As fantasy football continues to evolve, alternative draft formats like auctions have become more and more popular. The intrigue of always having a chance to grab the players you really want — and constructing a team almost entirely on your own terms rather than luck of the draw — seems to really appeal to millions of fantasy managers.
Of course, liking a format and excelling at said format are two different things — succeeding at an auction draft requires strategy, discipline, and attention to detail. Mail-in an auction draft by not preparing leading into your league's big day — or not paying attention from one nomination to the next — and you could wind up on an express train to the Toilet Bowl.
The Sporting News has plenty of experience participating in auction formats, so keep reading if you want an expert's advice on dos and don'ts ahead of your league's auction proceedings. So, silence your phones and take some notes: you're about to get educated on auction drafts (side note: sorry, kids, you won't get college credit for this).
DOMINATE YOUR DRAFT: 2024 Fantasy Football Cheat Sheet
For those wondering what the heck an auction draft even is, we'll back up the truck a bit. Auctions allow fantasy managers to acquire any player they want as long as they outbid the rest of the league and as long as they stay under the salary cap (generally set at $200 per team). So, having an auction strategy and budget plan on your 2024 fantasy cheat sheet is paramount to your long-term success.
There are always some general strategy rules to follow for any type of draft. For auctions, you usually don’t want to blow the majority of your money on two top-tier studs at the start of the auction. If you do, you could be relegated to value picks the rest of the way.
That said, you also don’t want to be too conservative and rely too heavily on mid-tier producers and long-shot breakouts. Auction draft mission statements should mirror basic snake draft strategies:
- Always look to maximize value
- Don’t reach or overspend on player
- Avoid reactionary or knee-jerk decisions
- Establish depth at running back
2024 PPR RANKINGS
Top 250 Overall | QB | RB | WR | TE | DEF/ST | K
Easier said than done, right? There will always be one manager who finds a way to screw up your game plan, always one bid you regret, and always one player you can’t believe you let your opponent snag on the cheap. But that’s life! There’s still a whole heck of a lot less disappointment in an auction — where you can largely control your own destiny — than in a snake draft, where you sit and wait to see which players fall to you. In the auction world, we can dictate our fate. Who doesn’t love freedom? It’s like a fantasy American dream!
And just like in a capitalistic society, there are plenty of people who fall flat on their faces chasing their dreams (or in this case, bidding on workhorse backs, high-target wideouts, and TD-hungry tight ends). You’ll fail if you don’t have a business strategy in the real world, and your fantasy team will absolutely tank if you go into an auction draft without some semblance of a plan.
Today, we’ll discuss some fundamental auction rules and the strategies that can take you from a history of mediocrity to a wildly successful future as an auction-draft tycoon. Take notes now, because the ones who wing it during auction leagues on the big day are generally the ones with top-heavy teams and/or an abundance of good-but-not-great talent.
Now bang the gavel, and let’s get this money!
2024 FANTASY AUCTION VALUES (PPR & STANDARD)
Overall | QB | RB | WR | TE | D/ST | K
Fantasy Football Auction Strategy 2024: Tips, advice for auction drafts
1. Know your budget (and format) and set your limits
Much like your budget in everyday life, you need to stay within your limits and draft within your means. Spending $130 on two guys in the first 10 minutes of your draft may feel amazing for the moment, but it’s going to be pretty brutal 50 minutes later when you’re still laboring to stretch the remaining $70 out to fill your roster. Your team will be top-heavy, you’ll have poor depth, and you’ll be relying far too heavily on bargain-bin investments for the majority of the auction.
Everything is about balance. If you spend up to draft a top-five running back, you’ll have to sacrifice a bit at another position. So, it’s probably a good idea to cross off the most expensive guys at wide receiver if you draft the most expensive running back early. Drafting a top-five player at each position just won’t happen unless you somehow figure out how to hypnotize your leaguemates. But what’s the fun in that? You want your opponents fully cognizant to witness you own them, from the opening bell to the final whistle.
Determine the price points you like for each one of your target players. Review our projected auction values and then make your own list. Tier off your players so you can better establish where you value each group. That way, you can better appropriate your next order of business if and when you make a big splash. You need to constantly do the math in your head and be one step ahead of your next move. Avoid the noise caused by other owners — your biggest enemy in an auction is often yourself. Remember to proactively self-reflect. “If I grab this guy at this price point, what kind of money will I have left to finish building my core roster?”
2024 FANTASY SLEEPERS
QB | RB | WR | TE | Each Team
Obviously, you have to know your format. Derrick Henry might not be worth a $40 bid in PPR leagues, but he could go for that in Non-PPR drafts. Deebo Samuel, a YAC-playmaker who relies on quality over quantity, also figures to drop in PPRs. However, players like Austin Ekeler and Saquon Barkley will typically yield more value as PPR backs. Just like you would pinpoint specific players round-by-round in snakes, do your research and know your targets at every price level in auctions. Don’t lose sight of your average remaining per-player budget.
