Mastering Salary Cap Drafts: Part 1, Beginner Mistakes

Note: This series is designed to take salary cap drafters of any ability and refine their skills to that of a seasoned veteran. The articles will go from basic concepts to the most advanced salary cap draft theories. Each article is designed to build on the previous articles in the series. For best results, read each article before proceeding to the concepts in the next article.

So your league has decided to give salary cap drafting a try. It may seem daunting at first, and it is natural to have some anxiety about it, but being aware of some beginner tendencies can put you ahead of a good portion of your league before you get there. Drafting in salary cap format is at once both exciting and stressful. It requires a level of attention that serpentine drafting does not, and a lot of emotion is involved. Controlling that emotion with preparation and sound strategy is how you win your salary cap draft. Here are some common issues beginners face and how to handle them.

Beginner Mistake #1 – Poor Budget Management

The first thing to know is that you can’t show up to a salary cap draft with a few pieces of paper and a pen. There are so many variables to keep track of that you need a computer program to help you keep everything straight as the draft happens. At a minimum, you should keep track of your cap to the exact dollar. Estimations are okay initially, but you should know what you can spend with every player you roster past the halfway point of your draft. But that’s just the bare minimum to be a competent drafter. You should keep track of everyone’s available cap if you want to be a top-tier salary cap drafter. Get the Draft Dominator from Footballguys to help you, or create a spreadsheet yourself, but your upside in a salary cap draft has a ceiling if you don’t know what every team has to spend at every point in the draft.

Those who fail to keep track of their cap, and that of their opponent, will fall prey to a couple of simple mistakes. They’ll either take themselves out of the draft too fast, or they won’t spend their money when they should. The difficult thing for salary cap drafters is finding that balance. Early in a draft, the top players will be flying off the board, and managers new to the format can get carried away spending too fast. Conversely, some managers will be intimidated by the moment and won’t end up with any elite players.

To control spending early in a draft, you need to have a plan ahead of time. Figure out what you want to spend on your top targets and what their approximate prices might be. Once you get in the draft, you may have to adjust those numbers a little, but if you try to roughly follow what you budgeted, it will prevent you from going overboard when the excitement is heightened at the beginning of the draft.

On the other hand, if you tend to get nervous when the bidding gets high, you should think of it like this: Would you leave a snake draft and not have a first or second-round pick? Of course not. But that happens when you don’t land any elite players near the beginning of a salary cap draft. So make sure you land a couple of top guys, but stick with your pre-draft budget. Keep your spending under control to stay in the draft as it moves forward.

The most important thing to remember is that you’ll rarely regret spending a few extra dollars on the top players, but you’ll regret leaving money on the table. Leaving even $4-$8 of unspent money means you could’ve drastically upgraded one of your starters by using that money. You have to spend all your money yet do it while keeping flexibility. This series should help you walk that fine line.

Beginner Mistake #2 – Lack of Preparation

A salary cap draft requires a different level of preparation than a conventional draft. Printing out a cheat sheet or looking at some rankings on a phone may be an easy and even somewhat reasonable way to pick players in a serpentine, but that is not the case in a salary cap draft if you want to succeed. This type of draft forces you to form an opinion on every player available during the draft. That’s because you don’t know when players will be nominated, and you won’t have a long time to ponder your next move like you can in a serpentine draft. When a player is nominated, it can often be when you aren’t expecting it. You must be able to react. If Elijah Mitchell is nominated, you have to know what you think about Mitchell at a moment’s notice and what you think about Mitchell compared to the players around him in ADP. This tells you whether or not you should be bidding or letting someone else have him. If you aren’t prepared with an opinion on every player in the draft pool, your results will reflect that.

Beginner Mistake #3 – Emotions Running Wild

Salary cap drafts are emotional roller coasters. You can’t walk into a serpentine draft and get Justin Jefferson and Derrick Henry, so it gives you a heady, exciting feeling when a salary cap draft starts. People will be nominating the top guys right away in most drafts, and you’ll be tempted to spend your money because they’ll be quickly flying off the board. But controlling your emotions and impulsiveness during the draft's beginning stages is key to remaining relevant going forward. The best way to do that is to avoid ambiguity in what you want to spend. Instead of saying, “I want to spend 40% of my budget on wide receivers”, come up with exact dollar amounts to spend on each wide receiver on your roster. You don’t have to follow it exactly when you get in the room, but having it to guide you when the high-dollar bids start flying is the best way to control the emotion and keep you on the right path.

Beginner Mistake #4 – Letting the Draft Happen

Many salary cap drafters like to use their early nominations to drain cap from other managers in the room. This idea isn’t bad and has its place, but far too many drafters simply sit back, nominate the top player on the board when it’s their turn, and then react to what everyone else is doing. The better way to go about it is to try to get others to react to you instead. Assuming you have your pre-draft plan in front of you, your early nominations should be aimed at defining how your draft will go. Do you want a top running back? Don’t wait to nominate one of the top guys and see if you land him. If you don’t land a top back at the price you want, you’ll know quickly and can pivot strategies. But if you wait and find out four rounds into the draft that your strategy isn’t working, you may have lost the opportunity to grab impact players at other positions. Resist the urge to be passive with your nominations and instead focus your early strategy on figuring out which way your draft is going. Letting the draft happen to you as a meek participant may not be disastrous, but it is a beginner mindset and won’t yield top-shelf results.

Now you have some ideas about some basic things that beginner salary cap drafters struggle with. The best way to improve in this draft format is to be aware of these pitfalls and begin to notice them around you. Then you can start working on eliminating these leaks from your own game. Next up, Part 2: Attacking Beginner Salary Cap Drafts.