David Gonos: 21 fantasy football auction tips

Remember when you didn’t know what Ben & Jerry’s Half Baked ice cream tasted like? Then someone introduced you to it, and now, breakfast just isn’t the same without it?

That’s what life is like with a fantasy football auction – once you’ve taken part in one, you’ll look at your other drafts a little differently. There will be something… missing. It’s like eating vegetable lasagna. Sure, it’s still good, but…

If you haven’t played in an auction before, this article is for you!

If you have played in an auction before, this article is for you!

I’ve been playing in fantasy auctions so long, it can almost vote. And over these past two decades or so, I’ve learned a few things that I want to share with my fantasy brethren. Not my competitors, of course. Screw them. Hey, stop reading!

3 Reasons Fantasy Football Auctions Are Better Than Fantasy Drafts

You can have absolutely any player you want, which is better than a draft, unless you have the first or second pick.
You can play great mind games with the other owners, like a poker game, as opposed to just waiting for someone to prod you when it’s your turn to pick.
Auctions allow you to build teams in several ways, whether it’s a studs-and-duds fashion, or a balanced roster of many middlemen.

21 Fantasy Football Auction Tips

For argument’s sake, we’ll refer to fantasy football auctions using $200 salary caps for 12 teams in standard scoring systems. Most of these tips, unless otherwise noted, are for both live and online auctions.

Pregame Planning

Make a Budget Ahead of Time – and Keep Track!

While you should definitely get a set of auction values you like, you also want to map out how you plan to spend your money. What I mean by that is – create a budget that you can use as a guideline. You might know ahead of time, OK, I don’t have to have the most expensive players, like Todd Gurley or Le’Veon Bell, but I want to make sure I have two of the top-15 running backs and a top-10 wide receiver.

What I like to do is break down my budget by position first, setting 45% of my money aside for five RBs, and 40% for six wide receivers, with 5% for QB, 5% for TE and the final 5% for a kicker, defense and the best available RB/WR/TE. Then within each position, break those down how you’d like:

Running Backs 45% for 5 RBs = $90
RB1 $30
RB2 $30
RB3 $20
RB4 $8
RB5 $2

Do that for each position, then, as the auction wears on, you have a guide that you don’t have to follow, but it will help you during your shopping spree. As you make purchases, slot that player in, then disperse any savings to either other players in that position, or over to another position.

Running Backs 45% for 5 RBs = $90
Dalvin Cook, $38
Kenyan Drake, $19
RB3 $22
RB4 $10
Doug Martin, $1

As long as you continually update your roster and budget, you’ll never be caught off guard on a bid, and your team should resemble what you laid out initially, as long as you don’t go crazy on bids.

Be Careful Where You Sit

In a live auction, sit where you can easily hear the auctioneer, and try to sit as far from the chatterboxes as possible. Anyone talking to you during the auction is going to screw up your game – plain and simple. You’ll either miss a player being bid on or you’ll accidentally let a cheap player go by because you weren’t prepared to bid when he was nominated.

Nomination Tips

Nominate Kickers First

Unlike a straight draft, I like to nominate kickers first. I nominate them for $1 ONLY, and I go down the order of my rankings. I nominate my top kicker for $1, then wait. After the eye-rolling, someone will either bid $2 – which is good because they’re spending extra money on kickers – or you get the best kicker in the draft for $1. Most likely, you’ll go three or four rounds of nominating kickers before you end up with one (a top-five kicker for $1, nice!), but really, you’re just squeezing these fools into bidding extra money on kickers, which means they won’t have extra money to beat you on that sleeper wideout you were eyeing.

It’s important to remember that picks aren’t really distributed evenly in value in drafts or in auctions. In an auction, if the bid increments were 10 cents, instead of $1, I’d suggest spending 10 cents on your kicker. You’re still getting a top-12 kicker, and you’d have extra money for other players. Repeat after me: Kickers don’t matter.

If I find out you ended up bidding $3 on a kicker, I will drive over to your house, and I will just stare at you with my mouth agape, wondering where we went wrong with you.

Plan Your Nominations for a Few Rounds

Have your queue filled with four or five player at all times. You don’t want to be caught off guard during nominations, or you’ll accidentally nominate a player you wanted later on for cheap.

Early: Nominate Players You Don’t Want

During and after you nominate your kickers, understand that your goal is to get others to spend their money. So nominate players you don’t want – or at least, players you don’t want to spend a lot of money on. Nominate injured players you don’t believe are healthy, or superstars you believe are overrated. Get high-dollar guys out there in order to get other owners to spend cash – so you will have fewer bids to battle for the players you do want.

Late: Nominate Players You Want

Later in the draft, once you realize the moneys have shifted enough and you are ahead of the game, with a solid end-game planned because of your budget, and more money and fewer slots left, start nominating the players you want. Now your goal is to win good, cheap players. Don’t nominate players you don’t want, trying to squeeze more money out, because you might get stuck with… a player you don’t want.

Nominate Stars Better Than Players You Just Won at the Same Position

If you just won Kenyan Drake for, let’s say $19, then you should immediately nominate any stud running backs ahead of him, like Devonta Freeman. The last thing you want to happen is for Freeman, a better fantasy RB, going for less than the player you just spent money on.

Nominate $2 On Your Final Players

As the draft is coming to a close, you might have two or three players that you really, really want as your final bargains, so why nominate them for $1, risking someone going up $1, forcing you to pass or go to $3 on a $1 player? Instead, just nominate him for $2, forcing someone else to go that extra step. At this point, you won’t mind the $2 bid for a $1 player because you’re draft is closing, and you want don’t want to leave money on the table.

