The most popular and most common way to draft fantasy football teams will always be via a snake draft. However, that doesn’t mean it’s the best way. Rather, it’s merely the simplest.
There is an alternate way to draft, which is an auction draft. Otherwise known as a salary cap draft, it presents a new set of challenges and more opportunities for fantasy managers.
What is an auction draft? How does it differ from a traditional snake draft, and how can you best prepare for it?
What Is an Auction Draft?
Most of you are probably familiar with the concepts of snake and auction drafts. If you are, feel free to skip down a bit to the strategy portion of this article.
This article is primarily for auction novices. It could be that you’re new to fantasy football, in general, or perhaps you’ve been playing for years but never delved into the world of auction drafting. Hopefully, by the time you read everything here, you understand enough about auction drafts to want to give it a shot.
Unless you’ve never played fantasy football before, you know how a snake draft works. There is a predetermined order of selection. Each team makes one pick per round, with the order reversing or “snaking” each round.
Auction drafts also have a predetermined order of selection, but rather than draft one player per round, teams nominate a player. When a player is nominated, that means he’ll be drafted. However, the difference between snake and auction drafts is that, until the bidding is complete, no one knows who is getting the player.
How Do Auction Drafts Differ From Snake Drafts?
At the end of either style of draft, each team will have a full roster of players. During the draft, only one player is drafted at a time. That’s about where the similarities end.
These are two very different ways of drafting rosters. I want to say they both have pros and cons, but I’m not here to be diplomatic. The goal of this article is to educate on auction drafts. Still, that doesn’t mean I don’t have a clear and defined opinion on which format is superior — it’s auctions, and it’s not close.
With that said, snake drafts aren’t bad. There is a sense of elegance in their simplicity. They’re far easier to understand conceptually than auctions. Both are difficult to truly master, but the learning curve for snake drafts is much lower to at least reach a level of competency.
If you want to promote skill and fairness to the greatest extent possible, auctions are vastly superior. Also, they’re way more fun and engaging!
In snake drafts, you make your pick, and then you’re done until your next one. Sure, you’re paying attention to what’s going on so you can plan your next selection, but you aren’t doing anything special. While other managers are drafting their players, there is quite literally nothing for you to do except wait.
In auctions, you’re constantly doing something. With every nomination, you make decisions about whether you want the player, how much you’re willing to spend, how this player will impact the rest of your draft, and more.
The biggest criticism of snake drafts is fantasy managers are beholden to their draft slot. So much about your draft strategy and the players you’re likely to get is determined by when your team’s name is pulled out of the proverbial hat (or an actual hat). Once you know where you pick, there are several players you have a 0% chance of drafting.
In theory, no player is off the table in an auction. As the draft progresses, some players will become off-limits. But at the base level, if you go into an auction draft saying you’re going to draft Player X no matter what, you will end up with that player.
It may not be a good idea to pay the price you paid, but no one can actually stop you. On the contrary, in a snake draft, if you decide you want to draft Amon-Ra St. Brown, but you pick 11th, well, you’re not getting him.
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ADP is not AAV (average auction value). ADP is objective. Regardless of starting roster sizes, a player is going to go around the same spot in every draft. In auctions, the number of starting roster spots will drastically impact the price of players.
Nevertheless, it’s still beneficial to frame auction values in the context of snake drafts. If you take a sample of 1,000 snake drafts, most players will fall within a relatively narrow range of ADPs. If you do the same for 1,000 auction drafts, you’ll get wild variation in how much a player costs. For that reason, it’s helpful to frame auction values in the context of snake drafts.
Let’s say you really like three guys that guy in the fourth round. Best-case scenario, you pick on one of the corners and can maybe get two of them. Most likely, you’re only getting one.
In auction drafts, you don’t have to make a pick in “every round.” Those three players that go in the fourth round that you really like, draft them all. That’s your choice as a manager.
The converse applies as well. Have you ever found yourself staring at the top available players in a snake draft and thought, “I don’t want any of these guys”? If you’ve been doing this anywhere near as long as I have, you’ve undoubtedly experienced that.
Oftentimes, you’ll look ahead at the players likely available at your upcoming picks in future rounds and would prefer to just take them. But you don’t want to reach for those players because you don’t think they’re necessarily worth taking in the current round. You would just prefer to essentially “trade down.”
Auction drafts allow you to structure your team however you want. You can bypass large groups of players and focus on drafting your guys.
In snake formats, every team has one first-round player, one second-round player, etc. In auction, you can draft two first-round players (or none.
Do you just not want any of the players that typically go in Rounds 4-5 in a snake draft? Don’t draft them. Do you want to shell out for two top-five players? Go for it.
The primary benefit of auction drafts is the increased control you have over what your team looks like. This is why I fervently advocate kicking off dynasty leagues with auction drafts.
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In dynasty leagues, you’ll have one chance to draft with the full player pool — the initial startup. That’s it. If you’re going to draft players who will, in theory, remain on your roster (or someone’s) for their entire careers, shouldn’t you have full control over what guys you get?
In redraft formats, there are plenty of instances where you don’t want to draft players based on ADP. If you end up with your hand forced and it doesn’t work out, well, at least it’s only one year.
If this happens in a dynasty league, it’s forever (or as long as your league exists). When you’re drafting players who will presumably be on your roster for the entirety of their careers, you want them to be ones you believe in.
I never want to spend early-round picks on guys because I feel like I have to. Auction drafts make that possible without having to rely on finding a trade partner to trade down.
