2024 Fantasy Football Auction Strategy (Salary Cap): In-Draft Auction Tips & Strategy (Pt. 3)

Dominate your auction with this in-draft strategy.

As fantasy season approaches, honing your 2024 fantasy football auction strategy is crucial for building a championship-winning team. Understanding the nuances of fantasy football auction drafts can give you a significant edge over your competition.

This guide will dive into the best 2024 fantasy football auction strategies, leveraging our Ultimate Auction Tool to create a top in-draft strategy and maximize your budget to secure top talent.

Please click the links below if you have not read parts 1 and 2 of the How to Dominate a Fantasy Football Auction series. Part 1 includes an overview of my auction draft philosophy and a tool for setting up the PERFECT customized auction player prices. Part 2 teaches you how to analyze the data from the tool and form a draft plan.

The following screenshots and analyses are based on a 12-team PPR league with 1 QB, 2 RB, 3 WR, 1 TE, and 2 FLX. Your league might differ, so this series aims to teach you how to analyze any league and formulate conclusions.

Read Part 1 to download the spreadsheet and learn how to customize the tool to your league settings.

Part 1: How to Dominate a Fantasy Football Auction Draft – Setting Player Prices

Part 2: How To Dominate a Fantasy Football Auction Draft – Developing a Game Plan

Part 3: How To Dominate a Fantasy Football Auction Draft – In-Draft Strategy & Tips

AUCTION SERIES RECAP, SO FAR

In case you missed the first two parts, we calculated the value of each player based on custom league settings, set a $180 budget for our starting lineup, and formed a data-backed strategy. We decided the initial plan is to draft cheap quarterbacks, one high-end and one cheaper running back, a mix of high-mid tier wide receivers, and Mark Andrews at tight end.

Then, we plugged in players who typically sell for a good value based on AAV and created this sample lineup:

QB: Will Levis $1

RB: Breece Hall $53

RB: Joe Mixon $20

WR: Davante Adams $26

WR: Cooper Kupp $23

WR: Mike Evans $22

Flex: Calvin Ridley $9

Flex: DeAndre Hopkins $6

TE: Mark Andrews $20

Total: $180

Note that this sample team is for a 12-team PPR league. Your league might be different, but you can still use the same process to generate a realistic sample team for your league.

If you followed along with the first two parts and used the Excel tool correctly, you should feel confident heading into the draft. You are now ready to master the final phase: in-draft strategy.

USING THE AUCTION TOOL DURING THE DRAFT

TRACK VALUE & PRICE CHANGES LIVE (INFLATION)

Each time a player is sold in your draft, you should input their selling price in column H of the Auction sheet. This serves two purposes: seeing which players on your draft board are still available, and keeping track of inflation.

Inflation is important because each time a player is sold, the value of every remaining player changes. Auction drafts have a fixed player pool, budgets, and roster spots.

If one player sells for more than their true value, the remaining players will sell for less because less money is available to spend on everyone else.

Our tool can track these values and price changes LIVE!

For example, Christian McCaffrey is truly worth $72 given our league settings based on his real value in column F. If I spend $150 on him, that $78 overpayment must come from somewhere, and it will cause the remaining players to collectively sell for $78 less than expected. As you can see, the Inflated $ amount for each remaining player in column I decreases slightly to reflect their new value.

One player does not have much effect on inflation, but if many players sell for more than their real value, players later in the draft must sell for less than their real value.

This concept is particularly important in keeper leagues, for the opposite reason. When players are kept for less than their true value, the prices of all remaining players will increase. Make sure to input the price of any keepers into the tool before the draft starts because keepers significantly affect the price of other players.

Even if your league does not have keepers, you should consider inflation when making decisions.

The Wolf’s Tip – Don’t just assume your league-mates will draft rationally with inflation in mind, though, especially early in the draft when $$ is still plentiful. As a “run” on a position begins – say, high-end RB1s – many owners will want to ensure they get one (as you should too). The effects of inflation will hit doubly hard later to reflect the trend, so don’t just wait for the value changes to kick in and then miss out on an entire tier of players.

USE THE TOOL TO PLAN NOMINATIONS

NOMINATION ORDER & STRATEGIES

Other than deciding how much to bid on each player, nomination order is the most important way you can control the draft.

Final selling prices can fluctuate significantly based on nomination order, so you want to try to put the guys you want in a position to sell for less, and the guys you don’t want in a position to sell for more. Some of our favorite strategies to do so:

TIERS: DON’T END ON A RUN

Tiers are the most important concept when considering nominations and should take priority over any subsequent strategy. Players at the end of a tier will almost always sell for a significant premium.

For example, if the top 5 running backs available have listed prices of $60, $59, $58, $57, and $48 on your site, the first four players are clearly in the top tier. If the $60 player is nominated first, managers will see plenty of alternatives remaining and generally bid him up to around fair value. However, once the last player in the tier is up for auction, managers have no comparable alternatives and are likely to drive the price up significantly.

