The Best Strategy to DOMINATE Your 2024 Fantasy Football Auction Draft

what's going on everyone welcome back today we're going to be talking everything you need to know on how to dominate your 2024 fantasy football auction draft so make sure to tune in if you enjoy hit that like button subscribe give us a follow on Twitter at all day pigskin to continue interacting with us there let us hear in the comments section do you agree disagree with these tips uh along with any other auction draft questions you guys might have we'll do our best to answer them all but with that being said let's get right into it and as you can see I've pulled up a uh auction Draft simulator here on fantasy pros because I think it's going to help illustrate the points as we discuss them and let me resume it now you know it's a 12 team a full PPR format but that doesn't really matter too much this is again more so for illustration purposes as we discuss but look with that being said let's get right into it um I'm going to start talking with what I believe are the most important uh pieces of information you need to know first and that is the different strategies that you can employ in an auction draft I always uh categorize it into three different uh possibilities either a aggressive strategy a Balan strategy or a conservative strategy so what are each of these three strategies and when should you employ them no problem let's start with the aggressive strategy as you might expect this is a strategy where you're going to be spending more money likely earlier on and you know kind of throwing a little bit of caution to the wind because you want to get multiple top tier players now look every single auction draft you do will be different so all these tips we're going to talk are going to be interconnected um but you need to track uh and get a feel of how the draft itself is going because certain times you know certain play like in this case Christian mcaffry is going to go for a lot of money 70 bucks uh maybe there's going to be some pretty good values on certain wide receivers uh again every single auction draft has its own flavor um but being able to know what strategy you are going to go in uh to an auction draft with beforehand is very very advantageous uh it's not like a snake draft where you know a lot of times there I say you don't want to go in uh with a set strategy that you're going to live by live and die by uh because the issue there is well what happens if that certain player is not available for you what happens if your debt set on Set uh on drafting a running back in the first round but all the top tier guys are already off the board so what are you going to do you're just going to reach for the next uh tiered running back no you should go for the best player available but in an auction draft it is a little bit different so I do want to stress that and again that's why we're talking strategies first because knowing which strategy you're going to go into an auction draft with does make a difference now let's get back to the aggressive strategy like I said this is I would say akin to drafting multiple first round talents so basically that's the beauty of the of the auction draft right if you really want you can land a Christian m and a beon uh where in a snake draft that would never be possible but in an auction draft if you so choose to you can do it the question is you know how is the rest of the roster going to look uh afterwards so if you're aggressive you're going to drop uh draft uh probably multiple uh round one type of talents if you equated to a snake draft and then you know there's a little bit of an inflection point you're going to have to start being patient it's probably going to take some time afterwards until your next uh your next pick because you might be priced out uh of the first coup or of the next couple of um you know selections nominations things of that nature so uh you do have to keep an eye out for that now the downside with aggressive is obviously being way too aggressive because you know if you come out of the draft and you draft three players uh that are like you know Bree hall beon and then Justin Jefferson and then you have like $20 left for the rest of your 12 roster spots then we're going to be in trouble so um there's too much of a good thing now even though I would say the more successful rosters by experienced let me stress this by experienced auction drafters are probably those that sway a little bit aggressive because you know uh history has shown that you probably do need to be uh uh you do need multiple uh top tier talents in order to uh really have a good chance of making a far run in the playoffs and in things like that um but that's why that aggressive strategy kind of lends itself to that let's move on to the second strategy here though and that would be a balanced strategy so with the balanced strategy basically what you're doing is again if I equated to a snake draft you're selecting uh a round one guy a round two a round three around four Etc and Etc it's it's not uh it's not a situation where you're overpaying a lot where you're being too conservative and you're waiting too much uh you're kind of right in that sweet spot um so I that's usually the strategy that I recommend to a lot of people that are beginners because you know it's the easiest kind of strategy it's it's the strategy that kind of comes most natural to a lot of people that are first getting into it uh then the last strategy is the conservative strategy now this is a strategy that some people do employ but there are again drawbacks to it as well because typically if you're being conservative you're waiting for most of the upper echelon type of talent to already have been selected and then you're grabbing like multiple tier two guys round two round three types of talents uh now the good thing is you're going to have a really really good bench a really deep roster things like that but then you're going to run into some other issues like the the issues of oh which player do I play when you know who's the best choice to make things of that nature and there might be a log Jam on your bench where uh there's a lot of similarly uh kind of producing guys but there's no one alpha where you're just going to start no matter what type of situation I think that's one of those uh that's one of those deals where uh you can run into trouble now again you're going to be deeper you might have the possibility of uh being able to run a lot of Trades once the draft is over because you have so much talent so much depth uh and you will be running the nomination and bidding process later on in the draft but uh being a little too conservative uh is is a strategy that I I tell people to probably stay away from