After Part I of the series, you know some basic concepts to help you understand a salary cap draft room better. Now, you can start to focus on how to put some of these concepts into play to begin to develop your own skillset and salary cap draft style.
Early Signs to Watch for in Your Salary Cap Draft Room
A salary cap draft is a much more emotional process than serpentine drafting. Bids are flying, the elite players are up for grabs, and the early flurry in any salary cap draft room has more emotion involved than an entire serpentine draft ever will. This can be hard for some drafters to manage, whether novices or veterans.
Early in a salary cap draft, emotions can have a big impact on how things go. It can either make things wild, leading to overspending, or make managers timid and tight with their money. You can take advantage of either situation, but only if you’re watching for it. Capitalizing on what is happening requires a grasp on the prices players might go for ahead of time and, more importantly, a grasp on the tendencies of your room. Part of that is preparation-based, as you’ll see in Part 3 of this series, but the other part takes place in the room.
Spending some time early in the salary cap draft watching the other managers to try to pick up on what they are doing can give you some insight into their thought process. If the bidding consistently goes higher than it should then you can be confident that prices will come down. The Golden Rule of a salary cap draft is that overspending early in the draft always leads to deals at some point. Be careful, however, as you can’t let every elite player go off the board waiting for prices to drop. Sometimes, you have to overpay to land one elite piece, and then you can go back to watching the market. Conversely, if the bidding on some of the players seems to slow down before it should then you’ll be tipped off to the fact that there are some timid drafters in the room who aren’t willing to spend their money. If you see this happening, you’ll need to quickly wade into the deep end and strike when some deals present themselves. Noticing these trends is critical to your success in the early part of the draft, so be alert and vigilant.
Focus on Situational Awareness in Your Salary Cap Draft
In a lot of salary cap draft rooms the managers are not motivated to keep track of what is going on around them and if the computer isn’t doing it for them they don’t do it at all. They almost certainly won’t know what money the other managers in the room have left, they won’t be keeping track of everyone’s rosters, and they might not even know how much money they have left for their own team. You should be aware of which managers have access to this information because they’re using a computer program like the Draft Dominator or an Excel spreadsheet, and which ones are consistently unaware of what is happening around them. There are a couple of things you can do to take advantage of players like this.
Clog Their Roster
Teams that don’t have a strong grasp of what is happening will often draft too many players at a position before they realize what they’re doing. For example, they can’t pass up a deal on Jayden Daniels (only $7 for all that upside?!), so they draft a third quarterback. If you notice them bidding on Daniels when they already have two quarterbacks or a high-priced starter, let them have Daniels and waste a roster spot. Or perhaps they can’t pass up a deal on Devin Singletary, so they fill their last bench spot when they have a bunch of money left for a much better player. It is a good strategy to target nominations at those managers or, even better, try to get them to land a player too cheaply to kill a roster spot. Sometimes, this can take them out of contention at a certain position or handicap their overall chances to compete with you in the latter stages of the draft.
Box Them In
Later in a draft, the managers who don’t keep track of the money in a salary cap draft room are at a disadvantage that continues to increase as the draft goes on. When money gets tight and the player pool is drying up, each dollar and each decision becomes more critical. You can often find situations where they will be bidding near their maximum bid and don’t know it. Know when to stop and let them spend their money. Or, when the end of the draft is near, you’ll save precious dollars by watching their max bid. If they can only bid $4, don’t ever say "3" as you end up paying $5 instead of $4 to outbid them. Be acutely aware of what they have left and try to craft your bids to take them out or box them in.
Don’t forget also that a hallmark of a salary cap draft is managers who make impulsive decisions that can massively impact their draft. In a serpentine format, managers have a lot of time to contemplate their moves and act optimally. But salary cap drafts aren’t like that, and drafters can get upset when they can’t bid because they’re out of money and a player is about to go too cheaply. Or they can attempt to price enforce on a top player because they paid market value and they get frustrated because someone else is about to get a deal.
Here’s an example.
