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

Everybody wants to believe they are an original thinker and a trail-blazer, but in reality most people think alike and the guy you really love this year is also starred by half the league.  That doesn’t mean you can’t have your own sleepers and late-round picks, but being crazy high on Bijan Robinson isn’t groundbreaking, but being high on Derrick Henry might be.  Find the market discrepancies in the water cooler talk and take a deeper look on the players who are still great, but maybe aren’t as sexy or have some potentially made-up barrier in front of them.  If your gut reaction to drafting a player is negative, then that sentiment is shared by most of your league mates and possibly could be the key to getting some studs at bargain prices.  I got Mike Evans for $8 last year because everyone thought the Buccs were cooked and while I wasn’t that high on him, I couldn’t ignore his historical production every single season.  One of the keys to winning your league is finding the team that no one likes, but is going to a beast offensively.  Last year it was the Buccs and two years ago it was the Seahawks.  Get in early or don’t get in at all. 

Keep up with the Jones

Just like in poker, the size of your stack is almost as important as the players on your team.  Every draft has ebbs and flows and if you understand where yours is heading, you can stay ahead of the curve.  If studs are all going above market value early and people are paying for stability at the top of their roster, then that means there will be a bubble at some point in your draft.  An auction bubble is where you win your draft.  It’s where Keenan Allen and Aaron Jones go for a handful of bucks and all the older, nearly washed stars fly under the radar because everyone wants the sexy second-year star.  If you can have the biggest stack in a draft when everyone else overpaid early and is conserving their bank roll, you can leave the draft in a great position, but beware the reverse.  At some point the talent drops off or there is only two elite WRs left and four GMs who desperately need them.  This is where bidding wars start and GMs get reckless.  If people are saving their money, spend yours, if they are spending wildly, then be patient.  Auctions can be the wild west and it’s only once they end do people snap out of the trance and realize what happened.    

Do some math

Figure out how many roster spots you have and then make sure the last two are $1 players because you need some room to maneuver.  If its a 1 QB, 2RB, 3WR, 1TE, 1FLEX (DEF/K) and four bench spots, put some ballpark numbers next to the positions.  If it’s a 12-team league, you don’t really want to spend much on a QB, so call it $5 and get a quality starter.  $25 each on two RBs you like, but don’t love.  That leaves you with $145.  Lets say you love TE like me, you go get a stud for $35.  So now you have 110 for WRs.  We want a stud, so $50 on one, $35 on another and then $15 for the third.  That leaves us with $10 for DEF, KICKER and five bench spots.  That’s not a lot of room for any depth or late-round sleepers.  So now we recalculate.  We still like TE, but maybe we go for the last good tier and spend $15 instead of $35.  We just freed up $20 which lets spend another $5 on the WR, so WR1-$50, WR2-$25, WR3-$20 and then we can spend $20 on the next five spots, so we can get two RBs for $5 each and one more WR we like for $5.        

Be Smarter then everyone else

Every article you read will say defenses don’t matter.  Well, they are wrong.  If you are smart, then the defense matters, if you just pick the one you think is best, then yes it probably won’t matter.  You either want to draft a defense because of the first handful of games or the last handful, no one can predict what will happen in the middle of the season.  Last season the Cowboys were the number-one scoring defense in part because they scored 37 points in Week 1.  They scored seven total points in the three week fantasy playoffs.  That’s not good.  This season they play the Panthers in Week 15, aka the first round of fantasy playoffs.  The Panthers are probably going to be bad again and a TO machine.  That game alone plus the Cowboys b2b top-two defense finish is enough for me to go out and get them even if costs me a dollar or two more.  Fantasy is about micro-targeting, find an edge, no matter how small and exploit it.  The Browns are another example.  They were a world class defense at home and just average on the road.  Well, check the schedule and guess what, they play two of their fantasy playoff games at home where they are ferocious (all three games vs. potential elite offenses as well).  Let’s do one more.  The Ravens have their bye in Week 14 and play the Giants in Week 15.  The Giants love to TO it over and the Ravens are predatory.  That potentially is a great matchup.  Defenses don’t matter unless they do, so ideally pick a team that plays it’s fantasy playoff games outdoors vs. bad teams in the playoffs.  

Don’t pay for Cap Rooney when Willie Beamen is on the wire

The QB position is cyclical and just last season it seemed like there were three elite QBs and then everyone else.  Thanks to some impressive rookies and bounce-back players, the QB position is now stacked for fantasy and it’s now counter-productive to spend for Pat Mahomes, Jalen Hurts or Josh Allen.  For total fantasy points last season, these QBs finished in the top-10: Brock Purdy, Dak Prescott, Jordan Love, Jared Goff, Tua Tagovailoa and Baker Mayfield.  Everyone’s favorite young superstar CJ Stroud finished 11th.  You can find a top-10 QB on the wire, it’s crazy, but it’s true.  Now sure, the top-two QBs for the season were Allen and Hurts and there is something about having a top-end talent at that position that feels like a warm, comfy blanket in the middle of winter.  There’s too much value at the position and need to spend elsewhere to justify spending even $10 on a QB.  The smart move is to get two, spend a little bit for a running QB and then get an old hand like Matthew Stafford as his backup and just play the matchups all season.  

In the beginning, elect players you don’t want

When you’re electing early, your goal should be to select the BEST player on the board that you DON’T want. You want to force your league mates to spend their money on a player that you don’t care for. It makes it easier for you to get the guys that you actually want while putting yourself in a better position financially. This works until you get close to the end of the draft, but if you’re up for the challenge and if you know your league mates well enough, elect players that you know that your league mates will bid on so you can continue to put yourself in a better position.  If you want to really stir the pot, nominate a kicker you really like and defense early because almost no one will spend an extra dollar out of spite.  This is a very poor sportsmanship and will rightfully earn you scorn, but it’s also a good way to get a nice edge.  

It’s better to get it right than perfect

Everyone wants to maximize every dollar and have a perfect draft, but the odds of that are slim and it’s more likely you crash and burn than perfectly walk the line.  Identify the players you must-have, the backups RBs you know are bursting at the seams and WRs who finally have a quality QB.  Circle them, star them, do whatever, but obviously don’t tell anyone.  Here’s the thing, you’re not Nostradamus and there are other people with the same guys circled, so don’t think you are going to get them without the other GMs exacting their pound of flesh.  There is nothing worse than being a $1 short on the one guy you must have, so make sure you reserve a little piggy bank with a couple extra dollars just in case.  There’s almost no difference in paying $3/4/5 for the guy you truly think is undervalued and not getting him will haunt you all season.  Don’t wait until your last couple of dollars to target the guy you need, you might risk another GM also having a mini-stash, but every move has a tradeoff.  Don’t be early and don’t be too late.  Like everything in life timing is key and when you’re truly locked in you see the moves before they happen.

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.

Click here to join us on Discord! And Follow us on Twitter by clicking here

Come join us at SportsEthos by filling out an application by clicking here