because you can fall uh fall out of uh your competition uh pretty quickly there if if you notice that everyone has an upper echelon player and you don't you're going to be playing catchup for the majority of the season now when it comes to these three different strategies I mentioned it before it's important to know which strategy you go into your draft with and the reason I say that is because it is really hard switching in between strategies during your draft now if you're an experienced drafter then you know maybe it's possible um and that's why I always say the balance strategy is typically a good strategy to employ because if there's one strategy that kind of allows you flexibility to go in between all three it's that one so keep that in mind but like look if you start out really aggressive and then you're like all right well I want to be balanced that that's not going to happen um that's just not the way it works when it comes to your fund management um again if you're somebody that's very experienced then it's a little bit different you have a little bit more flexibility you can let the draft come to you and kind of Judge it as you go uh live but otherwise it it is a little bit more difficult that's why I say you want to go in uh with a set type of strategy but now that we're done talking about strategies let's talk about the nomination process and here I think one of the most important things that I always mention is at the start of the draft nominate the expensive players that you do not want so uh I'm not sure if you noticed but when it was our turn to nominate here we nominated puka nakua the reason we nominated puka nakua is because we've said all right this is a guy that we think is overpriced uh there's some other really good wide receivers that we like things of that nature um and he's a little bit banged up right now so we're okay passing on puka AA but he's also going to fetch right around $40 which which is a lot of money right and and it's it's going to deplete other people's funds that is the point um you want to nominate the players the expensive players that you don't want early on because that way somebody else will end up paying up for them and then later on in the draft uh when let's say it's you and that person that spent up on that player you didn't want and potentially got them um bidding on a player that you actually do want you are likely going to have an advantage in the bidding process because you're going to have more funds available more money available and um you're going you're likely going to be able to win that bid so that's why it's super important early on to force other players to spend their money A lot of this uh you know auction draft process is a psychological uh game to it uh forcing other people to spend knowing when to nominate a certain player knowing what strategy to use knowing when to get out of a bidding war um and then just like knowing the Tendencies of your league mates these are all uh things we're going to discuss and this is why uh I really personally like the auction draft process because it a it is a little bit more psychological and a little bit more involved but look all right we've talked the different strategies we've talked what I think you know it's a quick cover of just nominating expensive players it's basic but it's super super important let's move on to the next point that is knowing your tiar uh this is extremely important in the auction draft process I mean it's also important in the snake draft process but in the auction draft why that's important let's look at the cheat sheets here because this breaks it out on fantasy pros by tiers right and I think for the most part it's pretty accurate so the reason I bring this up is because let's say that it is gotten into the final name here of the tier 2 running backs the way that they are ranked here on fantasy pros well what typically happens and you know if if you want if if you're like all right I need a running back I need to get this last tier 2 guy uh because you've kind of ignored the running back position for example and and you still want to get a uh an upper El Shalon guy at that position look your league mates they're not blind to that either they realize that there is uh a drop off in tears and if you don't realize that if you're not keeping up with that fact what's going to end up happening is you are going to end up paying a premium for uh you know for that last tier tiered player um and maybe you could have gotten somebody of the same ilk for a lot cheaper the reason why that happens is because it creates that kind of artificial bidding war for a player and uh because of that scarcity that exists for that last tiered player people are naturally going to uh spend up more money on them that's the way it happens again that's that's the psychology of it people realize oh if I don't do this now it's going to be too late and um it leads to uh INF INF at bidding wars inflated player prices which is is one of those traps you do not want to fall into uh during the auction draft process that's why knowing the tiers kind of having that list in your head or using a cheat sheet while you draft and having those tiers you know knowing which players you think are ranked a little bit too high a little bit too low is always super helpful in the auction draft process because it's going to lead you to getting good values it's going to help you avoid those inflated prices all of those things so for that reason knowing the tiers keeping up with the tiers uh and where those players are is very very useful so let's move on here now uh to our fourth point and that is knowing which platform you are going to draft on during your actual draft day and then when you are getting your practice you're when you're doing all those mock drafts doing the majority of those mock drafts on that specific platform now I can't tell you how simple of an idea this is right on paper but at the same time it's one that I feel like a lot of people kind of neglect because all right let's say you're drafting on Yahoo for example but then it's just easier for you to do those auction uh auction drafts on let's say fantasy pros or ES n and you really like the roster you put together on ESPN or fantasy pros um that doesn't mean folks that you're going to be able to um put together the exact same roster by spending similar types of dollars on yaho on your actual uh draft platform that you're using come draft day because just like a snake format the pricings for certain players are different from platform to platform again that's just akin to the rankings being different from platform to Plat platform um so that again ties back into uh being able to identify where certain players are priced where they're