Mastering Salary Cap Drafts: Part 7, Inflection Points

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.

If you haven't yet, it's a good idea to go back and read the first six parts of this series before you dive into the final part on Inflection Points.

Part 1, Beginner Mistakes
Part 2, Attacking Novice Draft Rooms
Part 3, Preparation
Part 4, Nomination Strategies
Part 5, Bidding Strategies
Part 6, Reading Your League

If you've made it this far, you've read about all the different parts of a salary cap draft – how to prepare, nominate and bid, and read your league. What all of it is leading to is an ability to isolate certain points in the draft when your skills allow you to capitalize on opportunities you see happening in real-time. Those moments are called inflection points. While technically a math term, in common parlance, an inflection point is a time of change in a particular situation or, more succinctly, a turning point.

Have you ever been in a salary cap draft where a high-caliber player is up for bid and the price stops way too low? Despite the fact that people have money, they are starting to be more selective with who they bid on and how much they want to spend. So a guy like Chris Olave comes up four rounds into the draft, and money is starting to get tight. Someone wins Olave for $14, and everyone collectively shakes their head or remarks, “Great deal!” But if it was a great deal, then why didn't someone bid? This should clue you in that something is happening. Despite Olave having a price that should be at least $10 higher, nobody chose to bid. Often, this means that there isn't enough money left in the room, and people aren't feeling the pinch at wide receiver. This is when you have to recognize and strike. Spotting this inflection point - and others like it - is how you become an elite salary cap drafter.

Inflection points occur multiple times in each draft, and the resulting conditions can last different lengths of time. Paying attention to when they hit will give you opportunities during the course of the draft. If you aren't watching for these changes, you will miss them and lose valuable moments to improve your team. Keep in mind that you may not always be in a position to capitalize on these inflection points, but if you are watching for them, you are more likely to be ready to take advantage. If you are constantly behind when those shifts occur, then you will not be successful.

Not all inflection points fit neatly into these boxes, but in general, here are the six major inflection points you're likely to see in every salary cap draft.

#1 - Settling In

This one is easy to spot. When the draft begins, there will be a period right at the beginning when people are still getting settled in. They will be thinking big picture about the draft, organizing their papers or computer program in front of them, and getting ready to do battle. Often a big-name player will be called out right away, and this heightens the effect of this phenomenon. Quickly there will be a large portion of someone's cap in play, and because it is so early, people won't want to spend a big percentage of their money immediately. With the whole player pool spread out before them, and their full $200 left, there will be a subconscious mental barrier to spending top dollars on the first couple of players nominated.

What You Can Do – Getting a deal on a top-tier player looks different than getting a deal on a lower-tier player. Often a couple of dollars, or maybe up to $5, is all you can expect in a deal for the elite players. The best way to get one of those deals is while people are settling in. This inflection point is often extremely short, so it's important to recognize it immediately and jump on it (sometimes it can last as little as one player). Don't forget that this can also recur during a draft if there is an extended break at some point. Just before going on a long break or just after a food break where you have been paused for a while, can replicate the behavior you saw from other managers at the beginning of the draft.

#2 - Fast Spending, Top Talent

There are always going to be varying degrees of experience in any salary cap draft room, and that will affect this particular point. Veterans don't get as excited to throw out the big names and start piling up talent. But it will still happen, and this point will feature a fairly long run of elite nominations before drafters begin to branch out to different types and levels of players. The end of the run is when everyone takes a breath and starts to nominate their kicker, the first defense, or the first low-ranked tight end. There will still be talent on the board, but people will start to focus on their individual plans at this point.

What You Can Do – Sometimes, it is advantageous for you to slow this run down by throwing a curveball out there. Nominating Brandin Cooks after watching Tyreek Hill and Saquon Barkley get rostered can often wake people up to the fact that you don't have to nominate all the best guys first. But often, you won't be able to stop it. Instead, now is the time for you to start to define your own draft, as discussed in Part 4. At this point, you'll be seeing the market getting set for the top guys, and you'll know if you're going to be competing for them or not. If the spending is wild, then you should force yourself to relax and wait. The draft will come back to you for deals later when the money is thinning out. But if people are timid and prices are lower than you thought, you must act fast. It is far more common to see wild spending than caution, but you should be looking for both.