2. Mock and mock and mock some more (both auction and snakes)
Of course, you’d better get in plenty of practice runs before the big day. Even experienced auction drafters need to mock ahead of their yearly draft, because so many variables exist each NFL season. Trades, free-agent signings, injuries, rookies, and even coaching moves can all affect a player's fantasy impact from one year to the next.
The most valuable part of mock auctions is determining what the public actually deems fair-market value for each player. Any "experts" can list a price next to a player’s name and call it their "projected value," but just like in real-life open markets, supply and demand ultimately dictate the actual values. A player’s true cost will be whatever people spend on him, not what an analyst suggests it should be.
It’s also good to establish your plan through a mock draft. Seeing what works and what doesn’t work when it comes to roster-building is vital. You have infinite do-overs in the Mock Auction lobbies, whereas you only have one go when you’re drafting your real-deal 2024 fantasy team.
2024 POSITION TIERS & DRAFT STRATEGY
QB | RB | WR | TE | D/ST
Participate in some snake drafts, as well, and then compare your favorite mock team from a snake to your favorite mock team from an auction. How do they differ? In what ways do your snake teams seem superior to your auction teams, and how can you bridge that gap in your next auction draft? Understanding your strengths and weaknesses, like every facet of life, can improve you greatly in the long run.
3. Follow the same core standards and mission statement as you would in snake drafts
Eventually, after a number of mocks, you will reach a vital breakthrough: your auction teams will begin to showcase similar starting strength, upside, and depth as your snake teams. You’ll regularly feature the equivalent of a first-rounder, a second-rounder, and a third-rounder, or two firsts and a fourth, or three seconds.
In that sense, it’s almost worth it to define a pre-draft value for each positional tier. Just like NFL general managers refer to a "Draft Value Chart" when contemplating trading draft picks, you should be referring to your own draft value chart when considering which players to target and which ones to fade (and when, and at which price points).
Higher-priced wideouts might not have as much value if they turn into bidding-war assets. Two lower-tier receivers at good value might be obtainable at the same total cost as one stud WR, and could inevitably net you more per-spot average production than if you paid up.
A top-heavy team doesn’t always win in auctions or snakes, and neither does a team with little to no depth. Spend wisely to create a balanced team.
4. Nominate and spend wisely
Budgeting is so important, so we’re going to reiterate it. In fact, nominating and spending are really what auctions are all about, so we’ll do breakout sections on both below.
5. Show up, pay attention, stay focused, and have fun
This could have just as easily been tip No. 1. It might sound boring, but you have to be present and engaged for your auction to be a success. Being late or not showing up can have dire consequences on your team and the league as a whole. Auto-auctioners screw everything up, so make sure your league members will all be at the draft on time and with reliable connections.
Next, pay attention! The ones actively involved the entire time are the ones who often land massive values while other leaguemates lose interest or drop the ball. You might not have been targeting Mike Evans, but if you can land a $28 receiver at $19, you should probably consider it. You still want to grab some "best-available" players when the value seems too good to pass up.
One last rule: always have fun and learn from your mistakes. If you keep at it, you’ll be the one giving the advice before you know it.
How to budget for each position on fantasy football auction drafts
Once you’ve mocked a bunch and established a general understanding of who costs what among the actual fantasy football community, you should set a basic budget for your team. Plain and simple, you need to have an idea of how you’ll be spending your $200 across all your roster spots.
Sometimes, a steal of a pick will reshape your core plan a bit, but you can still follow the guidelines on positional and tiered budgeting. Put a certain percentage on RBs, WRs, and TEs, and leave about 10 percent for your bench. Try to put around 10-13 percent total into QB, while RB, WR, and TE can vary based on your targets. Let’s run through a sample auction to see how it all works in action.
Kicker and D/ST
The easiest way to start this hypothetical budget plan is to allocate $1 at kicker and D/ST. If your league still has kickers, bummer, but please don’t spend over $1 on anyone except maybe Justin Tucker. Generally, the drop in per-game average from K1 to K2 and K3 at the end of each year proves that spending an extra buck is a waste. The Seahawks' Jason Myers for $1 sure looked good with his fantasy football-leading 8.4 points per game two seasons ago, but he was only 1.0 PPG better than the 10th-best kicker.
You could really use that extra buck when developing your offensive depth. The same can be said for D/ST, a position that’s almost impossible to predict each year and lends similarly minute declines from one tier to the next. Miami for a buck lands you a talented defense with some strong matchups in its first eight weeks (including the Titans, Seahawks, Patriots, and Cardinals). And when the 'Fins have a tough game, you can just as easily stream a hot defense on any given Sunday.
