Inflated Auction Strategy

[James8282]

I am in a fantasy auction league that has managers who spend BIG on running backs and other poistions that have elite players (Kelce/Mahomes/Adams).  Almost all RBs prices are inflated.  I didn't do well last year and trying to understand why.  After a year, I see that the settings heavily rely on the player scoring TDs, less points for yardage.  That said, I used a draft kit to input settings and for each player to have a dollar value.  The budget is $200 and players like CMC go for $117, Mahomes $100, a lot higher than what the spreadsheet calls for.  When I saw this last year, I passed on elite players and tried to get level 2/3 players for a better value.  Unfortunately, I came in last so I feel like the spreadsheet failed me.  With managers spending that much on elite players, what is the best way to handle this?

[Don Goodell]

My suggestion to you is that you pick a RB outside of the top 3 (top 4-10) and make that player yours at whatever it cost you, and also do the same for any qb (Mahomes and Allen will be pretty steep).  For these two players you have to be able to ignore your spread sheet, and that's a must!  If my RB is Taylor and QB is Murray, they are my players long before that draft even starts.  At the end of the draft it would be good to have a firm understanding of the math on the table.  I like to call this "trump power" . (example) If you still need 5 players and you have 15 million left, then your trump power is 11 million.  So basically 4 of those 5 players are subtracted as 1 million dollar purchases and the last players value becomes the remainder(11).  Anybody can win a auction league even if they don't understand simple math, but if you understand this simple math, it does give you an edge.  If 3 players (besides you) are remaining and they all have a trump power of 1 and your trump power is 2 that means any player that they nominate can be yours, and any player that you elect at 1 million, they can not trump. Though once you bid 2 million you then have the same trump power as them(1). At the end of the day, the most important thing is that you obtain an elite RB and an elite QB, and if you follow your spreadsheet, chances are you will not.  Good luck James!

 

Edited September 6, 2021 by Don Goodell