Mastering Salary Cap Drafts: Part 3, Preparation

Note: This series is designed to take salary cap drafters of any ability and refine their skills to those of a seasoned veteran. The articles will go from simple 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.

The first two parts of the series focused on things beginners do and ways to exploit those mistakes in your draft rooms.

Part 1, Beginner Mistakes
Part 2, Attacking Novice Draft Rooms

But before you can capitalize on this knowledge, you need to know how to prepare so that when the moment comes, you have the information in front of you to tell you what to do. You have to take your preparation for salary cap drafts to another level and realize it is completely different from preparing for serpentine drafts. It requires you to be ready with an opinion on every single guy that is nominated because you won't have 20 minutes to think it over while other people make their picks. Get prepared ahead of time, and you'll feel calm and comfortable when bids start flying.

Tier Sheet

One of the bigger principles in salary cap drafting is the relationship between player scarcity and prices during the draft. This isn't referring to scarcity over a full position group, rather, it refers to scarcity in tiers. This is one of the biggest drivers of price fluctuation in a salary cap draft. For example, if Travis Kelce, T.J. Hockenson, and George Kittle are already on a roster when Mark Andrews comes up for bidding, the price on Andrews will likely be artificially high. That happens because there are no more elite options left, so anyone who wanted a top tight end has to try to land Andrews. That will push his price well past where it should be. On the other hand, you won't see that inflation if someone nominates David Njoku because he isn't in the same tier as Andrews. So if you're going to excel at salary cap drafting, you must master the skill of rostering players before the tiers become scarce. That means having your player rankings broken down into groups of players that have similar price points. As the draft unfolds, when the tiers start to run out of players, it is on you to move quickly to roster someone before you are down to the last player in a tier. This can mean nominating someone so you can bid on them or seeing that a player who was just nominated is about to make a tier scarce so that you can go after them. Without tier sheets, you'll never see this problem developing.

The best way to separate players into tiers is to get a hold of some Average Values, or rankings with salary cap values, instead of rankings with Average Draft Position. You'll notice that at some point, as you go down the price list, there are price breaks that are bigger than at other points. That generally is where you would start with your tiers. Whatever your process may be, it is important to find the natural drop-offs in your rankings to be able to separate players into groups with similar prices. For example, there is a group of running backs that goes at the end of the second or early third round in serpentine formats that includes Nick Chubb, Derrick Henry, Josh Jacobs, Breece Hall, and Tony Pollard. After those guys, there is a drop-off to the next group, and likewise, that group is a drop-off from the group ahead of them that includes Saquon Barkley and Bijan Robinson. When you're drafting and all the running backs above the Chubb-Henry tier are gone and the next best player is Najee Harris, if you want one of those five running backs from the Chubb-Henry tier, then ideally, you want to act when one or two of those five guys are still on the board. Otherwise, if Chubb, Henry, Pollard, and Hall are gone, then if you have to have Jacobs, you are going to pay more than you would, or should, if there wasn't scarcity.

So before you get into your draft room, break down your rankings into tiers, and then erase any mention of prices on your tier sheet. You don't care about what the prices were predicted to be before your draft. That won't hold up when the draft starts; it will only paralyze you. All you care about when you get into the draft is whether you are happy with the player you got for that spot on your roster. If you are happy with Aaron Jones as your RB2 and have allotted $21 for that position, it doesn't matter if his predicted price was $16. Overpaying by $5 is immaterial if you are happy with the player and it fits your price sheet. Getting too hung up on what you should pay for a player can make you rigid and unable to adapt when things don't happen like you thought they would.

Making a Par Sheet

A par sheet is one of the best tools you can have for executing your pre-draft plan. In a salary cap draft, you want to shoot exactly par for your draft, which means that you want to spend exactly $200. You never want to end up with extra money, and you can't go over $200, so you have to hit the number perfectly. The way to do that is to use your par sheet during the draft.

To make a par sheet, you should find your league settings and write down every roster spot on a sheet of paper. Then assign an exact dollar amount to every single position on your roster and make those numbers add up to your salary cap. For example, in a typical league with a $200 cap, you would write down your 16 positions - 9 starters and 7 bench players - and then what you ideally want to spend on each position. For your kicker and defense, you start by assigning them $1, then for a few backups (like your RB5 and WR6), you'll assign $1 as well. Then with the remaining money, you should decide what your strategy will focus on and start weighting and assigning money to the appropriate spots. For example, if you think that you want a top tight end and a top running back, you would start by assigning what you think you can get those players for in the draft. You might start by writing "$55" next to your RB1 and then "$32" next to your tight end slot. Then start giving money to the other spots on your roster. You'll tweak and move the money until you have exact numbers for every spot. Not only does this process tell you what you value while you work through it, but it also shows you how critical every dollar is in a salary cap draft.

