If you haven’t yet, it’s a good idea to go back and read the first four parts of this salary cap draft series before you dive into bidding strategies.

Part 1, Basic Concepts
Part 2, Building Your Skill Set
Part 3, Preparation
Part 4, Nomination Strategies

After Part 4 told you how to craft your nomination strategy, you can now work on what to do once the player is out there. There isn’t as much nuance in your bidding strategies in a salary cap draft as there is when picking a player to nominate, but there are still some things you can do to try and maximize your value when bidding.

As a general rule, the best way to avoid a big mistake from a poor bid in a salary cap draft is to not get fancy. While you are getting comfortable with the other drafters, their tendencies, and the unique process of a salary cap draft, you should follow the simple rule of bidding one dollar more than the previous bid. Your goal is to take as much guesswork off your plate as you can and trying to craft the perfect bid every time you’re in the middle of a bidding war is sure to lead to mistakes for all but the most veteran of drafters.

The way to think of your bidding in a salary cap draft is to keep things simple. There are situations in which jumping the bid by more than $1 is appropriate but think about this example as a reason for caution. Let’s say you have targeted Jaylen Waddle as your WR2. You think that getting him in your league for less than $27 would be a steal, and you’re hoping he stays under $30. When Waddle is nominated, you find yourself bidding with someone dollar for dollar, slowly up towards $15. You know what you’ll pay for Waddle, so you decide to make a bid to throw off your opponent. You call out, “$26!” The reasoning behind the bid is solid. You’ll pay $27, and in most rooms, he’s over $30, so if you land him for $26, you’re doing well, right? The problem is, you’ll never know if that was as cheap as you could’ve landed him. Sure, $26 for Waddle is a great price, but you’ll never know if you could’ve got him for $25, $24, or less. Your job when you bid is to squeeze every dollar out of every play you make throughout your salary cap draft. When you make a bid like that, you eliminate the chance to do that. Making a ‘shock bid’ like this isn’t necessarily wrong, but it should be used sparingly so that you don’t waste money guessing whether or not you could’ve got a player cheaper.

The other benefit of keeping your bids simple is that it helps you deal with difficult league mates. There are always going to be managers in a salary cap draft room who are over-aggressive with their bidding. They’ll put huge bids in immediately when a top player is introduced, or they’ll end up in a bidding war with someone shouting bids back and forth without thinking about the price. This can be frustrating when you’re against someone like that and badly need to land a player, but don’t get caught up in their aggressiveness. Instead, cool things down by pausing for a few seconds after they bid before you respond with $1 above their bid. Don’t show weakness, but don’t feed into the runaway train, either.

Here are some other things to think about when it comes to bidding in your salary cap draft.

Have a Reason

Too many managers in a salary cap draft get into the habit of throwing out bids on players they like without thinking about how it furthers their goals in the draft. It is imperative to always have a reason for bidding. Of course, you want to bid on a player you like, but if that’s your only reason, that’s not sound salary cap draft strategy. You should ask yourself the following questions before you bid:

• Do I need this player, or do I want this player?
• Do I have the salary cap to pay for the player while sticking to my strategy?
• How many roster spots do I have left, and how will landing this player affect my future in the draft?
• Is the player cheap enough that you can’t pass up a bid?
• Is the player expensive, but you need the player bad enough that you have to bid?

Two factors exist that have a push-and-pull relationship with each other. On one side is the price of the player, and on the other is your current team need. Sometimes, this produces some odd results when you go through these questions, but they are important. For example, if you already have your top three wide receivers for your team and Tee Higgins comes up for bid, you are somewhat limited in what you can do. If the Higgins bidding stops at $9, you have to weigh whether or not that is cheap enough to bid or whether you have to pass on the deal. The unfortunate side effect of going through this sequence of questions is that you will have to pass on some deals along the way. You simply can’t buy every player who goes cheaper than they should. There are plenty of managers who can’t pass up a deal, and they’ll get stuck with a lot of decent players for solid prices, but it hems them in at the end of the draft. This often leads to a roster that is unexciting and that fills up before it should.

So, all you have to do to avoid that trap is to juxtapose your need against the price of the player. If Higgins is about to go for $3 or $21, the decision is much easier. You can’t afford to pass on him for the former price, and you can’t afford to bid on him for the latter. But when it’s somewhere in the middle, you have to look at price versus need while not forgetting that part of that equation is how many roster spots you have left. It can be a complicated formula that you have to assess in the middle of a bidding war, but you can train yourself to quickly run through those concepts by deliberately paying attention to these principles as you draft. It takes time and repetition, but anyone can learn.

Salary Cap Draft Price Enforcing

It is tempting to equate price enforcing in a salary cap draft with bidding people up. These two things seem similar but they are quite different. But before discussing how they’re different, there is an important salary cap draft caveat. Trying to run up the price on a player either because the price is just too low or because you think you can squeeze more money from someone is risky, and it can ruin your salary cap draft. To do either one effectively, you need to have a strong grasp on the managers in the room, the scoring system, expected prices, and a whole list of other little things that allow you to bid with the expectation that you aren’t going to get stuck with a player. Be careful.

