Lessons from an Expert Auction

Hei! Mitä sä arvosta tuokra asumisen saa? Kero se meille viides toista elokuuta mennessä ja oot mukana kolven saran euroon lahja kortin arvonnassa! Pisa tietoa osoitteesta N20-pistefi! N20-pistefi! Nämä on järjestelmä ja koko koko! Tehtyä esimmentä! Se on se, että on järjestelmä ja koko! Tämä on järjestelmä ja koko! Ja nyt, ettei järjestelmä ja koko! Went härmälyjärnt� 187 on saantomaisimmin jo liianneet. Vitha Skype on Realisticu joka, filledi onakaanhtoisu mycket muuta! J preservedihe crush on Raineroyden j Certiittoisimmen Kelsey. Discuttin to where you live, jos siellä huuska voi j haymoja, en Anjayjoiset, Ronan joumpuusjangka. Tämä on järjestelmälyjärntä, joten on järjestelmälyjärntä, joten on saa järjestelmälyjärntä, joten on saa järjestelmälyjärntä, joten on saa järjestelmäly, joten on saa järjestelmäly, It's just a question of what's going to argue that this is one of the most helpful things that we can possibly do on this show, - because it involves real people playing out a draft with intelligent drafters, people who know values cold, and generally know what they're doing in a draft room, even if they aren't auction specialists, - and they're not as cold in my opinion. You can't get much better than this, because it's going to give you a really nice baseline, because as you'll see when I go through all of the things that happened in this draft, - there weren't many wacky things that happened, and I think that's a great thing for our conversation, because those wacky outliers that happen in some rooms, - that isn't necessarily helping you to figure out what you're supposed to be doing, instead the linear way that this auction played out on Saturday, - is actually a great baseline for you, because it's right up the middle, and it's where you should start with your preparation and thinking about values for some of these players. - I'm excited about this today, we're going to take a chronological walk through the King's Classic auction, and I've got four themes that are isolated from the auction, that I think you can lay over everything that happened, and folks we are going to walk through it, - and I'm going to do my best to get you out of here in the allotted time, but as people have said, they'd rather hear the content if it takes longer, and if it takes an hour, it takes an hour. - but I think that we can rip through it here in about 45 minutes, I think that you need to remember that you can't possibly get all of this information in your head through one listening of the show. - And I'm not here to make some sort of silly plan to increase my downloads, because once you download the show once, I don't get a second download for listening to it again. - So I'm not telling you that you have to listen twice, but I don't think it can hurt, because a lot of this stuff is going to be difficult to take in, because we're going to move so quick. - And that's not because I'm trying to get done in 45 minutes, it's just that how often can you say what a player's price is before you move on, and it's hard for you guys to listen to that, and internalize it when I'm moving on to another point already. - So I don't think it's a bad idea if you listen to this show twice. It might be one of the only ones at the summer that you really need to have a couple run-throughs at it. - So we'll talk about those themes in just a minute. Let me get the preliminary stuff out of the way. First of all, I have to say right off the top, the salary cap summit is in just four days. - We start Sunday night at 7 p.m., we go Monday night at 7 p.m., and then we go Tuesday night at 7 p.m., Sunday and Monday are the live auctions with my live commentary on my YouTube channel. - You'll be able to find all that information on my Twitter account, and I'll be advertising that like crazy, but you can find my YouTube channel easily enough by searching the auction brief and putting in my name. - But that's Sunday and Monday live auctions with live commentary for two to two and a half hours. I'm going to be running my FWM. - And then Tuesday night we've got Doug Orth, Dave Richard, Jim Coventry, Matt Cruz, and Missing Somebody Important. It'll come to me later, but we have a great lineup of auction drafters who know what the. Oh, Scott Pianowski, how can I forget Scott? - We just had him on the show a couple of days ago. But all of those folks are going to come in and we're going to talk about auctions. - Everything from strategies to what they think this year, how they're approaching auctions. How can we make auctions bigger? How can we make them better? - Everything that has to do with auctions is going to be a two hour auction panel, so folks do not miss the salary cap summit. - All right, let's do a quick run through of the other stuff. Don't forget you can find me on Twitter @drewdavenport.FF. You can find me at the Fantasy Football lawyer on the Patreon Network just four bucks a month. And if you want to be in the salary cap drafts, a lot of the spots are already taken, but you can still get in there. You have to be a member of the Patreon, just go in there, it's just four bucks. And then you can put your interest on the post about the salary cap summit leagues. And hopefully you can get in there on one of those nights Sunday or Monday. And it is a league that will play out for the full season. You're not just doing a draft, you're doing a full league there. So a lot of the guys who did it last year, threw in some money, donated to charity, had some fun. So I think that the same thing can happen this time around. So last but not least, don't forget with FJ Fantasy draft boards again this summer. It's 10% off your order. If you use my code Auction Brief, they're the best draft boards in the business. Get over there. Order your boards now. We're getting into August here. And you need to get those boards ordered so they get here. They are the best boards in the business. Use my code Auction Brief for 10% off. All right, that's going to do it for the preliminary stuff today. Let's get into this auction from Saturday. And let's see what we can learn. Auction