ranked uh so you know where those uh discrepancies are so you can take advantage of it and then again by doing the majority of your uh auction drafts on the specific platform you're going to use that is the best way to prep for it because you more or less than uh know the type of roster you can put together how much money you're going to have to spend on certain positions on your starting roster um and you know uh basically how much money you're going to have left over uh to play with and you know you kind of draw up a pretty for the most part accurate blueprint but now let's get into what I call the last piece or miscellaneous types of tips here um where these are more singular uh quicker uh to the point but still pretty important so uh something that I always talk about budget management when it comes to the auction draft process it is all about budget management um you want to again this ties back into the strategy you're using you want to be smart with your money uh you don't want to spend all of it right away and then be left scratching your head what you're going to do for the remaining um uh starting spots on your roster when you only have like 40 or 50 bucks left typically you know what I see is spending right around 70% of your budget on your starting uh roster uh so not your bench is more or less like a good starting point so again budget management uh not not getting into unnecessary bidding wars there obviously there's always going to be situations where somebody is over priced and somebody overpays for somebody uh something like that but going being extremely excessive like paying $10 more for a certain player I would say that's on the excessive side um you know typically like four or five dollar more than their recommended price like I get it that's going to happen from time to time so just keep that in mind you don't want to get too aggressive you don't want to get in too many bidding wars things of that nature now sure sometimes you can just inflate the price of a player and punish your league mates for being a little bit too conservative because maybe they've ignored a certain position and that way you can you can force them to pay up uh a little bit more than they want but again uh while that's smart just don't fall in the Trap of accidentally bidding too much and then you ending up with that player next I want to talk about uh you know nominating players that you want early on and just nominating those Dark Horses those potential steals early on I typically advise against this the reason being is again it's all about psychology during the start of the draft that's when people have the most amount of money naturally right typically around $200 um and because that's when they have the most amount of money more often than not the majority of times when people have the most amount of money that's when they spend the most like if if you nominate somebody that you really like and you think is a steal a little bit later on in the draft and people have already spent up a lot of their funds like they're not going to be able to overbid that player as opposed to the start of the draft where yeah if they really want to they can do that to you they might not even want that player but they may just want to spite you because they see that you nominate somebody that's a little bit lower down uh the rankings and they're like all right this must be somebody that they really want uh so I'm going to bid up the pro uh bid up um the price and if they want them they're going to have to over pay for them so that's why more often than not I say nominate those players that you really like that are later on types of guys later on when uh when know some of that money has been spent up and uh you know again this comes down to it's tied to budget management it's tied to uh just keeping track of the auction draft process itself now that's not to say that sometimes there uh it there isn't going to be a point where somebody is nominated and you know it's a good value there's always the one-offs that's why you always have to I say this for the auction draft process you always have to stay in tune you have to stay um like in the moment and be involved in every single nomination and you have to keep track of your league mates their roster the way the way it's setting up because that's going to give you a little bit of a oneup on them during the uh the the live drafting process so you can kind of predict their Tendencies but again that's probably a little bit more involved uh a little bit more advanced of a strategy so if you don't do that uh always or at the start don't worry about it that's that's not that big uh of a deal also trying to identify certain League Trends if you're in an auction auction League that's been going on for several years typically most platforms allow you to look at the um you know the results from years prior so you can see how much certain players went for you can see whether your league really likes running backs whether they really value quarterbacks or tight ends and things like that and if if there hasn't been too much League turnover for the most part you can take away some of those Tendencies and apply them to their to to your current draft and then the final thing here that I want to mention is when it comes to the final uh budget that you have left that final uh dollar amount try to end the draft with right around like I mean Max $4 type of situation the reason I say that is because I mean there's a possibility where you know you can finish the draft and you can have like $10 left over that is the worst case scenario because what that means is you left um you left Talent on the table you could have gone ahead and maybe maybe you got a tier two running back well if you spent just like three four5 more a lot of times that can be the difference between Landing a tier 2 running back and a tier one running back so ideally you want to minimize the amount of money that you have left at the end because that means you maximized on the drafting value uh so also keep that in mind but with that we wrap up these what I believe are key tips that you need to know in order to nominate uh to dominate your 2024 fantasy football auction draft again knowing the different types of strategies knowing uh what type of players you want to nominate knowing the tiers practicing on the appropriate platform those miscellaneous tips that will be mentioned at the end hopefully this was helpful for you guys if it was hit that like button subscribe give us give us a follow on Twitter at allay pixion to continue interacting with us there let us hear in the comment section any questions you guys might have we'll do our best to answer them all but in the meantime we'll see you guys in future videos