Bench (Part 1)
We’ll go over which actual bench players we will select for this model after we build our starting squad, but you obviously want a solid bench. You don’t need studs. Your studs are your starters, and you can also add breakouts via free agency and the waiver wire.
Your bench should be a variety of reliable handcuffs, high-upside sleepers, and a rookie or two. If you go conservative at QB, consider grabbing a second QB with a high ceiling on the cheap. If you pick an injury-prone or volatile TE, get him a backup.
Let’s base our budgetary plan on a league with standard 16-player teams. With $2 slotted to K and D/ST and $20 allotted to our bench, we have $178 left to spend on our eight starting skill positions. Now you can really break it down (erra-erra-erra).
Quarterback
At QB, we generally recommend going for value. Much like with kickers and defense, the contributions of second-tier and third-tier QBs are not massively different on a per-game basis.
Spending 10 percent of your skill-position budget on mobile QBs like Lamar Jackson seems like a big risk, and not just because of injury history. Jackson's $24-27 projections and average auction values (AAVs) double those of C.J. Stroud and Joe Burrow ($12-$13), both of whom we regard as more valuable.
We even prefer the upside of Brock Purdy and Jordan Love (both $8) after the former brought San Francisco to the Super Bowl and the latter enjoyed a breakout year in which he guided Green Bay to the NFC title game. And Trevor Lawrence, Justin Herbert, and Jared Goff all seem like strong value buys given their past success, coaching, and/or weapons around them.
Let’s slot Love, the fifth-highest scorer in fantasy last season, in at $10. That's two bucks over his projected cost but still a massive value for a QB coming off a season with 32 passing touchdowns and over 4,400 all-purpose yards. With multiple talented young wideouts and former rushing champ Josh Jacobs, there's no reason to believe Love's regression in 2024 will be a negative one.
Obviously, you don’t have to draft Love, but looking for similar value makes sense at QB unless you can get one of the top studs for well below market value.
Running Back/FLEX
That leaves us $168 for two running backs, three wide receivers, a tight end, a flex, and our bench. Now we’re having some fun! Since it’s rare to win a fantasy championship without an elite back — or multiple RBs from within the top four tiers — your priority should be at the running back position.
Kyren Williams ($38) offers huge value in both standard and PPR leagues. We also like Rhamondre Stevenson ($17) and Tony Pollard ($13) as they seem like discount workhorses due to down and/or injury-affected 2023 seasons. It's easy to envision Drake Maye and Will Levis dumping down to their respective running back early and often in games to keep the chains moving.
You might also consider going with multiple young RBs in the teens who are capable of exploding into the top-10 RB leaderboards. Two years ago, we capitalized on this strategy by drafting Josh Jacobs ($23), Breece Hall ($22), Travis Etienne Jr. ($19), Tony Pollard ($16), and Dameon Pierce ($16). Even with Hall's midseason injury, not many squads with all four of those backs were out of contention.
Last year, we capitalized on the ceilings of low-priced youngsters Rachaad White ($17) and Isiah Pacheco ($16). We analyzed their skill sets, projected their season-long roles, and took calculated risk-vs-reward opportunities by drafting them. And both White and Pacheco turned out to be mostly reward for not a ton of risk.
In our 2024 mock auction, we ended up with Williams at $38 and Stevenson at $17 as our presumed RB1 and RB2. We also snagged Ezekiel Elliott and Rico Dowdle for a combined total of $17 (Zeke for $12, Rico for $5) so we could (in theory) monopolize the Cowboys backfield. Then we scooped Austin Ekeler at a bargain-bin rate of $8. He doesn't need to be the Ekeler of old — even if he's 1/5 of peak Ek, he's more than worth the $8. We've spent $92 and just need receivers and a tight end.
Wide Receiver
Two years ago, we went with the strategy of targeting all upside at running back and coming away with stud wideouts Ja'Marr Chase, CeeDee Lamb, and A.J. Brown. Last year, we went after a stud back and RB depth, then budgeted wisely in the pass-catching department. This year, we're targeting much more balance.
We let the other owners throw their money around for FantasyPros' top nine wideouts, then swooped in for Mike Evans ($26) during a bidding lull. Evans was one of the most efficient per-game fantasy scorers of the 2023 season thanks to Baker Mayfield's breakout. The tall receiver finished 24th in the NFL in total receptions (79), ninth in receiving yards (1,255), and tied for first with 13 TDs. We'll take the age-30 discount on a guy who clearly still has plenty left in the tank. Another strong option in this price range is Davante Adams, who had 175 targets last year and finished top 8 in TD catches (8) and top 15 in yards.