talk. So with anything that I do, there's a little bit of setup work here that we got to get through. It's not this fun stuff, but it's really important to understanding what happened in the draft. And I know that going through mock draft sometimes can be a little bit tiresome, but I think this is completely different than a snake draft or even a mock auction. This is real live ammunition. And that's why it's so valuable. And I'm not here to just be like, hey, check out my team. But I have to do this from the perspective of myself, because I can't get anyone else's head. And I have to talk about my team to tell you how I did things and how I played it. And I think that's really valuable stuff. And I've been told in the past that people like hearing what I've done in an auction. And so, and you know, how I think about stuff. And that's why this hour cap summit was so successful last year. So that's what we're going to do here. You're going to go inside my mind as I walk through this draft. And we're going to do it in chronological order. But let's get some setup work done here. I want to tell you about who the players were, what the scoring and roster requirements are, what my approach was and what my par sheets looked like. And then I want to tell you four themes that came out of this thing. And then you can be thinking about those themes as we go through because I'm not really going to spend much time on them. I'm just going to tell you, hey, here's the general themes. And then you'll see them develop as we walk through the draft. All right. So let's get a little bit of this setup work done and move into the meat of the auction. All right. Just generally don't forget this is an expert league. We have a $200 cap. We go really deep in our starting lineups. The players in the room are JJ Zacharyson, Jeff Ratcliffe, Doug Orth, Scott Pianowski, Colby Conway, Matt Harmon, Jim Coventry, Marcus Grant and Michael Floreo shared a team, Andy Barrens, Patrick Dirty, Hutchins, and Matt Hussley. Doug Orth, Hutchins, and Brown, Brad Evans, and Brian Drake. And James and Hutchins did three quarters of the auction for Drake when he went on the air. So folks, that's an incredible lineup. It's tough. We don't need to belabor the point. These guys know what they're doing. And like I said to Scott on Tuesday on discussions with Drew, not all these guys do auctions very often. Some of them, this is their only auction every year, but they really know fantasy football. So that helps to make up for whatever skill they lack in auctions. They're just really good at fantasy football. So they know values really well. And they're rarely going to get out of line. It's going to be a pretty solid group regardless. And we'll hear a little bit more about that in a little bit. Don't forget how deep we go here. We start three wide receivers and we have to have three flexes with two running backs. It's a one cubic league. But when you go three flexes deep, as Pianowski pointed out on Tuesday, just the starting receivers in the game. themselves is 42. And then when you figure you're starting some flexes, you're going 50 to 60 wide receivers deep every week. So this is a real exercise in how we approach a different format. And something that people talk about all the time that you just have to remember is that when you have this deep of a format, things change drastically. And one of the things that changes is that the top prices tend to be a little bit lower than normal. And while that sounds counter intuitive, it's actually quite logical because the top prices come down as people get nervous about filling out the back of the roster for those flex spots. That's what we saw in this room. And it's what I've seen historically when I've been in drafts with A smart people and B deep rosters, the top prices get shaved off a little bit. And that's what happened here. I think I probably underestimated that just a touch. I know this in my head, but I should have thought about it just a little bit more. I was in on Jemir Gibbs and Bijon Robinson in the mid-50s. It was mixing it up there and ultimately backed off. But if I had thought about it a little bit harder, I wouldn't even have been bidding at that point because I think that's pretty normal that the top prices come down a little bit in such a deep leak. So now we know what the leak is all about. Let me tell you a little bit about my par sheet and my approach. And I'm going to give you what my team is. And then we can walk through how we got there with the themes that were present in the room. Typically, I'm only going to make two par sheets when I go into a draft. I know people like to do more. And sometimes I will do more. And this is one of those situations where I decided to do that. And the reason for that was that I really felt like there might be an opportunity to get a top level quarterback. We've had this conversation before. I'm not going to go over it again. I think in a room where people play quarterback chicken, you can sometimes find really good quarterbacks for cheap. I did in this draft. However, I also was thinking about Josh Allen when I made up my first par sheet. So I had a lot of $21 for Josh Allen on my first par sheet. And it's kind of funny that I didn't actually bid 21 when I had the chance to for Allen. But I'll tell you why in a little bit. So I made a QB par sheet that was $21 to try to get Josh Allen. I made another par sheet that was in case Brock Bowers went too cheap. And when I say too cheap, I meant if I can get the guy below 35 preferably 31 32 maybe even 30. I was going to run with it. Now I didn't think that was going to happen in this room. It didn't, but I wanted to be prepared. So that's why I had three par sheets instead of the normal two. My last par sheet was a cheap quarterback par sheet. And that's the one I ended up using. And I got to say this is kind of funny. I just got a kick out of this. This is really just anecdotal. But I thought it was pretty funny. I've been doing a lot of par sheets to the last couple of years. And it started to become pretty instinctual. So I'm sitting in my hotel