Head RotoExpert Ben Ice delves into Auction Drafts to help you build a powerhouse fantasy football team.

As fantasy sports nears the 30 million-player threshold, the games themselves continue to evolve. Similar to the computer industry in the 1990s, which saw a revolution in operating systems as they moved from command line (DOS, CPM) to Graphical User Interfaces like Windows, the internet has fueled an explosion not only of players, but also of variations of the games themselves.

Yet somehow the oldest, simplest form of drafting seems to maintain its grasp on the game. Snake drafts, which rely inherently on the luck of the draw, still dominate the fantasy landscape.  Much of that is due to that same simplicity.  Fantasy football is especially subjugated by this Stone Age methodology because of its sheer simplicity.  Casual fans can play the game and be fooled by the illusion that they are somehow in control of their destiny. 

Somewhere Lady Luck and Murphy’s Law are cuddling amorously and toasting their good fortune.

The auction draft format is slowly gaining ground. I expect this trickle to turn into a flood as serious players (who, along with the industry, continue to grow in numbers) embrace the more challenging and infinitely more satisfying auction mindset.

It’s not hard to understand why.

I was first introduced to auction drafting in 2004 when, as a writer for Fantasy Sharks, I was invited to represent the site for an auction draft hosted on Fantasy Auctioneer. I was immediately taken in by the concept.  I was in control. I no longer had to pray that my lotto number would be selected to grab the top two or three difference-makers. Instead, I was able to go toe-to-toe with 11 other fantasy managers for the players I coveted.

Auction drafts are the true free market economy in fantasy sports. 12 owners meet, each with the same salary cap and the same number of roster spots to fill. Each of us has the freedom to decide who we want on our respective teams and how much we are willing to pay for that privilege.

Auction drafting is much more than just another way to draft. The nuances, from Studs and Scrubs to the balanced approach, are only a piece of the puzzle. Strategies like The Hammer, which often plays more to a balanced approach rather than the Studs and Scrubs, allow you to control the end of the draft, the time when the best values are often realized. 

The Game
The standard for auction drafting calls for a $200 salary cap and 17 rosters spots to fill. Typically, the 17 spots include one QB, two RBs, two WRs, a flex player (WR/RB), one TE, one defense/special team combination (D/ST), one K, and eight bench players of any configuration.  Variations include number of teams, a $100 salary cap (which I personally find to be too restrictive, as it makes the draft end game less manageable), and the inclusion of individual defensive players (IDP) instead of the simpler D/ST (the latter being a format which is rapidly gaining in popularity).

Each fantasy owner, in order, nominates a player on his turn. The fantasy players then subsequently bid on that player until no one is willing to pay more that the most recent price offered. At that point, the winning owner adds the player to his roster, and the final bid amount is deducted from his salary cap.  Your cap is automatically reduced by $1 for each open roster spot, so you can’t exit the draft without filling your roster.  For instance, if I bid $72 on LaDainian Tomlinson and $67 on Steven Jackson, I’d have spent $139 on two roster spots, leaving 15 openings to be filled.  My remaining auction dollars, $61 in this case, would be reduced by 14 (the number of spots remaining minus one dollar for the next player) leaving me with a maximum bid of $47 to bid on any one player, ensuring I’ll have a dollar to spend on each open spot. So if I bid $47 on Tom Brady and end up the high bidder, I’ve filled three spots and have $14 left to fill the remaining 14 roster positions.

The beauty of auction drafting doesn’t end on draft day either. While some may use a standard waiver process during the season, most auction leagues rely on a Free Agent Acquisition Budget (FAAB) during the season. The reasoning is to continue the philosophy of an even playing field, forcing players to manage their waivers just like the built their initial roster during the draft.

Strategies – Studs and Scrubs, Balanced Bidding, and the Hybrid Gambit

For the purposes of this article I’ll focus on the standard format when analyzing these various strategies for approaching your Auction Draft.

Studs and Scrubs (S&S)

The idea is to buy a few key studs at a premium and to fill the balance of your roster with value and high risk/high reward players. You can often spot those following this concept, because they are the ones who bid Tomlinson to somewhere between $70 and $80.  In fact, you’ll see that S&S players will often budget as much as 60 to 70 percent of their cap to acquiring two or three stud players, two of whom are almost always RBs.  While this may seem crazy, I’ve seen guys like Scott Pianowski of Fantasy Guru pull it off successfully. However it takes an iron will to work this strategy, because once you’ve blown the majority of your budget on two or three studs, you have to hold out for the end game, which is affectionately called the Dollar Derby.  Maximizing your remaining budget in the end game is critical if you want to succeed, but it becomes even more important when you employ S&S.

