Above are the results from an auction I participated in this past Saturday. If you look at it a little, you’ll notice some things went a little screwy. The lesson, which is one you’ve already learned if you’ve done a few auctions, is that every auction is different. We’ll get into the specifics of this auction later, but first I want to talk about how to prepare for an auction.

The first step when preparing for an auction is coming up with a budget. Unlike a snake draft, you have a lot of options when it comes to roster construction. But I find it’s best to try and treat an auction as much like a snake as possible in order to build a balanced, deep team. My goal is to essentially get a one player that would go in each round of a snake draft. So to prepare a budget, I simply take the midpoint price of each round to set a baseline price for each of my picks. For example, in a 12-team league, I would average the cost of my sixth and seventh ranked players to determine about how much I want to spend on my most expensive player. Here is the budget I came up with for this 12-team auction.

[am4show have=’p3;p4;p7;p9;’ guest_error=’Front Office’ ]

As stated, auctions are inherently unpredictable. But the most variable players as far as prices go are the guys at the top. So it’s best to prepare several potential budgets to use depending on what the top players cost. You should change the price of your top player and then adjust the rest of your budget accordingly. Below is a picture showing the five budgets I took in to my latest auction, with the budget I ended up using in this draft highlighted in yellow. As soon as you get an expensive guy, you’ll know which column to use.

Rice was my first player purchased at $60, so I used the budget with that price allotted for my top pick. I like Rice quite a bit, so I was perfectly fine having him as the 4th most expensive back. And when he came up, he and Doug Martin were the only running backs in my top tier left. I was happy to take Rice and not risk having to overpay for the last elite guy. After that, my plan was to get a running with an ADP of 12-15 at the position or one of the elite receivers for about $40. But it quickly became clear that a running back I would normally pay $39-$40 dollars for was going to go for more than that. And if I took an elite receiver, I’d only have $26 or so to spend on my RB2. As you can see, that would have ended up being someone like Eddie Lacy who is far below my cutoff for a second back. When MJD came up and stalled out in the mid-forties, I couldn’t pass it up given that I had MJD valued at $54 and the obvious premium you were going to pay for backs.

With MJD in tow, I was $6 over my budget. But there were a couple factors that helped me get back on budget rather quickly. First of all, that premium being paid for running backs meant there were going to be some values at another position. That position was not quarterback. A few guys in the league had the strategy of cornering the market on QBs and trying to work out trades for QB-desperate owners later. These guys overpaid for quarterbacks to make that happen, and they got two or three of them. Aaron Rodgers went for an insane $56, and that owner also bought Colin Kaepernick at a more reasonable, but still overpriced, $22. Drew Brees actually went for a fair price of $39, but his owner also took Tom Brady for $34. Peyton Manning went for $38, and his owner also took Matt Ryan. That gorging on quarterbacks was the second and most important factor that helped me get back on budget. I think it was a horrible strategy on their part, but it’s the perfect example of the uniqueness and unpredictability of auctions.

Because of the splurging on other positions, wide receivers went for huge values. It’s a deep position to begin with, so there are likely to be values at WR in any auction, but that was exaggerated in this auction. Unfortunately, I didn’t recognize that early enough and bought a few receivers I probably would have passed on had I caught on. But when I took Vincent Jackson for $21, I was pleased. He’s a borderline WR1 in my rankings, and I got him for a price that was $5 under what I had budgeted for my third player, so it basically got me back on budget. And then when I got Welker for $16, I was actually under budget. However, had I known that Hakeem Nicks would go for $9, Stevie Johnson for $7, and Cecil Shorts for $5, I would have passed on at least one of my first two receivers and picked up an extra flex-worthy running back like Ahmad Bradshaw for $16, Lamar Miller for $15, or DeAngelo Williams for $11.

I did manage to take advantage of the WR prices a little later in the draft. I thought Reggie Wayne for $11 was a steal, but then I got Jordy Nelson for $5, which I thought was the steal of the draft. I also love Lance Moore for $4.

Some might criticize my team because I left money on the table ($3). But I like being one of the guys with the most money in the later part of a draft. Having money in the back half of the draft allows you to essentially be the net for the values that fall through the cracks. That’s what happened with Jordy. He was a monster steal at $5, and I was able to get him because I had stayed close to my budget but just under it. It also allowed me to make sure I had the extra buck to spend to get my handcuff (Pierce) as well as my preferred RG3 insurance in Ben Roethlisberger.

Long story short, this draft’s calling card was insane value at wide receiver. Because I stuck to my budget, I was able to take advantage of it to some degree. However, I didn’t see it coming early enough. I’m not sure if Jared and Dave knew what was happening or lucked into it, but they reaped the benefits of it. Jared spent fairly big on two backs as well as two QBs and still ended up with Steve Smith and James Jones as his receivers. He shouldn’t have drafted two QBs, but he didn’t do horribly in spite of it. And Dave spent really big on Spiller and McCoy but still ended up with Amendola and Antonio Brown for a total of $17. Kudos to them. But all in all, I’m pleased with the depth and balance I ended up with by sticking to my budget.

[/am4show]