My home fantasy football league is preparing for our 13th auction draft this weekend. After five years of snake/serpentine drafting, we switched to an auction draft in 2012 and never looked back. Every year and every draft is different, but the constant is the fun we have getting together, managing our budgets, and all walking away with the confidence that we each just drafted a league-winning team. This piece is obviously a glimpse into my own league, but I hope you can relate some of the stories to some instances of your own.
Over the years, plenty of lessons have been learned in our auction draft. Whether this is your first auction draft or you’re a few seasons in and still figuring it out, there will always be opportunities to learn new lessons. While I take time to critique my own mistakes and the mistakes of others, it’s a good reminder that we all make them in this game we play for fun. More importantly, if we don’t laugh at ourselves…our league definitely will. Enjoy it and happy bidding!
Auction Draft Lessons Learned for Fantasy Football
Get Your Guy
This is one of the golden rules of any fantasy football draft. The biggest and best difference between a snake draft and an auction draft is that in a snake, you don’t have a chance to get your guy if your draft position doesn’t allow for it, especially in the first round. In an auction, every manager starts with the same budget. In theory, you can get any player you want if you put your money where your mouth is.
This lesson learned in an auction draft goes back to 2012, my home league’s first season of an auction draft. A good place to start. With no experience in auction drafting, I made a basic plan to get who I believed to be the best player in the league: Calvin Johnson. I knew others would be in on “Megatron”, but not like I was, right? Wrong.
The bidding starts for Calvin Johnson and we’re all having a great time. Then it gets serious. We’re now north of $60 in our first-ever auction draft. That’s pushing one-third of our $200 budget! So, when my best friend says “$63”, I stare at my draft sheet in silence. Sold. To him. It’s over.
Calvin Johnson caught 122 of 204 targets in 2012 for 1,964 yards and five touchdowns. A career year.
From this point, my stubborn self decided to save all of my money. My new plan was when everyone else has spent a good chunk of their budgets, I was going to “clean up.” The player with the highest salary on my 2012 roster was wide receiver Greg Jennings for $35. He logged 36 receptions for 366 yards and four touchdowns. I did not win the league that season. TAKE A WILD GUESS WHO DID!
Get your guy. You’ll figure it all out from there, trust me.
Ask a Non-League Member to be Your Auctioneer
This is easier said than done. Odds are, most of the people who care to be at your auction draft are drafting. I can tell you from experience, however, that early on, one of our league members acted as the auctioneer…while also drafting his own team. Not only does this make for a difficult draft for the manager to focus on, but when they are involved in a bid, it’s hard to run smoothly.
If you are lucky to find a fair and fun auctioneer, treat them well. Auction drafting is fun and should be for the auctioneer, too. Provide an idea of how you want the auction run, set rules, and above all else, give the auctioneer full discretion when running the show.
If you play in an auction league that drafts online, obviously the computer will dictate the countdown for each bid. However, I highly recommend getting your league in on a group video call for the added commentary. There’s nothing better than seeing real-time emotions during a bidding war!
Don’t Be a Price Enforcer
A price enforcer is a manager in the auction draft who bids players up to a price they think they should be drafted at. This will occur often in an auction draft, especially if bids begin unreasonably low. For instance, if Christian McCaffrey’s opening bid is $1, you’re not really price-enforcing if you announce a bid of $50 just to expedite the bidding.
What I’m talking about is price-enforcing players you don’t even want just to get others to spend. A good (bad?) example of this took place in my home league last season. After a few dozen rounds, I felt I had a good team of Jahmyr Gibbs, Garrett Wilson, Chris Olave, and Justin Fields. Money wasn’t exactly tight, but I had enough of a budget for one more big salary or to spread it around for a more well-rounded team.
Then Josh Jacobs got nominated.
The bidding was crawling through the low 20’s. I’m sitting there thinking Jacobs should cost at least $30, right? So, when the bidding gets to $29, I say “30!”
And then it’s silent. Going once, going twice, sold…to me, a guy who didn’t want Josh Jacobs. At all.
At this point, I’ve spent $88 of a $200 salary cap on Jahmyr Gibbs, Rhamondre Stevenson, and Josh Jacobs. My roster still had 10 vacant spots and I had $13 left. For the next hour or so, I watched other managers in my league draft Keenan Allen, T.J. Hockenson, and plenty of other soon-to-be stars of the 2023 season for a fraction of Josh Jacobs’ salary. So, the lesson learned here is to worry about your team, and your roster build, and let the rest of the league go about their business.
