(This week, PFF Fantasy’s writers will be highlight the common pitfalls drafters run into, the most common errors fantasy players make on draft day. Monday, it was standard leagues. Today it’s auction leagues. Welcome to Draft Mistakes Week.)
Auction drafts are a favorite of many in the fantasy football community, as it gives you ultimate control over your own team. You aren’t beholden to your draft slot. If you want David Johnson, you don’t have to have one of the first three picks. You just have to pony up and pay more for him than anyone else in your league.
Many people say auction drafts require more strategy than snake drafts. That’s debatable — but it’s a certainty that they require a different approach. The unique approach to drafting lends itself to many different strategies, many of which work in their own right.
On the other hand, there are definitely wrong ways to approach an auction draft, and there are many common mistakes you should be aware of so you can avoid them.
Not adjusting the values yourself before the draft
Do not rely solely on the pre-draft values given by your host site. Sometimes, these values are not adjusted to your unique league settings. Other times, you might completely disagree with the value given.
As noted before, these pre-draft values are not a reliable fallback for you. You only have a set amount you can spend on your entire roster, and an ill-prepared auction drafter will rapidly run out of money if they don’t understand the values of each player themselves.
You don’t necessarily have to make your own values (while that would be ideal, it can be a time-consuming process). But at the very least, you can take a scan of the players and their values and adjust accordingly. It helps to think of each player as a percentage of your overall budget. A $50 player with a $200 budget would take up 25 percent of your budget. If you think of it like this, it’s easier to process.
If you don’t trust yourself to make your own adjustments, then be sure to check out a bunch of different auction values from different sites and sources (including PFF) to get a firm grip on each player’s value.
Missing out on tiers and being undisciplined
This was a mistake I learned first-hand last year. I missed out on the top tier of wideouts and ended up with Alshon Jeffery. This wasn’t terrible (he was considered a tail-end WR1 leading into last year), but the real problem was that I ended up overpaying for him. Even if he didn’t bust, it was a bad move on my part. I overpaid, plain and simple. When you do that in an auction draft, there’s really nobody to blame but yourself.
The best way to avoid this is to put players in tiers and discipline yourself around the tiers. This doesn’t necessarily have to be cut-and-try value tiers ($20-$29; $30-$39, etc.), but it does help to tier players based on rankings. Identify the tiers you want to target and if you miss out — don’t panic! That only leads to you feeling the need to overpay for the top player in the next tier. Remember: You put them in a lesser tier for a reason.
Not having a comprehensive pre-draft strategy
This one might seem “obvious,” but compared to standard snake drafts, you have to have a strategy leading into an auction draft. You cannot just take the “best player available” or scoop up players that have fallen behind their average draft position.
The key word here is “comprehensive.” It’s not enough to have a loose plan, which is sometimes the best kind of plan for standard drafts. In an auction draft, if you don’t know what you want your roster to look like before the draft begins, you will not like your team when the draft ends.
Want an elite wideout and an elite running back? Do the math beforehand and see what the rest of your team might look like if you take this approach. Want to be unique and take Rob Gronkowski and Travis Kelce and pair them with an elite wideout? Do the math and see what your running back situation might look like with your leftover money.
Do this experiment several times overall, and see which team you like the most.
Being a stickler about your pre-draft strategy
The above comes with a caveat — you need to have a backup plan. Don’t freak out: This is easier to accomplish than you’d think. Most of the time, only a handful of things can get “weird” in auctions. Entire positions start to either go for more or less than you expected.
Just have a backup plan in case you want to go wideout-heavy but they end up going for 10 percent more than you expected. Remember: Not every position can go for more than expected. Auction drafts are a zero-sum game. One dollar spent on one position is one fewer dollar that can be spent on another. If quarterbacks and running backs are going for more than expected, that means wideouts will become the bargain.
The best part? If you go through the process of step three, you will have already gone through all of the different possibilities and roster constructions. After identifying your favorite, identify your second- and third-favorite strategies as well. You’ll be able to use one of them.
Not looking at prior-year trends
This only applies to leagues that have had auction drafts for several years. If this is your league’s first year taking the plunge into auction drafts, just keep this tip in mind for next year.
It’s extremely helpful to see how your leaguemates valued players last year. But beyond just players, it’s extremely helpful to see how leaguemates valued entire positions in previous years.
For example, if 35 percent of your league’s auction budgets went toward wideouts in both 2015 and 2016, you can probably safely assume they will spend somewhere around 35 percent on wideouts again in 2017. If you do the math on your pre-draft values, and see that wideouts make up 40 percent of the total value, then you can presume that some solid wideout values will be available in your league come draft day. Keep your eyes peeled.
A note about this last tip: It’s not an exact science — players change, and so do your leaguemates’ strategies. I’d put less weight on this one than any of the other tips given here, but it’s certainly something to consider.
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