How to Blow 1/3rd of Your Budget on AP and Still Get a Good Team

As you may surmise from the title, I had an auction draft today. It was my first one, despite the fact that I was in the league last year (I had to let the 'bot handle that one and it totally screwed me). I deliberately avoided any articles talking about auction draft strategy for a couple of reasons. One, I had a hunch, based on last year, that this league is different in the sense that people blow their wads early and then have to scrounge around the 'dollar bin' late; I thus figured I could make hay 'in the middle', as it were. Secondly, I've been watching a lot of 'Storage Wars' on A&E, so I figured that was just as good.

Well, it didn't start out so good. Despite IE 8 being just fine for a snake draft, it wouldn't show me the list of players for an auction draft. Panicked, when the 'bot auto-nominated AP for me, I immediately bid $67 (out of $200), figuring I'd either get him or seriously cripple someone else. Well, I got him.

I then switched over to Opera and that made things a lot better. I settled into my strategy: bid up the marquee players and try and get people to overspend early. This worked, for the most part. I bid up players like Peyton Hillis and Darren McFadden; I did end up getting 'stuck' with Larry Fitzgerald for $45, though, so I decided I'd only drive up the spending on players I wouldn't mind having myself. Also, I wouldn't actually nominate players I wanted, choosing instead to nominate Drew Brees, Peyton Manning, Dallas Clark, etc..

Once my opponents were hurting for cash, I was able to scoop up some awesome talent at considerable value. By the end, when they could only pay $1 for a player, I was able to beat them since I could bid at least $2.

Here's how I did; oh, the league is PPR:

1. Adrian Peterson, $67
2. Larry Fitzgerald, $45
3. Felix Jones, $14 (Yeah, I'm going all in on Felix this year)
4. Tim Hightower, $12 (didn't mind getting stuck with him)
5. Mark Ingram, $9 (ditto)
6. Stevie Johnson, $8 (ditto x 2)
7. Percy Harvin, $8
8. Kevin Kolb, $1 (I nominated him hoping someone else would bite; oops)
9. Dez Bryant, $8 (here's where the plan came together, as now I had the $ to outbid others for players I'd targetted)
10. Matt Schaub, $3 (so, I got my backup QB first and my starter 2nd)
11. Santonio Holmes, $4 (another case of me being flush with cash allowing me to get a good player in a PPR league at a deep discount)
12. Jimmy Graham, $6 (see above)
13. Matt Stafford, $3 (at this point, I didn't know who had which QBs but I wanted to a. play keep away and b. get him as trade bait)
14. Mike Tolbert, $2 (I feel bad for whomever nominated him for a buck only to lose him to me for two! This league favors catches and TDs and he'll give me both.)
15. Johnny Knox, Lance Kendricks, Dustin Keller, Nick Folk, DAL D, $1 each.