Turn Your Notifications On
I’m a big advocate for putting phones away, cracking open a few cold ones with your friends, and living in the moment of the draft. You can still crack a few cold ones with your friends and enjoy the draft, but turn your notifications on for any breaking NFL news. This is one of the lessons learned the hard way in a few auction drafts and can be applied to any draft format.
We all remember when Andrew Luck retired five years ago. Most of us remember because our fantasy football drafts were either about to start, currently drafting or had just ended. My auction league had just ended and the manager with Andrew Luck as his quarterback all of the sudden needed a starter. Brutal.
This year of all years it’s important to have your phone close by. If CeeDee Lamb, Ja’Marr Chase, or Brandon Aiyuk sign extensions, or Aiyuk gets traded, you will want to know! If you’re drafting this weekend during the final week of preseason games and someone unfortunately gets hurt, you will want t0 know!
Let’s quickly rewind to my home league’s 2018 auction draft. The 36th player nominated is San Francisco 49ers running back Jerrick McKinnon. He comes and goes for about $25 and the draft continues. Between drafting Jerrick McKinnon 36th overall and the 47th nomination, news breaks that Jerrick McKinnon tore his ACL in practice. Horrific luck for McKinnon…and the fantasy manager who just drafted him.
Well, he didn’t see the news, but the manager sitting next to me did. So, the 47th nomination was San Francisco 49ers running back, Matt Brieda for $1. The guy who just got McKinnon says $2. To his surprise, the original bidder says $3. Now there’s confusion from the McKinnon manager…along with a $4 bid. Finally, the original non-McKinnon manager ups the bid to $6 and drafts Brieda. It didn’t take long after that to break the McKinnon injury news to everyone.
Pay Attention to the Entire Auction Draft
As money gets spent and rosters filled out, it’s easy to lose focus if you’re uninvolved in the bidding. However, paying attention to what other managers are doing can help provide intel on what managers you may be up against the next time you’re trying to draft someone.
Additionally, it’s no one’s responsibility to tell you which player is nominated. Hopefully, your auctioneer will continuously announce the player during the bidding, but if you weren’t paying attention, then a player you wanted may come and go.
You might also mistake which player is actually up for bid if you’re not paying attention. Last year in our home league, Tampa Bay Buccaneers wide receiver Mike Evans went for $16. In hindsight, that’s one of the steals of the draft. The only problem is the manager who got him thought he was bidding on Los Angeles Chargers wide receiver Mike Williams, the player he actually wanted. This brings us to our next lesson learned in an auction draft…
Avoid Making In-Draft Trades
The same manager who drafted Mike Evans for $16 was pretty distraught. Another manager offered him half of the money to take him off of his hands. And he accepted. So, Mike Evans cost this new manager just $8. Guess who won the league? It worked out for the original manager, however, as he used his partial refund to land Alvin Kamara and did ultimately land the top seed for the playoffs.
The issue with making in-draft trades is that everyone’s value of the dollar is askew. If you draft Player A for $20 and Player B for $10 and someone offers you Player C, who you really wanted and cost $25, you’re technically losing $5 in this trade. It could make your team better, but this trade may still available to you after the draft to assess clearer after the bidding stops.
More importantly, once the draft is over, the values really don’t matter anymore. For instance, in 2022 when I was offered Austin Ekeler ($49) immediately after the draft for D’Andre Swift ($43), who cares what we each paid?
I was actually getting the “better deal” for a more expensive running back, but Swift was My Guy (see the first lesson learned above) so I declined. Yeah, that’s right, I was offered the eventual RB1 for the eventual RB16 and I said no. I’ve gotten over this and found peace in the fact that my interest in Swift on the Lions in 2022 led me to invest heavily in Jahmyr Gibbs in 2023. So, there’s that.
This lesson learned especially holds true as the season progresses. Other managers don’t care what you paid to draft a certain player when you’re in trade talks. They care about current value to their team on the road to the playoffs.
Switch Your League to an Auction Draft
I’ll end with the most cliché of lessons learned during an auction draft and that’s to make sure you do one. I admit I was hesitant to make the change. We were only five years into our now 18-year league. It was new, uncharted territory for our group, but we’re much better off for it.
Not only is the draft itself an amazingly interactive way to construct your team, but the build-up to draft day is also plenty of fun. You’ll find yourself making budgeting plans, debating which managers are going to bid for which players, and prepping like you’ve never prepped before.
I could write a collection of short stories about my home league auction draft. Hopefully, this short piece of lessons learned is enough to convince you to take your fantasy football managerial skills to the next level and switch to an auction draft.
Who’s your favorite dark horse QB1? Drop some names in the comments below and then make sure to check out our 2024 Fantasy Football Draft Kit for more great rankings and analysis.