room as is the tradition about three or four o'clock in the morning on Friday night when I have to be at the King's Classic in 10 and I'm doing my par sheets and I'm not putting that off because I think I'm too good and I'm not ignoring my own advice to prepare. But I've been thinking about my par sheets for weeks. So I've already got the ideas in my head. And here's the funny part. After I do my quarterback in Tideon heavy par sheets, I go, okay, here's what I think I want to do if that other stuff doesn't work out. And I went down and I took my first pass at the par sheet and folks in all the years I've been doing par sheets. I have never once taken a first pass at a par sheet and been dead on $200. And that's what happened. I've been drinking all night. I'm sitting in my hotel room tired as heck. Just party at night, 3.30 the morning and I just ripped the $200 par sheet on the first guess. And I didn't touch it. I didn't touch it because I liked it that much and I was that tuned in. And I said to myself, I think it's just time to go to bed. And so it was pretty funny. I enjoyed it a lot. And this par sheet ended up being pretty darn good. And you'll see that I wavered from it with I'm on on Ross St. Brown. But otherwise this was a pretty strong par sheet and it was pretty accurate. Despite feeling that maybe I didn't really do what I wanted to do at times, it was pretty accurate. And part of that is something that I preach about all the time is that you have to go back and look at what actually happened. And I had this conversation at dinner because we go to dinner right after this all ends. And it's a bunch of guys that were in the room. JJ Winner was watching the draft. Jameson was in the draft. Pianalski's in the draft. Drake is in the draft. All these guys are having their impressions. And those impressions are really important to what actually happened. Because sometimes you think something happened and it didn't actually go down that way. So it's really important to have these post mortems about what you did. All right. So that's the setup. And my par sheet for the cheap quarterback that I put down that was perfect. The first time I went through was the following quarterback three bucks running back one forty four running back to twenty eight. And you'll notice that's a little bit different than my normal build. I normally dump out of RB2. But I think the value is there in the mid tiers at running back where we usually call it the dead zone. I think that that's now switched to a wide receiver dead zone. We'll talk about that in a minute. So RB2. 28. Wide receiver one thirty two. Wide receiver two twenty six. Wide receiver three eighteen. Tight end five. Flexes eleven nine and eight. And then my bench six four three. And then one one one. So I'm putting almost no money into my bench. And that's something that has changed a little bit for me over the years. Not only in deep leagues like the King's Classic, but in most leagues and most of my par sheet builds, you're going to notice this year that I do not care about your bench and I've cared less and less about that over the years. That's something that I'm shifting away from. And if I can save money on my starters and feel good, okay, that's fine. Let's get some depth. But for the most part, I just don't care. I want to be aggressive on the waiver wire early. And I want to be able to cut people. All right. So that's it right there as far as the setup with my par sheet. Let's talk a little bit about what were the themes that I pulled from the draft. And then after I finished talking about them, you're going to think, well, we didn't discuss that very much and that's exactly right because I want you to just take those themes and I want you to think about them as we roll through the draft chronologically. All right. Let's talk about four themes I pulled from the King's Classic Auction on Saturday. The first theme is one that we beat to death on Tuesday with Scott Pianowski, but I have to say it again. This was a tight conservative room. And so what we have to decide when this is happening in the room is how are we proceeding the rest of the auction? Because you find out really early on that this is a tight conservative group. And what are you going to do when you notice that that's what's going on in the draft room? This is really important stuff. How do I approach a tight conservative room? And my idea was that I was going to strike early and not have any regrets about going for top level players. Because as I said at the beginning of the summer, it's all about the high level producers that are going to win you fancy titles and getting a bunch of $8 guys. Is it necessarily going to do it for you? You have to have different makers. So in a tight conservative room, I think we need to be ready to strike. So the theme of this draft was it was a tight conservative group that really knew their values. The second theme I pulled out of it was that I think that in a typical online auction, you're getting a countdown clock, a 10, 9, 8, 7, so people know when they have to bid. But as we're doing a live auction in the King's Classic with a professional auctioneer, it changes things, okay? And it changed that draft. Now Matt Cruzy, friend of the show, he's going to be on the salary cap summit on Monday night, excuse me, Tuesday night, the fourth. And we're going to talk about this a little bit with him. But him and I have had the conversation before. He knows where I stand on this stuff. And so this this opinion won't be a surprise to him. But I think there was a lack of poker against each other. I think there was a lack of headbutting against each other in the draft. And I think I can attribute that to the time everyone had to think about their bids. One of the benefits that I've always said that we have as people who are more prepared, who have a par sheet and who study more the craft of auction drafting. I think one of our benefits is that we can force people into mistakes by using the pace of the auction to do it. And that pace, a lot of times, involves that countdown. The going once, the going twice, the