But if you feel comfortable doing it, one of these is inherently less risky than the other. Price enforcing is the process of bidding on a player that has stalled out well below his expected price. When you decide to bid in this situation you are essentially saying that you are ok if you end up with the player. For example, people are bidding on James Cook, and his price stalls out at $19. People are buying the Ray Davis camp hype, and you’re watching as a room that’s low on money is letting Cook’s price crater. You hadn’t planned on landing Cook, but bidding $20 is less about trying to land him and more about making sure his price gets closer to what should be his market value. If you happen to get “stuck” with Cook for a price between $20 and $25, you are still getting a nice deal. But, more than likely, you can stop bidding in the low-to-mid $20s and let someone else have him. But you pulled an extra $5-$6 out of the room by getting his price up closer to where it should be. That matters in the long run if you consistently enforce market value as the salary cap draft goes on.

Bidding someone up solely because you believe that the other manager will keep bidding and you can squeeze more money from them is a completely different concept. In this situation, often, you are simply reading the player and their roster for how much they are willing to pay. If someone doesn’t have their top receiver and Brandon Aiyuk is the only one left in the top 20, you can explore the idea of making them pay a few more dollars than they should. Aiyuk goes for around $26 in salary cap drafts, so when the bidding stops at $22, you have a chance to squeeze that player for a few more dollars. Trying to get the other manager to pay $28-$30 is probably too risky, but sometimes scarcity inflation will allow it. Instead, take some of the risk out and just concentrate on pulling two more bids. When you bid $23 and then $25, you are done. Hopefully, they say $26, and you have effectively cost them $4. It doesn’t seem like a lot at the time, but doing that over and over during any salary cap draft has a cumulative impact that you will notice.

Part 6 of this series will focus on some human psychology and tells in a salary cap draft room, but to successfully pull off price enforcement or bidding someone up you have to know the fantasy angle, the human angle, and the salary cap draft strategy angle.

Three Final Salary Cap Draft Bidding Tips

Bidding in a salary cap draft is more of an art form than something you can nail down with specific linear thoughts. You can rarely say, “Well, if they do this, I’ll do this,” because so much of what happens in a salary cap draft room is not the same in any other room. You have to adjust as you go. Learning as many moves as possible and then mixing them up is important to get the best results. Here are a few final moves to consider adding to your salary cap tool belt.

1. Bidding more than $1 – Yes, there are moments when you want to bid more than $1 over the previous bid. There is a psychological barrier to crossing over certain price points. When the bidding slows at $27, you can often say $30 and win the contest right there. Whereas going by $1 increments allows your opponent to get comfortable with paying in the $30s for a player they had pegged in the $20s. Crossing the $20, $30, $40, and $50 barriers is a psychological hurdle people must get over to continue to bid. If they’re on the fence it might be the final thing causing them to stop bidding. Furthermore, if you sense a drafter seems unsure with their last bid then jumping the bid by $2 or $3 will sometimes end the fight and thereby save you a couple of bucks.
2. Quick Bidding – If you know what your bid limit is in your head when a player is nominated, it is a good idea to get into the habit of bidding quickly. Following an opponent’s bid with a quick $1 jump has two effects on them. One effect is that your quick bid makes it harder for others to determine when you’ll stop. If you go more slowly when you’re nearing your limit they’ll get a quick read on your intentions. The second effect is that it will discourage others from bidding. Your quick bids will show confidence and a willingness to continue to bid. They won’t know when you will suddenly stop, and your show of confidence sometimes buys you a few dollars off the price. There is another beneficial side effect of bidding quickly. It allows you to keep the pressure on the other player when you’re the one with the winning bid. If you give them time to breathe, they get extra time to think and decide if they want to bid again. Don’t give them that luxury. Keep the pressure on and see if you can force them to make mistakes as a result of your quick bids.
3. Keeping Quiet Late – The later you get in the draft, the more you want to curb your involvement in any bidding. The chances of a mistake get higher and higher as roster spots and money dwindle. On top of that, the chances also rise sharply that you’ll get stuck with a player you didn’t want because people unexpectedly stop bidding. In this case, the recommendation isn’t how to bid but to remember that sometimes not bidding is the best way to stay flexible late in a salary cap draft.

Conclusion

None of these ideas by themselves are going to win the day, but they are important in the nuanced jungle of a salary cap draft. Your ability to employ one or several of them during the draft will have a cumulative effect as it wears on. There are no magic pills in a salary cap draft room, and when you are playing with veterans, your edge will be small. But learning all these tactics and then combining them as they become appropriate can push your edge, and that is what you need to win your salary cap draft.

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