Fantasy Football Draft – Auction Drafting 101

Fantasy Football Draft – Auction Drafting 101

The auction Fantasy Football Draft is a very different style of the draft than the average snake. Do you want to draft anyone you want? Do you want Saquon AND Christian McCaffrey? Boom! You can have it! Do you want Zeke AND Alvin Kamara? Done. The auction process puts EVERY player at your fingertips. That’s what makes it so much fun, you are not limited to players in your draft area. You can draft ANYONE you want. No more do you wait patiently until your turn. Every nominated player is your turn. There are many more differences that I will go over but these are the rules of an Auction draft. This is auction drafting 101.

Auction Drafting 101.

1) Be ready for a marathon.

Auction draft sometimes takes twice as long as conventional snake drafts. Every player that is nominated can be bid on and won so you have to pay attention to every player. I know there will be parts of the draft that you might not pay attention to because of running out or low of money but you need to pay attention or you may lose out on some great value.

2) Create a budget for each position.

If you don’t have an idea of what you will or want to spend you will EASILY go over budget. I think a good rule of thumb is 80 percent on WR and RB. The other 20 percent goes to TE, QB, K and D. So with a 200 dollar budget that is 160 dollars to RB and WR. I like to try and get away with spending 4 bucks or one dollar each on 4 other positions. That might sound crazy but most Ds and Ks will go for only a buck. Then good QBs are only going for 1$ and also good TEs for only 1$.

3) Be patient and wait for value.

There will be a lot of spending at the beginning. A LOT. Wait for that value to fall to you. It might be really hard but you don’t want to be the guy that blows his wad early and have to wait until almost the near end to get the cheap guys. This is called “studs and duds”
Nominate players, you don’t want and kickers, QB’s and TE’s

 4) Nominate QBs, TEs, Kickers and Defenses early

I think there is a subtle art to nominating players. I like to throw people off. I like to nominate kickers, QBs, and TEs in the beginning when everyone is looking to spend money on the top-end players. It makes them change their thinking and with the most of their budget on the table, they might overspend. The other side of the coin is that sometimes you can sneak top-end players buy someone because they don’t want to spend money on a kicker or defense in the draft. I once got Justin Tucker for a buck because it was early in the draft. I like to nominate players that I don’t want also because it makes people spend money on players I don’t want and then I have more money for the players I want.

5) Only bid one dollar at a time.

This might seem like an obvious detail but if you big too much then you could have gotten that player for one dollar more but you bid 5 instead.

6) Be careful spending on the top-end talent.

Do you want to spend 60 bucks on Saquon Barkley? If your budget is only 80 for RBs and you blow that much on Barkley you don’t have much left. You might be able to get like 2 players for that much.

These should help you not only get through an auction draft but to do well. These types of drafts have really become the favorite for many fantasy owners. I love this setup as well but the amount of time it takes really turns me off to it. This is the last weekend to start the season and if you have any drafts coming up I wish you luck.

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