beeping of the clock in front of you online gives you that pressure and builds that anxiety and forces you to make decisions. I think what ended up happening with the live auctioneer was that there was a lot of time to think after people were out. He gave everyone time to bid. And that's okay. That's a style we all have to adjust to. And we all have the same auctioneer. It's not like that's something that's unique to me. But I believe it nerfed a little bit of my skill and ability to manipulate the auction room because everyone had a lot of time to think. And I believe that contributed to the stability and the pricing as well. We just didn't see a lot of wacky stuff. And again, it's smart guys. And if you give them time to think they're not going to do wacky things. If you pressure them, they They might make mistakes. So I think that was a theme of the draft too. And I think overall the stable pricing was a result of it. The third theme I noticed was that despite the fact that we've spent the whole summer talking about how personnel is changing in the NFL and how wide receiver twos are less valuable than ever before, the prices did not reflect that in this auction. And I'm going to tell you, I don't think the prices are reflecting that in general in the mocks that we're doing either. So I think one of the big things I'm going to be hammering in my drafts and in my draft plan coming up for football guys that I'm writing soon is that running backs showed greater fantasy utility last year than they ever have. And wide receiver twos tanked. Yet, dot, dot, dot, prices didn't reflect that. And they aren't reflecting that. And there's our edge, I believe. There is our edge. Look, I just did a quick glance at last year. But the wide receiver 24 last year averaged 12 and a half PPR points per game. The running back 24 averaged 12.2 PPR points per game. 0.3 difference. And when you consider that middle tier of wide receivers that we're going to talk about was going for 22, 25, 28, 32 and you could get a similar running back for 12 or 14 or 16 or 9 folks folks. What are we doing? What are we doing? We're making it harder than it needs to be. I love chasing receivers to I did it in this draft too. I'm not jumping on anybody's head. I'm here to say we're missing the plot. We are missing the plot. All right. And the number four thing is once again, I believe we had a stubborn quarterback room and this opened up some value as well. I don't think that's going to happen in a lot of home leagues. But I do think in sharp rooms it's going to happen. And if you're in one of those rooms, you need to remember that there is some opportunity there at quarterback. Other than Lamar and Jackson and Josh Allen, I don't believe a quarterback went for over $7. And the entire draft. No quarterback went for more than $7 except for Jackson and Allen. So there is an opportunity there. Okay. Those are the themes. Now that we've got that out of the way, we've got a nice solid half hour here to walk through this auction and see what happened and see how the results turned out the way that they did. Okay. So I think it's beneficial at this point to reverse engineer this thing by saying what my team is so that you can see how I build it. If that makes any sense because I don't think it does it good for me to start talking here and you have no idea what I ended up doing. So my team is as follows. Drake may my only quarterback. I paid $6. Say, Quan Barkley $40. Jalen Warren $16. Kyle Menongai $9. J.K. Dobbins $7. Tank Bigs B5. Yes, I handcuffed. Say Quan Barkley. You want to fight about it? Braylon Allen for $1. Emmanuel Wilson for $1. At wide receiver, I have Amon Rosset Brown for $49. Jalen Waddle for $29. Michael Pittman for $12. Juan Dale Robinson for $11. Romeo Dobbs for $5. And Don Tavy and Wicks for $2. And then my tight ends are a pile of garbage. I got garbage pile one for $3. And garbage pile two for $2. Sorry. I'm a little slab happy. I got Dalton Shultz for $3. Colby Parkinson for $2. Easily the worst part of my roster. And I'm not happy about my last couple wide receivers, but I love my quarterback. And let me just say this. My top four receivers and top four running backs. I'm very happy about, and I'm happy about Drake May. The rest of it's a little bit of a question mark, but everybody has that. So we'll talk about those prices again as we go through, but I wanted to put that out there so you know exactly what we're working with and how we got there. So early in the draft, what was my approach? Well, I drew the number four nomination spot. And if you want a little bit more in depth about my early nomination, head over to the Patreon network because I just dropped a nine minute video about the conversation around Sequan Barkley as my nomination with the fourth overall pick. But let me break it down a little bit quicker here because you can get nine minutes over there about that. But I had the fourth pick and I've been thinking for weeks, what am I going to do with that fourth nomination? I shouldn't call it a pick, fourth nomination. And I decided that I wanted to do Sequan Barkley with that fourth nomination. And why? Because I felt like he was being disrespected a little bit and would be somebody that people might not be as interested in as they were in previous years. So I was really hoping to get Barkley 36 to 39 dollars. I ended up getting him for 40. I did nominate him with the fourth pick, got him for 40 bucks. And I was pretty happy about it at the time. Now as I said in my Patreon video, it turned out to be a little bit irritating and I don't think it was the greatest nomination. And the reason for that is because I think I probably should have pivoted off of Barkley once I realized what was happening early in the draft. Because the conservative players in the room, the conservative managers did not give out a sit-in-down bonus. Now folks, this is going to happen in just about every one of your drafts. But as I've said before, it's not going to happen in every draft. And in the sharper rooms, they're going to be watching out for it. I don't believe there was a