Fantasy Football auctions require an entirely different type of decision-making from team owners. Ask ten different players their auction strategy in a redraft league, and you might get ten extremely different answers.
Auction strategy requires you to worry not just about roster build, but also asset allocation. And it also forces you to make perhaps the toughest decision of all: Bid big on top players early or wait for bargains late. Let’s talk about what that means, and then I’ll explain how I like to do it when I get into an auction.
The Best Players Come Up Early in Auction Drafts
Maybe you’ve been in an auction where all owners are super-disciplined and save some of the biggest names on the board for later in a draft. But that would be different than most Fantasy Football auctions I’ve ever encountered.
In many cases, the early players put up for bid tend to look like the early rounds of a standard redraft. I guess the theory is that owners like to get the big purchases out of the way early so that they can set the market for the other players who are left. Whatever the reason, it’s just the way it tends to happen.
That means you must decide on your auction strategy quickly. You can go big on the top players, like CeeDee Lamb or Breece Hall, and run the risk of depleting your allocated amount of money. Or you can stay out of the bidding wars and try to pick off players later since you’ll likely have more money than those who scored players early at high costs.
Building from the Top Down
My Fantasy Football auction strategy is to get involved with the bidding early. Auctions give you the chance to do something you just can’t do in standard drafts, and that’s to double up on some of the top players. For example, this year, I believe that there are three running backs and five wide receivers in a clear top tier.
In an auction, you could conceivably get two of them. You might end up with Bijan Robinson and Justin Jefferson, something that wouldn’t happen in a draft. Now I’m not saying you should go that route, as that would probably cost you a little bit more than is advisable in a competitive league. But it at least gives you an idea of what you might be able to do.
I would prefer to get at least one of those eight guys in the early bidding. What I’ll also try to do is to get two RB1s and/or two WR1s by bidding high. That might mean going after someone like Tyreek Hill, a high-end WR1, and then complimenting that with Puka Nacua, who’s more toward the bottom of the WR1 grouping.
Is it Affordable?
My auction strategy, and it’s a pretty hard and fast one, is that I’m going to fill my quarterback and tight-end positions for as little money as possible (assuming it’s a standard and not a superflex league.) The reasoning here is that I feel it’s much easier to find bargains at those spots than you can at the running back and wide receiver positions.
If that means that I must go a little bit below what I normally would consider QB1 or TE1 types to fill those positions, I can live with that. Give me Justin Herbert and Dalton Schultz. I can make up for it if I have two studs at running back and three more at the wideout position.
Besides, the endgame “bargains” in an auction are rarely all they’re cracked up to be. Why? Because there are usually a couple of owners who have used the same auction strategy of saving money. That means that they’ll beat each other up bidding for second and third-tier players, who then end up going for much more than their real value. Better to bid early and go get the top Fantasy players available while you can.
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