If the $57 player is the final guy nominated in the tier, I would expect him to sell for more than the $60 player because managers tend to panic when they run out of alternatives. There are two key takeaways here.

First, if you want a player in the top tier, DO NOT wait for the last one. Second, if you are targeting a specific player in a tier, try to nominate him before the rest of the players in the tier are gone. Tiers will usually make the most significant impact early in the draft but don’t neglect them in the middle rounds either.

2024 FANTASY FOOTBALL AUCTION STRATEGY

EARLY AUCTION DRAFT STRATEGY

Your top priority early in the draft should be securing at least one top player. Ideally, this would be a running back like Breece Hall. As discussed in Part 2, the players who deliver truly difference-making seasons are overwhelmingly found in the first two rounds of the draft.

Pinching pennies can be tempting at the beginning of the draft when only a few players are gone, but many managers will use the first few picks to feel out how the draft is going and bid more passively. Even if you planned on getting Breece Hall for about $53, but you see McCaffrey going for $69 when he’s valued at $72 on your sheet, I recommend pulling the trigger to secure a difference-maker.

The worst possible position in most auction formats is having zero players drafted when all the top players are gone. This has happened to me before. It doesn’t feel good, and those teams typically fizzle out during the season or early in the playoffs due to a lack of star power. Even if you have to overpay slightly, draft at least one top player.

Another reason to focus on drafting good players early is that you have more flexibility after the draft. Assuming you’re in a league that trades frequently, stars are the most sought-after trade commodity. If you have any experience playing fantasy, you know that it’s much easier to trade away a star for four depth pieces than it is to trade your four bench players for a star, regardless of what some trade calculators might say.

In an auction league, a couple of teams will miss out on all of the round 1-2 players previously discussed. They will have an abundance of depth but no stars. If they play rationally, they will probably be willing to give up significant value for a star when they realize they messed up during the draft.

Even if you spend your entire budget on 3 or 4 stars and are left with no depth, you have the option to trade a star immediately for depth.

For example, you could probably trade Breece Hall ($58 value) for something like Joe Mixon ($29), Keenan Allen ($14), Diontae Johnson ($12), and Courtland Sutton ($8) ($63 total value) after the draft to an all-depth team. In my experience, the team giving up the star in a trade like this typically receives more total value than they send away due to the scarcity of elite players available on the trade market. Erring on the side of having stars is better both in terms of having difference-makers, and trading flexibility after the draft.

LATE AUCTION DRAFT STRATEGY

As you get into the late stages of the draft, you need to nominate the players you want. I recommend making a list of high-upside players listed between roughly $1 and $5 that you like before going into the draft. You should not nominate any of these players early in the draft when your opponents have money to spend because they will likely sell for more.

After your opponents have spent most of their money and filled most of their rosters, it’s time to nominate your sleepers. You should have a few dollars saved for the bench, and you would be surprised how many quality players you can get late in the draft for only a few dollars.

While you wait to nominate your sleepers, consider getting your kicker and defense for $1. This will allow more time to pass before you can sneak in and steal your top late-round targets.

BE WARY OF BEING THE “PRICE POLICE”

We never want a player to go far cheaper than they should. Still, you don’t want to “Price Police” and ultimately get stuck with a guy you don’t want. If a player you’d be comfortable with is going too low, do your job and make the owner pay an extra few dollars. But don’t just bump prices up for the sake of doing it, especially on guys you’d hate to see on the squad. Otherwise, you’ll burn a fast hole in the wallet while watching guys you truly wanted slip away for far better values. Nothing worse.

READ THE COMPETITION

My final nomination strategy is to pay close attention to your opponents during the draft. Try to pay attention to how each manager is constructing their roster. Make educated guesses about which opponents will target the same players you like.

Also, pay close attention to each opponent’s maximum bid, especially at the end of the draft. If you know an opponent likes one of your sleepers but only has a $3 maximum bid, nominate that player for $3 to ensure you win and don’t have to pay the extra $1 or $2. Maximum bid information should be easy to find on your draft site.

FINAL AUCTION DRAFT TIPS

The key takeaway is to pay attention to tiers above all else, especially early in the draft. Don’t wait until the end of a tier to get your guys, and make sure to secure an elite player before that tier dries up.

If you made it through this entire guide, first of all, thank you! To you, my number one piece of advice is to stick to your pre-draft plan as closely as possible. You spent time analyzing data, making contingency plans, and creating flexible budgets for a reason. As long as you plan for multiple scenarios, trust that at least one of those scenarios will occur, and your plan will work. Do several mock drafts to ensure your plans are rock-solid, and make any tweaks if needed.

It’s okay to let opponents get players that don’t fit your roster for good value. Remember that you can’t take advantage of every value, so don’t toss your entire strategy out the window just because one player is going five bucks cheaper than he should. Don’t get into a bidding war just because you want to squeeze a few dollars out of someone. It won’t make that big of a difference and has the potential to wreck your plans if you blow your budget on someone you weren’t expecting.

Stay calm. Stay focused. Stick to the plan. You now have everything you need to dominate your auction draft!