Sam LaPorta is up for nomination. The bidding is down to Teams A and B. Teams A and B have no tight ends on their team. Team C already has Trey McBride for $24 and only has $41 left while still needing an RB2, WR2, and the rest of their backups as well. Team C is not in on the bidding. The back-and-forth between A and B slows at $21 for LaPorta. Team C is upset that he isn’t going for more money and suddenly jumps into the bidding by yelling, “$22!” Team C made an impulsive, unwise bid. All that manager knows is that they feel LaPorta should be going for as much or more than McBride and are petulantly making a snap decision without understanding the consequences. Team A is keeping salary stats meticulously and instantly realizes that if she stops bidding, she will stick Team C with two high-priced tight ends and effectively take him out of the draft because he’ll only have $19 left to fill most of his team. But Team B is not keeping track of the money. Instead, he just knows that he wants LaPorta and bids $23 thereby letting Team C off the hook.
In this scenario, which team do you want to be? Team A, right? It’s forgivable to be Team B, but not desirable. And being Team C? You’re not in control of anything happening to you, and you’ll likely end up with a poor team. You must have situational awareness of everything going on during any salary cap draft. Not only will this help your team, but you’ll also be able to recognize those who aren’t tuned in to what’s happening. You can force them to make mistakes, strengthening your position even further.
Broadcasting Intentions in Your Salary Cap Draft
One of the most important things you can do to develop your salary cap draft skills is to monitor your own tendencies during a draft. Managers don’t realize they do things that clearly show others how they feel about a player. Some managers will wait until the bidding slows down before bidding on a player they want. Others wait until there are only a couple of seconds on the bid timer before bidding when they want a player, but at other times, they bid early in the bid clock. You don’t want to fall into the trap of being predictable by what you’re doing with your nominations and bidding. Here are a couple of easy traps you can avoid by being aware of your behavior during the draft.
Trap #1
In every draft room, you will find managers who nominate players they want or players they don’t want. You may not know which managers in the room are which when you first start, but your job is to figure that out in the first portion of the draft and then use it as the draft goes on. You’d be surprised how often some managers only call out players that they are interested in. You’ll notice that they either end up winning that player or they’ll bid to the late stages before dropping out. This is an easy one to spot if you are paying attention. Once you spot it, you can use it to squeeze extra dollars from an opponent, as your risk is greatly reduced.
On the other hand, some drafters are the opposite and only call out players they have no interest in. As the draft goes on, you’ll see they never end up with a player they nominate. In fact, most of them don’t even put up the pretense of bidding on the player they just called out after their initial bid. Keep a scratch piece of paper by you during the draft and note which category your fellow managers fall into.
Trap #2
Bidding only when interested in a player is a poor way to go through a salary cap draft. Once again, it might surprise you how often salary cap drafters bid only when they want a player and otherwise remain silent. It’s hard to stay focused the whole time a salary cap draft is happening because it demands more attention and a longer window of intense focus. So when a player is nominated they don’t care about, they take a break and do other things or tune out the current bidding war. For you, this means it is extremely easy to know when someone is serious about a player because they’ll be bidding. It’s that simple. When you spot this happening, it is your job to squeeze some extra dollars from these drafters. They likely won’t even know that they spent $24 instead of $20, and that can happen 6-8 times in a draft. Bleeding off $12-$20 from managers in the room because they are giving away their affinity for certain players is an easily exploitable advantage for your squad.
The general rule to remember about a salary cap draft is that most drafters aren’t scrutinizing themselves to know what they’re doing right or wrong. Except for the most highly skilled drafters, you’ll be able to figure out what they’re doing fairly quickly in most situations. Paying attention to what they do during the first few rounds of the draft can repeatedly pay dividends throughout the rest. An important facet of understanding how to attack these tendencies is also identifying those same tendencies in your own salary cap draft game. Make sure you are not only attacking others’ mistakes but fixing your own as well. When you combine mastery of your actions with exploiting the typical errors from other managers, you’ll be able to handle all but the most advanced draft rooms. Part 3 in the series will tell you what you need to know to prepare for your salary cap draft.
