2WR then WRs aren’t nearly as important because it’s the position with the most abundancy and the most consistency.  The only thing worse than having one great WR in a two WR league is having four great ones and only being able to start two. 

     

    Adjust your strategy for league size

    Again every league is different and every league size requires a couple modifications for your strategy.  As a general rule, the smaller the league, the more heavily you should invest in stars.  There’s no point in having a deep, well-balanced team in an 10-team league.  Assuming (10-team league) it’s something like 1QB, 3WR, 2RB, 1TE and maybe a flex, you want to spend roughly half your budget on two players and definitely not a QB.  A 10-team league means the wire will be popping all season and you’re going to need room on your bench to be a mover and a shaker on the wire.  If your bench consists of $8 players that might hit late in the season, you don’t want to have to drop them for a guy who popped Week 1 and you also don’t want to have to keep them stashed on your bench all season if they never actually level up.  The inverse goes for a 14-team league.  As great as it is starting with Christian McCaffrey and Justin Jefferson, your ability to extract value late is severely limited and if either goes down, you don’t have the depth to patch the giant hole in your boat.  Fantasy football is the most volatile sport around and it’s more about winning the war of attrition than building a juggernaut.  Your team in Week 15 will not look the same as the one in Week 1 and the GM who can best navigate the snakes and ladders along the way is probably going to be the last one standing.

    Don’t get Cocky Kid

    A great fantasy GM is the one who is the most hated after the draft.  He’s the one that doesn’t let people sneak value and isn’t afraid to bid a player up when he knows there is more room in the budget.  There’s a fine line between genius and madness and all it takes is a couple extra clicks for you to bid up players you didn’t need and end up with a team full of players you never wanted.  Don’t get fixated on extracting maximum money for every player, if you can just bid up a bunch of players for a few extra bucks, take the W and don’t risk the L.  Also there’s plenty of fish in the sea, don’t get into a bidding war unless you’re 100% certain the player is a superstar in waiting and if you do get into one, it’s best to let the other GM pay top dollar and you lose the game of chicken.  No one knows anything for sure and it’s almost always better to the have the GMs go damn, I can’t believe you got him that cheap rather than go, wow you must really like him.    

    Be the zag you want to see in the world


    Want to get access to Jon’s articles? You’ll need to have a SportsEthos NFL FantasyPass membership. Click here to learn more and sign up!  

    Bonus tip:

    Everyone is always gun-shy when the draft starts and the first stud that gets nominated is almost always undervalued.  No one wants to spend early because the draft is supposed to be fun, but if the first player nominated is someone you covet, strike while the iron is hot.

     

     

    August 8, 2025, 1:41 pm