From there, we grabbed perennially undervalued Eagles receiver DeVonta Smith ($21) and stud Bears wideout DJ Moore ($20). Keep underrating these guys, Fantasy Land! We love getting $25-30 value for $20-21. A low expenditure at WR2 paved the way for a few of our favorite wide receiver sleepers.
Welcome to our squad, Hollywood Brown ($10), Jaxon Smith-Njigba ($3), and Keon Coleman ($3)! That's $16 for three wide receivers with massive ceilings. Brown could enjoy a career resurgence with Patrick Mahomes, JSN should move closer to Geno Smith's top target in Year 2, and Coleman should immediately absorb a healthy target share with both Stefon Diggs and Gabe Davis out of Buffalo.
That leaves us with $25 for our tight end and remaining bench spots.
Tight End
We're going with Dalton Kincaid ($13) in what should be a breakout season for Buffalo. He's basically a wide receiver with TE eligibility, so we're ecstatic about this price just like Josh Allen is going to be raring to fire targets his way.
We also jumped at the opportunity to grab T.J. Hockenson at his injury rate of $3. At best, that's a trade chip down the line or a season-saver if Kincaid gets hurt. At worst, we lose a miniscule $3 investment.
Bench (Part 2)
We already mentioned the three backup RBs (Zeke, Ekeler, Dowdle), two bench WRs (JSN, Coleman), and backup TE (Hockenson) we drafted. That leaves us with $9 left, and we can't think of a better upside purchase at this range than rookie receiver Xavier Worthy of the Chiefs.
Always look for breakout or bounce-back potential at this price range, especially at the tail end of your draft. Are there injury-prone backs ahead of a certain guy? Does one lesser-known rookie have a solid offensive line and a strong work ethic? Target these value-rich players now so that you have them queued up late in the draft when most other managers have compromised their budget.
If speedster Worthy finds any kind of rapport with Mahomes, Kansas City could have its next star. He's so fast he broke the all-time 40-yard-dash record at the NFL Combine. Sure sounds like a guy that Mahomes will enjoy targeting for YAC highlights and Hail Mary bombs.
Look at this squad. It’s filled with a balance of upside and established greatness, and it should cruise to the playoffs with a little luck in the health department. The only real question marks have contingency plans, and whatever doesn’t work out we can solve through the waiver wire. Great success!
- QB1: Jordan Love, GB ($10)
- RB1: Kyren Williams, LAR ($38)
- RB2: Rhamondre Stevenson, NE ($17)
- WR1: Mike Evans, TB ($26)
- WR2: DeVonta Smith, PHI ($21)
- WR3: DJ Moore, CHI ($20)
- TE: Dalton Kincaid, BUF ($13)
- FLEX: Hollywood Brown, KC ($10)
- K: Nick Folk, NE ($1)
- D/ST: Miami Dolphins ($1)
- Bench1: Ezekiel Elliott, RB, DAL ($12)
- Bench2: Austin Ekeler, RB, WAS ($8)
- Bench3: Jaxon Smith-Njigba, WR, SEA ($3)
- Bench4: Keon Coleman, WR, BUF ($3)
- Bench5: T.J. Hockenson, TE, MIN ($3)
- Bench6: Rico Dowdle, RB, DAL ($5)
- Bency7: Xavier Worthy, WR, Chiefs ($9)
Again, this isn’t exactly how you need to map out your auction, but it gives you an idea of how to put together a budget. In this case, we devoted just five percent of our money to QBs, 46 percent to WRs, 40 percent to RBs, eight percent to TEs, and $2 total to D/ST and kicker.
Some might flip the percentages on RB and WR — or at least balance them a bit more — or maybe go all-in on Travis Kelce at TE and spend less on WRs. Whoever you like, balance accordingly, budget wisely, and commit to it.
Strategy tips for how to nominate players in fantasy football auctions
Big names often come with big price tags. Some of these names (and prices) probably won’t interest you, but they will surely interest your opponents. Get your leaguemates spending their money early on these big names you don’t like.
Nominate players early who you think will go for a higher cost than they’re worth. You can even bluff-bid, or "bid up" a player if you have intel that a leaguemate really likes a guy. Just don’t get greedy and screw yourself by overspending on a guy you hate because you tried to bid him up.
If you clear some money out on players you have no interest in, you will likely have less competition for players you actually want. Some of your foes will already be cash-strapped, or at least taking it easy after chomping on the big bait.
Every time we make a big investment in auctions, our per-player average and per-player max spending goes down. Let some of your opponents bid themselves out of the $30-$40 range before you cast your net on the $30-$40 guys you covet.
Of course, your leaguemates might have the same plan and nominate players you want. Don’t be afraid to bid, but also don’t be afraid to get outbid. There will always be more good players, and as long as you stick to your plan, you can build a winning team.