This inflection point is one of the most important ones of the entire draft. It is where you decide on a strategy and watch everything flow from the decisions made during that crazy first run of players. The purse strings are loose, the talent is elite, and the bidding is usually wild, but you must control the moment to set up the rest of your draft.

#3 - Scarcity Creeps In

At this juncture, there are plenty of players left, but there are two major things that have changed: There is a substantial amount of money subtracted from the room, and tiers begin to show scarcity. Managers have secured several players, and plenty of top talent has already been rostered. This is not to be confused with a lack of total available players. Rather, this is where the boomerang effect will start to become more prominent as tiers begin to dry up. This might be one of the longest stages in the draft. Some teams have already taken themselves out of the running for big players, but others have quietly spent almost no money. As a result, prices will become the least predictable than they will be for the rest of the draft. There will be big spikes as drafters panic and try to secure the final guys in their respective tiers, or there will be huge discounts like the example with Chris Olave in the open to this article.

What You Can Do – First, don't be one of the ones panicking. Because you have read this series, you now know that you cannot allow positional runs to dry things up before you secure the players you need. So when you see the draft move to this point, speed is of the essence. You may feel as though you are spending more on a player than you wanted, but the alternative is to pay a lot more for someone later because they're the last good player remaining. The worst-case scenario is that you get bid up on one of the remaining players because of scarcity, so you stop and think, “I'll get one of the couple of others that are left.” Someone else is likely thinking the same thing. If you don't buy that player now, it will not only get worse for you in a minute, it will get much worse. The random spikes in pricing will be challenging, but that is what you have prepared for.

It is hard to judge what to do in this difficult stage of the draft, but pulling the trigger at the right time and finding that balance is what turns a decent drafter into an excellent one. Hopefully, at this point, your plan is already in place (you defined that during #2 above), and you can begin to shift your focus from a meta-picture of the draft to a more specific focus on people's rosters and the reasons behind their bidding.

#4 - Max Bids in Play

Now the game of salary cap drafting is truly afoot. Most teams have a maximum bid that is in play, and that limits their desire to spend on players they are not targeting. The elite talent is gone, as are most of the tiers directly below the top guys. At this stage, the buying power in the league becomes unequal. The playing field is slanted substantially with cap dollars, and this will affect who people nominate. As a result, your draft is affected by other people's decisions more than your own.

What You Can Do – This is prime deal-getting territory. Since drafters are more carefully monitoring their caps and have several players on their team, you will see even more players inexplicably go cheaply. The spikes in prices become smaller, and overall behavior becomes more predictable. Unless they are on your “Do Not Draft” list, you should be trying to snap up the first couple of deals that work for your build so that you can control the end stage of the draft. Remember, you aren't falling in love with certain players, you're here to fill a few spots during this period (not a lot – a few!) with good players at rock-solid prices.

Stacking a couple of deals is the best way to put together a dominant roster while remaining relevant through the draft. You still have to keep your roster flexible, but it is a mistake to pass on some of these deals by trying to save your money for someone better. You can't get those deals back when you pass on them! You must grab a few deals during this particular period, or your chances at a next-level roster are gone.

#5 - Low Caps, High Competition

There is a tendency to lump this particular inflection point with #6 below (Low Cap – Low Competition). But that is a mistake. After #4 is winding down, you will see a lot of people with smaller amounts of money that seem too low to be much of a factor. Assuming this is dangerous. Even if a team has 8 roster spots left and $31, you may not be aware of their intention to spend $24 (their max bid) on one final player. It is truly heartbreaking to think you outlasted the room to get DK Metcalf cheaply, but then an irrational bidder spends their maximum of $24 to crush your hopes. The lesson is simple: Nobody is out of it until they have less than $5 to spend on a player. It is common to make the mistake of saying that this period is like the period of the draft at the end, where there are lower cap amounts, but almost nobody is capable of spending more than a few dollars on any one player. The two situations are quite different. When you reach point #5, the competition for players will still be fierce, and teams are going to be trying desperately to finish strong. Raw dollars spent will become smaller, but each dollar will matter more and more.