sit-in-down bonus here. So I think we had the number one player that was nominated was Kyron Williams. He went for 25. And then it was JimiRgibs for 58, Christian Watson for 21. And then I called out Barkley and got him for 40. So I don't believe there was a sit-in-down bonus happening here. Although I could argue that Barkley was maybe a couple dollars off. Again, when it comes back to talking about the top level players, you're never really going to get much of a discount on the top level players. I got lucky getting Brown last year for 36 bucks. He went for 38 this year. He was another guy that I thought about going with. But I thought that was getting a little bit too cute. And I thought that he would be a little bit more expensive than I wanted him to be because people are generally off-sake-quan and pretty excited about Chase Brown. So I did what I did. But I get head over to the Patreon and check out that conversation. I think it's a fun one. I think that I made a bit of a mistake early in this draft because I was counting on a sit-in-down bonus and I didn't get one. And so I probably could have played it a little more conservative early. But I believe just like at a poker table, when things are conservative, you need to be aggressive. And my thought all along was that I was going to strike early and that I was not going to have regrets about buying a couple of really elite players. And that's what I did with Sequan Barkley and Amon Ross St. Brown. And here's the funny thing. I didn't even realize it happened this quickly and this is why you have to go back and look at this stuff. I got Sequan with a fourth pick and I got Amon Ross St. Brown with the 13th pick. All right, so the 13th nomination I already had two players for 89 bucks. It affected my draft greatly. And I'm going to tell you exactly what happened with Amon Ross St. Brown. I told myself before I went into this draft that I was not going to let people get away with early deals on elite players. Now the Kyron Williams nomination bothered me a little bit because I wanted to keep going. And when he went for 25, I was a little frustrated by that. But I wanted to stick with my plan early to go for more elite players. And I felt like even if that was a deal for Kyron, it was going to affect my draft. And I didn't want to do that that quickly. I didn't want to lock myself in that quickly. And it was a good thing I didn't because if I had stuck him in my RB2 spot, I would have felt good initially being $3 ahead of my $28 estimation, but it would have gone poorly when it got St. Brown. So anyway, back to the point, which is that I had two players in the first round for 89 bucks. But remember, I told you on the recent walkthrough that in those first two rounds, I wanted two guys and that's what I did. I was very happy about that. That's a plan that I executed well. And I felt fairly good about it until some other things happen that may meet just a little bit irritated that it didn't have just a little bit more patience. But I feel like sometimes the patience thing can backfire, especially when we're trying to grab those first and second round picks. So what happens with St. Brown is the bidding starts slowing down in the mid 40s. And I'm thinking to myself, Drew, you are not going to forgive yourself if one of your favorite first round players ends up going for less than $50. Because I talked about this a couple weeks ago when I said guys that I thought I would have more of that are going to expensive. I'm on raw was one of those that I listed because I said I thought I'd be able to get them for less than $50. And yet every time I turn around, he's going for 50 or more. So I said in this draft, I really think that it's going to be hard for me to sit here and stare at I'm on raw safe Brown in the mid upper 40s and tell myself, gosh, I missed that opportunity when you see players going for more later. So the way that it happens is the extra bit of thinking time that I talked about in the earlier theme when I talked about the auctioneer and how people were able to think. It actually aided me here. It helped me here and it can be argued that it didn't help me because I never would have had 49 if it had been quicker. But I like how it turned out because a lot of times in this league I don't get any elite player like that for that much of a price. I got Puka for 39 last year. So I'm going to offer 49 is a little bit out of my comfort zone. I was proud of myself for that. That's not normally something I do and you got to check yourself on stuff like that. So what ends up happening is it stalls out in the mid 40s. I'm not in on the bidding and at $48 harm and hold the player and he says anybody, anybody, anybody and then I jumped in right into the wire at the last second and said 49 because I said to myself, I'm not going to stare and I'm on my seat ground for the next three hours for 48 bucks and be pissed. Okay. You never regret spending that extra dollar or two for a good player and that all went through my head and I just said 49. It was a bit impulsive but one of the things you have to remember is I don't care so much about the price because it's about market price. I care about having the player there. I'm not trying to get a deal on I'm on Rosset Brown. I'm just saying he's less than 50 bucks. I got a go for it. There's nobody that's more money in the bank with 115 catches and 10 touchdowns in the last three years than this guy. So for 49 bucks I was happy with it. Here's the cascade effect that it had on my roster. Because I got embarked for 40 and as I said my par sheet had him for 44 I was feeling great that I was plus four on my par sheet and I blew that out of the water with safe brown for 49 because I had a lot of 32 for my wide receiver one. You can call us a mistake. I'm not sure that it is. That would be overly critical of myself but I lose $17 to my par sheet there. That's a massive swing and I think one that I probably should not have taken. So it was a bit impulsive but I also wasn't mad about it because I told myself I was going to be aggressive and strike early but I went from