Balanced Bidding

This is probably the most difficult strategy, because it means sitting on your wallet while watching many of the top players fly off the draft board at often-ungodly prices.  A Balanced owner does most of his buying during the Value Middle, once approximately a third of total available auction dollars have been spent on a small percentage of players. This is where your third tier RBs and second-tier QBs and WRs are usually taken. The idea is to spread your risk across more players, hoping some of them will break out during the season. This is often where rookies are purchased. Adrian Peterson might have gone for $20 or less last year, because he was an unknown quantity, but you can be sure he’ll be filet mignon on the eventual winner’s plate this year.  While you may lose out on the highest-ranked players if you follow this philosophy, it helps to insulate your team from the inevitable injury problems that can doom a S&S owner.

The Hybrid Gambit

I tend to fall into this category more often than not. While I can’t get myself to risk 35 percent or more on a player like LT, I am more than willing to spend up to 40 percent of my budget for two solid RBs. This year they might be Clinton Portis, Willis McGahee, Jamal Lewis, or Laurence Maroney. While I am spending more than someone following the Balanced discipline, I feel like I’ve got a better chance of having one of my players hang close to LT or AP in point production.  I might then spend $20 for a tier two QB like Matt Hasselbeck, Ben Roethlisberger, or Eli Manning and $40 for two WRs, in the range of Anquan Boldin, Santonio Holmes, or Torry Holt. That gives me the majority of my starting lineup filled and $60 left for the end game, where I know I’ll see value bubbling to the surface.  Believe me when I say that if you don’t reserve some of your budget for the third and final stage, you’ll find yourself constantly saying “Damn, that makes my $32 spent on Chad Johnson look like a waste in comparison.”

Nominations – The Rush, the Value Middle, and the Dollar Derby

There are three stages in most drafts and they are really more emotional in concept than anything.  They mirror the tendencies you will experience in almost every draft. If you pay close attention, you’ll see the shifts and be better prepared to take advantage of each stage.

The Rush

In the first stage, owners are flush with money and eager to snag top value with their budget. Typically, a manager will nominate the most highly coveted players who they aren’t interested in acquiring to flush money out of the other owners pockets, thereby reducing the amount available to bid on subsequent players. During this first stage, top players go for premium dollars, significantly reducing the total available cash in a short period of time. This is a mirror of what usually happens during the beginning of the NFL free agency period and is dominated by the S&S strategists.

The Value Middle

You’ll know when the Value Middle comes around, when quality players are suddenly not commanding premium dollars. I’ve seen countless drafts where one owner paid, as in my previous example, $72 for LT, and Clinton Portis is bought some time later for $29. This happened in several drafts last year, when concerns of his shoulder injury and the prospect of losing carries to Ladell Betts were both on many owner's minds. It’s during this stage that owners following a more balanced strategy will fill their starting lineup for the same amount of budget that the S&S players spent for only two or three studs.  Bidding usually becomes less frenetic here, as owners hoard their cash looking for deals.

Which leads us to the end game...

The Dollar Derby and The Hammer

The Dollar Derby is the last and most critical part of the draft.  Owners will have spent a significant portion of their auction dollars and will still have quite a few holes on their roster.  This is where the real fun begins, as savvy owners vie to control the end game, with what is known as The Hammer.

Simply put, having the hammer means you have more cash available than the other owners as compared to the number of roster spots remaining. If, for example, I have $36 of cap available and six spots to fill, I can spend up to $31 for a single player... assuming I feel there is someone left who is worth that much investment. More often, I’ll be able to spend between $6 and $10 on the remaining players, while other owners look on jealously. This is usually where sleeper stealing occurs.  For example, if I covet D.J. Hackett and have $10 to spend for five roster spots, the maximum I can spend would be $6. The owner with The Hammer simply bids $7, thereby stealing my sleeper and filling a roster spot with a potentially solid player. Last year I was buying Wes Welker in early drafts for $4-$7, because there are many WRs left to consider after the first two or three tiers are depleted. Needless to say, he was one of the best values in the draft, but no one really knew that at the time. This is also the time where you can scoop up injured players, older players, and guys who’ve fallen out of favor due to perceived loss of opportunity for a buck or two.  S&S proponents use this final stage to fill their roster with sleepers, rookies, and the aforementioned out of favor players, hoping to strike fantasy gold once the season begins.

While it may seem like a lot to take in, the sheer excitement of working an auction draft in an attempt to out-maneuver opposing owners makes this by far the greatest format available to serious fantasy players. If you have never tried auctions, I implore you to make this the year you take the plunge. Almost every person who has tried this format immediately falls in love with it.

Ben Ice is the founder and managing partner of RotoExperts.com. He has already mocked over three dozen drafts in preparation for the upcoming season, while telling his cohorts he’s been busily planning and building the imminent rise of RotoExperts as one of the premier fantasy destinations.  Um, did he just say that out loud? You can reach him with your fantasy questions at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it , that is, unless he is mocking his next dozen teams.

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