What You Can Do – Hopefully, you have saved your least important nominations, like your kicker, defense, and backup tight end/quarterback for this phase. This is when they come in handy to effectively punt your nomination instead of having to call out someone you could get stuck with or someone you want to sit on for later in the draft. Now is when waiting is usually the optimal play. To do so, your nomination game takes on the most extreme importance. You must call players out that other managers will want to spend money on or fill a roster spot with. This is also one of the more critical moments for using your manager tells when a player is nominated. Pay attention to the teams that can compete with you in remaining cap dollars and analyze what they need. Your goal at this moment is to start to fill up your roster but also to try to fill up their rosters with players you don't want. You'll stall as long as you can by getting your kicker and your defense wrapped up, and then hopefully, you are in a position to nab the top available player(s) left before the next inflection point hits.

#6 - Endgame: Low Cap, Low Competition

The final shift in the draft happens when the draft turns into a modified snake draft. There will be several teams who can't bid more than $3-$5 for anyone, and some teams begin to grab their last players. This part of the draft is still important! You have gone from competing for players everyone wants to the “get your guy” territory. You will want to be on the lookout for players with big upside that have been ignored to this point because of some major flaws. They will be popular targets, but you have been cagey and saved enough to get them if you want them. For example, would you rather grab Kadarius Toney or Michael Thomas for $4 or Tyler Boyd for $2? Boyd may provide some sort of fantasy value, but he is the ultimate salary cap fade. If you have done your job to this point, you have plenty of wide receivers and Boyd does nothing for your team. Toney or Thomas, on the other hand, have the ability to make your roster special if they hit. Taking a shot on that possibility, however small, over a veteran like Boyd is almost always a better play. This point in the draft is for long shots with upside and players people have forgotten about.

What You Can Do – The idea during the endgame is to have enough money to get the lottery tickets you want while also spending your money before the draft gets to the true $1 per player point. You should aim to finish your draft before the majority of your league mates by fixating on a couple of players you have isolated for this stage in your pre-draft preparation. Is there someone suspended that can be a factor down the road? Hurt and out for a month? A backup you need for your top guy? No matter the case or reason, grab your guys and get out. There is nothing more frustrating than sitting there watching your favorite guys go because you spent your money too early. The endgame doesn't have the pressure of the previous stages because you should've already set yourself up to finish strong, and if you didn't, it's too late anyway. It is still important to pay attention to physical tells and nominations, but the difficulty level is substantially lower as you finish the draft.

Series Conclusion

So there you have it. You've followed along with the Mastering Salary Cap Drafts series as you learned the most basic of concepts – spend all your money! – to the most advanced analysis on when your room is shifting during your salary cap draft. There is no substitute for experience when identifying the right moves to make in this format. Often people can forget that instincts are built through experience and preparation. You don't gain instinct by finishing your third salary cap draft. You need repetitions. And you must make those repetitions count by carefully studying these concepts, preparing for your drafts, and then observing and implementing everything you can every time you draft.

When all of the skills in this series are mastered or at least thoroughly understood, then the instinct for drafting becomes the drafter's best friend. You'll see the shifts as they happen, spot the tells on the fly, and instantly know which buttons to press, when to bid, and how to dominate your salary cap draft.

You'll likely never leave a salary cap draft in your fantasy career thinking that you had a perfect draft. There will always be a move you could've made that you failed to make. That is what makes this type of drafting so much fun and why it is so important to push every edge in the pursuit of Salary Cap Perfection. Good luck and happy bidding!