As an example, your par sheet in this scenario might look something like this:

• QB1 - $12
• RB1 - 55
• RB2 - 21
• WR1 - 30
• WR2 - 16
• WR3 - 10
• TE - 32
• K - 1
• DEF - 1
• Bench - 7
• Bench - 6
• Bench - 4
• Bench - 2
• Bench - 1
• Bench - 1
• Bench - 1

This is just an example, and there are a lot of different builds you can choose, like:

• Focusing on a top tight end
• Getting two Top 12 running backs
• Going heavy on wide receivers
• Landing a top quarterback

You can bring several par sheets to your draft, and once you land your first few players, you'll know which sheet is going to be the one you use, and you can throw the others out. As the draft continues, you'll put the players in the appropriate spots as you roster them and then write a "+" or "-" out on the right side of your par sheet as you spend. For example, you wanted a top running back, but Christian McCaffrey was too expensive. So instead of McCaffrey, you landed Saquon Barkley for $49. That means you can write "+6" on your par sheet (you had allotted $55), and you know you can use that money somewhere else. On the other hand, if you went all out for McCaffrey and paid $61, you write "-6" on your sheet, and you know you have to make up $6 somewhere. The benefit of the par sheet Is that you can instantly look down your sheet and figure out where to best take that $6 from. You'll keep a running total of the entire draft as to how you're doing in relation to par as things progress. This helps you stay on track and keeps you focused on spending all your money but doing it in a way that fills out your team properly. Par sheets are a massive advantage over your competition.

Nomination Lists

One of the big mistakes a lot of salary cap drafters make is to waste their nominations. This will be more fully explained in Part 4 on Nomination Strategies, but as you prepare all you need to do is make a couple of lists for easy reference during the draft.

As salary cap drafts go, you will have to bounce back and forth between nominating players you want or finding players to call out that you don't want to roster. This is harder than it sounds in the heat of the moment, especially in online draft rooms. You can't fall into the bad habit of looking down at your draft sheet and calling out the next ranked player on the list after the previous nomination. That does nothing to further your strategy. Instead, make two lists.

List #1 is a list of players you want or are targeting as part of your strategy. List #2 is a list of players you don't want or players that don't further your strategy. What's important to remember is that these lists are supposed to further your own pre-planned draft strategy from your par sheet. Of course, you'd like to have Josh Allen, but if you decide to go cheap at quarterback, then he shouldn't be part of your plans. He belongs on List #2 strictly because he doesn't fit your strategy, not because you don't like him as a fantasy quarterback.

So, if you want to go cheap at quarterback, you will have some inexpensive players at quarterback on List #1 (players you like) and some expensive players at quarterback on List #2 (players that don't fit your cheap quarterback goal). So this year, List 1 would have guys like Geno Smith, Dak Prescott, and Kirk Cousins. These quarterbacks are going somewhat cheaply this year. Don't worry if your nomination of one of these guys doesn't work. If you call out Kirk Cousins and suddenly find someone saying "$9" on him, then it's easy, and you're out. That's why you have a long list that you can go back to again and again when it is your turn to nominate. One of your cheap List 1 quarterbacks should sneak through to you at some point for a good price. You want to have guys from every position on each list so that when it's your turn to nominate, you can quickly go to your list and pick out the perfect player to keep pushing towards the goals you set out on your par sheet before the draft.

You don't need to put every player on these lists, so keep it limited to those players who best execute your strategy for you. Putting Kenny Pickett on List 1 may technically be correct (he's a cheap quarterback), but if you don't care about actually rostering him, then he shouldn't make your nomination list. However, the deeper this list is, the less freelancing you'll have to do when you're in the draft.

Having nomination sheets seems like overkill. But finding the perfect nomination isn't easy, and it's a big key to succeeding in your draft. You won't have time during the draft to find the right player to call out when it's your turn. The nomination sheets help you with that difficult decision in the heat of the moment.

Conclusion

Preparation for a salary cap draft is a different animal than preparation for a serpentine draft. When you walk into the draft, have your tier sheet, your par sheet, and your nomination lists. Other than your software, you don't need anything else in front of you. These three lists will make you more prepared than almost any salary cap drafter out there, veterans included. The nature of these drafts means that you can't nail every detail down, but if you have read the first three parts of this series, you have a firm yet flexible way to succeed without much experience. Head to Part 4 to learn more about the theory behind nominations and how to use them to your benefit.