plus four to minus 13 on my par sheet. Here's what I love about the par sheet. Now I've got to adjust. Can I take money off of my wide receiver two? Well not really. I'm at 26 bucks and I'm at 18 for my wide receiver three. I think what I'm going to have to do is shave a bunch of money off of RB two which of course is something I'm very comfortable with and it's something that I do all the time. So we're going to get there in a minute with how that happened. But the beginning of the draft really proceeds as it does in most drafts in a really linear fashion and don't forget something that I say all the time is that people want to nominate the top guys and even if it isn't like straight down the list like Buka, Chase, Json, they want to nominate the top guys. In the first two rounds 28 nominations only two players were nominated that were outside the top 24 running back a wide receiver or top 12 tied in. That was Christian Watson and Devonte Adams. So 26 of the first 28 players are essentially elite players. This is something that I'm hammering on this summer and more but I want you to remember this. People will nominate the top guys. So it's important for you just to nominate your top guys that you want. So things really unfold in a pretty linear fashion as prices are really slotting in quite nicely. Players like Christian McCaffrey 46, Kenneth Walker 40, Jonathan Taylor 42, Ashton Gentie 43 and I think that I have a little bit of comfort there in the fact that I like Barclay for 40 when you're talking about Taylor for 42, Walker for 40, Gentie for 43. I think what got me a little bit irritated was that there was a little pocket in there where Devon H.H. went for 34 and Rishi Rice went for 27 and I got frustrated because I thought, okay, this is just too cheap and I'm the one who was pushing those numbers up to where they were and I was frustrated that other people weren't doing that and I'm not the only person that was bidding but I was just sitting over there just shaking my head kind of just doing like this is too cheap and I don't know what we're doing here. I thought it was an inflection point and I was texting with JJ Winner during the draft a couple times just to say, gosh, did you see that or did you see this or I got to do this or that. It wasn't like anything nefarious or anything. We were just talking about like some trends in the draft and oh my gosh, what's up with H.H.H. and Rice there and I thought it was an inflection point. I thought that all of a sudden we were about to see some cheaper deals and here's a weird one. Here's a weird curve ball for you. It turned out to be a false inflection point because it really was just two guys back to back that people are nervous about. H.H. and Rice. They're nervous about them for different reasons but they're nervous about them because price is shot back up right after those two guys. That's something to remember. Sometimes the inflection point looks like it's coming in an ain't quite there yet and that's what happened on Saturday. I thought that was an interesting curve while I wanted to point out. So the price for St. Brown ends up being 49. Jackson Smith and Jigba goes for 50. Puka goes for 50. Lamb goes for 43. This all happens early in the third round and it's pretty interesting because the market was set. The market's just straight up been set at that point and St. Brown was just going to be a dollar cheaper than elite guys like J.S. and Puka and I'm not saying St. Brown isn't elite but the $50 price getting just over St. Brown I thought was super interesting as well. And the early conservative pricing then starts to have an effect on the room as we get deeper into the draft. We get to the end of the second round. And remember what I talked about. We're still bidding on elite players here and the prices went up because there was early conservative bidding and that's what's going to happen. That's a cardinal rule of auctions that if things are tight early they're going to loosen up. Devonte Smith at 2.13 and Mechaag Buka at 2.14 meaning the last two nominations of the second round. Devonte Smith went for 34 bucks and Mechaag Buka went for 35 bucks. Those are high prices folks. If they're nominated at a different time those prices are going to be much lower. Zay flowers went for 31 at the end of the first round. So remember that when there's early conservative pricing you're going to see a spike and you need to get in there and that's part of what I was doing was trying to get in and make my strikes before things got out of hand. And I would argue that 34 for Devonte Smith and 35 for A Buka are too high and 31 for flowers. Those are all guys that should be 3 to 5 to 7 dollars even cheaper than that. And I'm not saying they're horrible prices but they're part of the inflation when it came to scarce quote unquote elite borderline Y receiver one Y receiver two prices. Now right about this time too we saw an interesting quarterback play from Colby Conway. He nominates Josh Allen. And instead of nominating Josh Allen for 12 or 13 to 14 bucks he nominates him for 20 bucks. And it's what Pianowski says as the price line bit he nominated him for an amount that he thought that he was fine paying. And I think there's a psychological aspect here too that I love with the play which is to say the word 20 automatically gets people like yeah because if he says 12 and people go 14 15 16 and they take their time and they get up to 19 maybe they don't feel bad about saying 20 or 21. But if you just rip off 20 right away people are just like I'm not saying 21 folks it worked on me. I had a par sheet where $21 was the exact amount I was going to pay for a tie for a quarterback if his name was Josh Allen. I could have been 21 a bit right on my par sheet but at that point in time I didn't feel like that's what I wanted to do because Allen was nominated with pick 3.01 and at that point I had already decided I couldn't afford a top level quarterback because I had over paper brown and I'm sitting there minus 13 on my par sheet. I just couldn't do it. So it's a nice play by Colby. I have to pivot I can't do much