1007: Mailbag - Auction Draft Strategy, A Surprising Player to Avoid, and More

JJ Zachariason (0:02)

This is The Late-Round Podcast with your host, JJ Zachariason.

What's up, everyone? It's JJ Zachariason. In this episode 1007 of The Late-Round Fantasy Football Podcast, sponsored by DraftKings.

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So I got a couple questions this week about auction drafts, and they're from Patreon. The first one's from John. It says, I'm in a super flex auction league. I've averaged out the price each position, RB1, RB2, etc. have gone for in past years. Any other tips for strategy in taking super flex rankings over to an auction format? And then I got another question from Charlie that says, Hey, JJ, could you talk a little bit about your approach to auction drafts? I've heard you mention trying to maximize your starting lineup and paying attention to $1 guys for your bench. Do you typically try to spend your full budget on the starting lineup and have a full bench of those $1 guys, or save a little budget to spend on a couple extra flex positions for the bench? Thanks. Okay, this time of year, I get so many questions about auction drafts. I had like four of them this week on Patreon alone. So let's talk about them. I've said this before, specifically in episode 891, which is an auction draft strategy episode, but people overthink auction drafts. It's not like you're playing a totally different game. You're just playing with a different currency. Instead of spending draft picks, you're spending dollars. But regardless of your format, Jameer Gibbs is gonna be good in both of those formats, in a regular snake draft and in an auction draft. Nico Collins is gonna be good. The game of fantasy football is played the same way. Now, I have some thoughts on auction drafts in the Late-Round Draft Guide, which you can find on lateround.com. But there are two major things to think about with your individual auction draft. Number one, understand your league's total economy. And then number two, be reactive to how teams are spending as the draft goes on. With number one, in understanding your league's economy, I'm essentially saying that one league to the next is gonna spend differently on players based on two major factors, league size and league lineup requirements. When the league size is larger, players get more expensive, because more money is in the draft. When league lineup requirements are also greater, it means that you're likely, and I stress likely, gonna allocate a smaller dollar value to each lineup slot. Now in general, and this is to Charlie's question, you should be thinking about your bench as just one dollar players, because in fantasy football, we always wanna maximize our starting lineup. That's what's actually scoring fantasy points for us. So if you have a short starting lineup, let's say a quarterback, two running max, two wide receivers and a tight end, you're gonna wanna be spending more money on those players in a 12-team league versus another 12-team league, where you have like three wide receivers and like four flex spots or something. Because when you have more starting lineup slots, that equates to a need to have a more robust lineup in general. It's more difficult to go stars and scrubs in that environment because your scrubs are gonna be hitting your starting lineup. Now, you can still do that, you can go stars and scrubs. And league size is more important than the lineup requirements themselves. But hopefully all of that makes sense. I'm just trying to get this information out there in a concise way. Now, the being reactive thing is unbelievably important. That's point number two. There's not one singular answer for every auction draft. Now, I have a formula that gives me base dollar values for my rankings. And you can find those on Patreon or in the draft guide. But one auction draft is gonna be totally different from another. What you can do with those auction values though, is use them as a baseline for when your draft is taking place. Let me give you an example. Last weekend, I was in the Kings Classic in Canton, Ohio at the Pro Football Hall of Fame. It's a 14-team league and the rosters are pretty deep. You have a quarterback, two running max, three wide receivers and three flex spots and a tight end spot. It's a full PPR league. I didn't want to go full-blown stars and scrubs because that would mean that I'd have little depth in a league where depth isn't easy to come by. In more of a home league environment, that's totally different. So with the Kings Classic, we do a snake draft followed by an auction draft. It's literally like seven hours of drafting. It's glorious. But the draft starts and I have my dollar values for players for a 12-team league, like I said, and I noticed that all the expensive guys are going for like $10 to $15 less than my stated dollar values. While more of the middle-round players, they're going around the stated dollar values, which tells me, man, I better start spending up on some of the players who are first three round picks in the draft because they seem to be going for a little bit cheaper, which does make some sense because it's a deep roster, right? People don't want to spend up and use so much of their budget on just one or two players. But immediately, when I saw that, I bought Devon Aitchan. Now, your league is going to essentially create prices as you draft, and when you have the price for players, you can then estimate what a player in his tier will go for, or should go for, or that you'd be willing to spend. So all these questions that are like, hey, how would you approach an auction draft in this specific format? The answer, honestly, is pretty similar across the board. Follow the process I just laid out, and you should at least have more success than you were having before, and listen to episode 891 And like I said, there's a little bit more in the draft guide to make you feel even more comfortable as you draft.