Fantasy Football Auction Draft Strategies
Fantasy football continues to be dominated by snake drafts. It’s difficult to envision that ever changing. They’re easier to grasp and navigate, take a shorter time to complete, and present a lower barrier to entry for new players.
While undoubtedly the most common draft format, it’s difficult for someone doing this as long as I have to ever join new snake draft leagues, knowing that auctions exist.
If you want to join a new league, I cannot recommend enough having an auction draft. I still love my snake leagues, but every time I look for a new league to join, I can never bring myself to join one with a snake format.
It appears that all future leagues I join will be auction drafts. That’s how much I love the format. Now, let’s get into some auction draft strategies.
Stars and Scrubs
The strategy known as stars and scrubs is, well, exactly how it sounds. Your goal is to allocate the majority of your budget toward your starting lineup while backfilling your bench with a bunch of $1-2 players.
When budgeting for my auction drafts, I usually allocate 85-90% of my budget to my starting roster.
Novice auction drafters often make the mistake of trying to have a complete, well-balanced team. I know this because I did it, too.
You can build very different teams in auction than you can in snake. That includes the potential to build a very, very deep team.
Now, to be clear, there’s nothing wrong with having a great bench. You should endeavor to do so. Just not at the expense of your starting lineup. Instead, you want to use the fact that you can essentially draft a bench entirely of double-digit round players to give yourself a stronger starting roster.
As you may have guessed, this is an inherently risky strategy. Focusing almost exclusively on your starting lineup makes you more vulnerable to injuries and bye weeks.
I am a proponent of stars and scrubs, but I’m not going to have my bench consist entirely of $1-2 players. Ideally, the first guy off my bench is near starter level, and the next one is also a solid role player. The rest of my bench can be upside dart throws.
The main benefit of this strategy is not only will your starters be very good, but you won’t have to worry about dropping bench players early in the season to churn the waiver wire. This strategy is designed for you to do just that.
Every year, I come out of my snake drafts liking all of my players. I think to myself, “I don’t know who I’m going to drop when the time comes.” Of course, every year, without fail, I have several players I can’t wait to drop.
As Herm Edwards so aptly put it, you play to win the game. Drafting safety valves and trying to build a balanced roster isn’t always the best way to go. It’s a great way to ensure you won’t have a last-place team, but the goal is to win.
Heavily skewing your auction budget toward your starting lineup is a low-floor strategy, but upside wins championships. You know with absolute certainty that someone in your league is going to have that upside team that hits. If you don’t try to make it you, then it can’t be.
The biggest mistake I made in my early auction days was putting together a roster full of good players but lacking great ones. It was a fantastic way to make the playoffs and lose. No one cares about coming in fourth.
A Balanced Approach
Unless you skipped over the previous section, you already know how I feel about this strategy. I’m not exactly a fan. Nevertheless, it’s objectively a strategy that exists. So, I would be doing you all a disservice not to discuss it.
You likely don’t need me to explain what this entails, but I will anyway. This strategy involves constructing a roster with no holes.
By no means should you avoid elite players altogether. However, your primary goal is to make sure you have a legitimate quality starter at every starting spot. If that means you don’t have the top-end talent other teams have, that’s okay.
Ideally, you can get values throughout your draft, thus enabling you to have a complete roster that also has some elite talent. But that’s more best-case scenario than a predraft plan.
As I mentioned above, the easiest way to convey value in auction drafts is to compare them to snake drafts. This can be helpful in illustrating a point.
In the context of snake drafts, a balanced approach is akin to trading away your first and second-round picks to amass a surplus of picks in Rounds 3-6.
You won’t have a single player in your starting lineup that shouldn’t be there. At the same time, your roster will likely lack those players who have that elite upside to win you matchups by themselves.
If you were matched up against a “stars and scrubs” team, you would never have the best players in the matchup. However, you will have more players worth starting than your opponent. The idea is that even if your opponent’s stars smash, your flat but effective lineup will make up for it against your opponent’s scrubs.
A balanced roster will consistently produce at or above the league median. Your team will be unlikely to completely flop any given week. You will put up a consistent weekly point total and go to your opponents, “Beat it.”
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The strategy is based on probability — if you’re slightly above average compared to the rest of the league, you’ll win more than you lose. That’s true; it mostly works.
You will likely make the playoffs at a high rate, with a higher probability than a “stars and scrubs” team. As we know, once you get in, anything can happen… in theory.
However, to rattle off the three consecutive wins needed to win a championship, you typically need upside, which is where this approach can backfire.
How To Navigate an Auction Draft
The key tenet of auction drafting is every draft is different. This is true in snakes but even more so in auctions.
You could put the same 12 people in the same auction, run it 100 times, and each one will look very different. The unpredictability is what makes it so exciting.
You need to know what you want to do when entering your auction draft, but you also need to be prepared to adapt. Whether in snake or auction, you shouldn’t force a strategy if the draft room is pushing you another way.
Understand what you want to do and be prepared to audible. Read the room early. Deduce what type of managers you’re drafting against.
If you do enough auctions, you will experience every type of draft room. You could have a very frugal room, reluctant to spend money early on. You could have a room full of big spenders who see that full $200 budget and think it will never run out.
There is much more nuance to an auction draft than in a snake. If you’re just dipping your toes into the auction world, it’s important to not overwhelm yourself with information.
Focus on the basics, get a few auctions under your belt, and then check in for other articles on more complex auction strategies.
Understanding player values, positional values, and how the amount you can expect to pay for a player shifts based on what’s already happened is paramount to your success. We at PFN will guide you every step of the way.