about it. Now at this point in time too we saw an interesting run from 3.08 to 3.13 where Deandre Swift went for 25. Judkins went for 27. Basel Tutton went for 20 and Trevian Henderson went for 22. Now I'm not saying I hate those prices but those feel like a little bit of inflated prices for that point in the draft because of the fact that they're all mid to upper level RB 2s and everyone is interested in those guys at the RB 2 level even though there's plenty of players who are cheaper who represent RB 2 value just as well. So I thought that was an interesting run there. I just feel like all of those guys are inflated just a little bit. Swift at 25 he's probably 22 right? Judkins at 20 70s probably a $24 player. Tutton at 20 he should be 17 18 bucks. Now I understand people are excited and we're seeing Tutton go up and up. Trevian Henderson 22 when you consider a Remondory Stevenson went for 18 I think that's 3 to 4 bucks too expensive. But again we're seeing a general increase in pricing here and when I said earlier that we've got some wide receivers that are going in that range we have these obvious running back 2s that are going in the same range but then there's a lot of running back 2s where it just fell off a cliff a little bit later. And I knew I needed to get one of those guys so I went after Jaylen Warren because I felt like a guy who could get me 40 or 50 catches would make a nice RB 2. I believe in Jaylen Warren and I believe that he's going to get plenty of touches even and I'll recall. So $16 gets me back in the par-cheat at game 12 bucks there, and now I'm back in the game. It was around this time that I saw that I could have pivoted to a different wide receiver one, but obviously I had already made my bed, but for just for informational purposes, right at the beginning of round 4, the 401-02-03, or Nico Collins, Justin Jefferson and Drake London. They went for $35, $44, and $39 respectively. So if you want to bail out of that wide receiver one, which is what I originally had planned to do, you can get a guy for the upper 30s, low 40s that makes a lot of sense as a wide receiver one. He just won't be that elite wide receiver one. You can argue that Justin Jefferson obviously is one, but I think we all know that he's got quarterback problems. Drake London at $39 looks like a really nice price, and if I had not had St. Brown, I would have been in on Nico or London at that point. So I'm back in it here because as round 4 opens, I'm minus 13 on my par-cheat still, and I got to do something here. So Jalen Warren was my nomination, and I knew that he wasn't going to be very popular. Luckily I was correct on why I shouldn't say I knew. I was hoping he would not be very popular. He wasn't 16 bucks, felt like a great buy for an RB2. And then right after this, Roma Dunzee goes for 20 bucks. I'm looking at the wide receivers, and I'm thinking, "Boy, oh boy, it is getting a little bit thin." I think I texted JJ at this point and said, "Boy, oh, I need a guy. I need a guy right now." But it's thin, and it's starting to get to the point where some of these guys are going to be the last types of the wide receiver to area that I'm looking at. We're talking about guys with explosive alpha potential that are still going in the mid to upper 20s. So when Jalen Waddle came up, I never expected to have Jalen Waddle, but he ends up going to 29 for me, and I had set 26 on my par-cheat, so I lose another $3. Now I'm down $4 still, but I had to act because it was getting thin, and boy, oh boy, I'm happy that I was actually right here in making this call. Because initially when this happened, I was not that excited about the price for Waddle. It suddenly became a lot better as we moved on. Inflation hits, because at this point we see Parker Washington get nominated, and he goes for $16. I feel like that's a pretty big number. I have not seen the Jacksonville receivers as expensive as I saw them in this room. I believe Brian Thomas went for $18, Jacobi for $13, and Parker Washington for $16. I feel like all of those numbers are higher than I've been seeing. I was a little bit surprised by that, but then again, people in the business are high on the Jacksonville offense as they should be. The inflation continues here. Teteroe and McMillan goes for $26. That's not a bad price. It's a few bucks more than I want. Jameson Williams goes for $21. But here's the murderers row. Terry McClore and Ghosts for $32. T Higgins goes for $36. Mike Evans goes for $30. 32. There's a little bit of a question there. But then McIleman goes for $16. Folks, Parker Washington and McIleman are not $16 players. McClore and Higgins and Evans, they're great players. And I am not arguing with somebody paying that price, okay? Because at that moment, that's what you have to do. But here's further evidence if you ever needed it that tears are so incredibly important. And that's why I felt an urgency to act for a waddle. And boy or boy did I feel good when McClore and Higgins and Evans all went in the 30s and I had waddle for $29. So that felt great. That felt like one of the best moments for me in this auction. And I want to point out something here because I think it's important. When you pay a higher price for a player, a lot of times people will say, well, that's where I value him or that's what I think he's going to go for. But I want to make an analogy to ADP here, which I don't do very often. But I think it's important because a lot of us see things through the lens of ADP because that's just how we've been indoctrinated with fantasy football information over the years. And I think it makes the point a little bit more simple to understand. If you say, well, I paid $16 from a guy, I'm going to be because that's what he's worth or Parker Washington because that's what he's worth. That may very well turn out to be true. But at the time you paid that money for that player, was that player worth it? And I would submit to you that no, the players are not worth $16 at that point. So I'm not saying it's a terrible price if they turn out, of course, to produce for that. But that's not what we're