Bidding Tips

Mix Up Your Bidding Cadence

This is more for live drafts, but be conscious of how you are bidding — the volume, the frequency and modulation. If you bid the same way at all times, then people start to learn when you are about to bail out on a player, or they’re going to be able to predict that you’re ready to go much higher. By modulating your volume and how quickly you bid, you can keep your opponents on their toes, not letting them know when you’re bluffing/policing their bids. Speaking of that…

Don’t Police Other’s Bidding

By “policing,” I mean don’t be overly concerned with a bargain that might slip through at a position you already own. This is different for fantasy baseball, where rosters are much deeper and people use at least two at every position. If you get caught policing a bid, like bidding up Russell Wilson for $10 because you think it’s a crime for someone to get him that cheap when you’ve just spent $12 on Cam Newton, then you might end up with two starting quarterbacks. And that’s no good. (Try trading a starting quarterback and getting equal value in return – it’s quite difficult.)

Never Use the Plus-1 Button!

In online auctions, they have a Plus-1 button that allows you to click it and add $1 to the latest bid. It’s convenient, but it’s a trap! The millisecond before you hit the Plus-1 button, someone else will jump bid by $10, and now you’re suddenly bidding $11 higher than the bid you were planning to beat.

Don’t be lazy – just punch in your bids each time. Do the work!

Don’t Be the Idiot That Makes a Smart Comment DURING a Bid

If a bid battle is going on, and it’s creeping past the dollar amount you set for a player, and two owners are bidding each other into oblivion, this is the greatest thing to happen to you since you picked up Alvin Kamara off waivers last year. Let them tear each other’s wallet apart!

But don’t worry, some idiot will say something like, “Are you guys seriously bidding $30 on Marlon Mack!?!” That will splash cold water in their faces, the bidding will immediately stopped, guaranteed, and everyone will hate the Chatty Cathy.

Spend a Couple Extra Bucks When You Must

I had always believed you should never exceed your limit for a specific player. Like, if you think Amari Cooper is worth $27, then you should not bid $28 or more, with the idea that you always want to get better value than what you pay for.

However, over the past decade, I’ve shifted that belief to say you should exceed your limit – but you should do it sparingly, and only for a couple dollars more. My reasoning is that auctions change every minute they’re live, which means values change. If you have the money to spend, and a player comes across the auction table that you really want, then adjust on the fly – and spend!

Why save all that money using our other tips if you’re not going to spend it to get the players you want!?!

“Jump Bidding” is Reckless

There are very few benefits to bidding more than $1 higher than the previous bid. Those benefits include: Getting the auction over sooner, spending money like a baller, and maybe catching an owner or two off guard with a sudden jump in price. However, the drawbacks are more significant, with the greatest of which being you might overspend by several dollars that could have been used to turn a top-50 wide receiver into a top-30 wide receiver.

Understand the Power of “9”

Did you know that the marketing world has already done some very important research to help you win your fantasy football auction league? Have you ever noticed how the prices of most things at the store end with “9” or “99”? Why does something cost $9.99, instead of just being priced $10.00? The reason for it is because marketers and merchandisers figured out that “charm prices,” like prices ending in 9, 99 or 95, get considerably more sales than those ending in 00. (We have Professor Robert Schindler of the Rutgers Business School to thank for that!) Since people read from left to right, they’ll register the first number before the second number, and a $10 item sounds much more expensive than a $9.99 item.

With that in mind, consider this during your bidding wars!

If you are bidding back and forth with someone, and you are on the even numbers and the other person is bidding the odd numbers, rather than bid $8, $18 or $28 on a player, jump right to $9, $19 or $29 instead. Force them to decide on taking it into the next set of 10s! They’re likely to bow out.

Also, keep that in mind when it happens to you – don’t be afraid of taking it into the next 10s if you have a player valued as such.

Strategies

Be Active Early – Then Relax

Draft a couple really good players early on, especially since the best players will usually be nominated first as everyone wants everyone else to spend some money. Follow your budget and don’t be afraid to buy a high-priced player or two. You don’t want to wait so long that you and one other owner are battling to make Joe Mixon your franchise player.

Write Down Names of Who You Outbid For Certain Players

When you beat out another owner in a major bloodbath bidding war, write his name down next to the player you won. Now you have a trading partner that values that player as much as you do. No other owner values him as much as this guy. Just don’t remind him he was bidding on him or he’ll feel like he’s being had.

Plan Your Final Picks Wisely

You don’t want to leave any money on the table, so make sure you map out which players and positions you want to grab near the end. If you have $6 left and you have to fill three positions still, consider who the very best player available is, then bid $2 on him, knowing you can go up to $4 if you have to, leaving yourself with two $1 players. If you get him at $2, then you can still do it again on the next two players.

The bottom line is – as the draft comes to a close, don’t be afraid of bidding a max bid on the best available player.

Spend Heavily on RBs and WRs

Just like in a draft, good running backs and wide receivers are gold for a few reasons, including the need to start multiple players at the position, position scarcity, and likelihood of injuries.

Spend Frugally on QBs and TEs

As we mentioned earlier, value is spread out much differently in auction leagues. In a draft, Kirk Cousins might be an eighth-round pick, along with players like Carlos Hyde and Jamison Crowder. But in an auction, Cousins is a cheap quarterback and the other two players are probably going to cost 50 percent more than Cousins.

Treat Defenses and Kickers the Same as a Draft

Just like how you’d wait on defenses and kickers in a draft, you should spend low amounts on them because they are too inconsistent and not reliable from one year to the next. Don’t waste money here – save it for sleepers at the valuable positions.

Do you have any good fantasy football auction tips to share? Drop them in the comments below!

(Top photo: Tim Heitman-USA TODAY Sports)