doing here. In the moment when we're playing the game, the $16 prices there are incorrect. And let me make this analogy now with ADP. If you believe that after the season is over, Bayesville Tune will be seen as a second round pick next year. But he's a fifth rounder right now. Does that mean you should draft him in the second round? Well, of course not. You should draft him in the fifth round or maybe the fourth to make sure that you get him. But drafting him in the second makes no sense, right? Because that's not his value. And we would never walk into a snake draft and say, Hey, look, I got tooting in the second round and brag about it, right? But if you say, Hey, I got my guy element for 16. I'm excited about it. And again, I'm not jumping. I don't even know who got limit. I'm not jumping down up and down on this person for 11 for 16. I just tried to illustrate a point here. Okay? Because at the time you paid that, the player wasn't worth that. So just because the player turns out to be worth it, doesn't mean it was at the correct game theory play in the moment. If we're in an auction room and we're trying to beat the game, I don't believe paying the price at that point is correct as far as the price itself. Now, this may sound confusing, but I'm not telling you not to make the play. Okay? Because you need the player, right? So don't worry about beating the game if you need the player. And that's part of what happened here. So I'm cool with that. I'm cool with the plays they made. But I want to point out that saying to yourself, Hey, I think he's going to produce like that. That's not the point here. What we're trying to do is get the player at the right price so that we can go on and buy other players that are worth the price at that moment. And therefore our team takes off. If we end up with lemon at eight and he's a $16 player, that's how we profit. That's how our roster gets better. But paying 16 for lemon and then having to use him as a wide receiver three because you couldn't afford one means that he has to produce. And if he doesn't hit, then that's when you're in trouble. So I'm not saying again that these are bad plays, but just don't forget that general concept. Now, in the end of the fourth early fifth round, we saw some interesting prices here. Rico Dowdow went for 10 bucks. Josh Jacobs went for 25 and Javante Williams went for 21. I think all three of those prices are too cheap. I hated passing on all of them. But let me just remind you that's really important that's something we've talked about. You have to pass on some of them. At that point, I already had Jaylen Warren, Jaylen Waddle, Amundera State Brown and Sequan Barkley. That's $134 bucks. There's nothing I could do. I can't pay $26 for Josh Jacobs when I have $66 left on the F4 players. I still need 12 players and I got $66. So I knew what I was doing as far as my flexes and I was okay, but I couldn't pay $26 for Jacobs. I was irritated by that. I couldn't pay $22 for Javante. I couldn't pay $11 for Rico. That bugged me. But hey, that's how it goes. Right around this time is when I saw an interesting price on Tyler Warren at $22 bucks in the middle of the fifth. Colston Loveland had gone for $19 bucks in the second round. So I thought that was interesting. I don't have a huge strong take away, but I thought that you might like to hear that. And then it was around the end of the fifth round when I ended up with Drake May. And I ended up with him for $6 bucks. Next to Jalen Warren, I think the price for May has to be one of my favorite plays of the draft. And I think it's important to note that when you nominate quarterbacks, that's going to be a large part of the game with one quarterback leagues. Don't forget that. That when you nominate them matters. And Drake and Jameson's team, they nominated pretty early. And you want pretty to be a two or three dollar guy or even a one dollar guy late. But he ends up going for five because it was too early in the draft. So think about that when you're talking about your quarterbacks, I end up getting May, like I said in the fifth round, money's running low at this point. And people don't want to spend a quarterback because as Scott Pianoski put it on Tuesday, they don't feel pressured. They don't feel stressed about the quarterback position. So they can let a guy like that go and feel okay because they want to spend money elsewhere. The prices were perty for five Lamar Jackson for 16 in the middle of the fourth. Murray for four, Dart for three, Daniels for seven, burrow for seven, Caleb Williams for four. All right, these are all prices that you're going to see in a sharp room. So that's probably not going to happen in your home auctions, which you need to be looking out for your quarterback value at the top. And if it's not there, take a look. Just take a look at Josh Allen. Take a look at Lamar Jackson. Take a look at Drake mate and see what you can get and if you can't get him fine just blow it off Just blow it off and don't forget that if you nominate him too early I think that's going to be a disadvantage You really need to wait to the 5th 6th 7th round like we talked about on the five stages of an auction episode last week A couple interesting things to end this out because we're almost done Ramandre Stevenson went for 18 bucks at the 8.01 and Kenny Gainwell went for 14 bucks at the 9.04 This doesn't always happen in typical home leagues But we got to the 10.07 with Jacobi Myers at 13 And we never saw a player go for more than $10 the rest of the draft Six rounds went off without a player going for more than 13 bucks So that's really interesting to note and that's what's going to happen in deeper leagues So if you're in a 14 team or you're in those deep roster leagues that's what's going to happen Round 9 and 10 are going to be a lot of low price guys and then after that it's never going to get above 10 bucks The reason I point out Ramandre Stevenson and Gainwell at 18 and 14 is they were clearly the last two running backs on the board that stuck out like a sore thumb And remember I talked about that the sticking out like a sore thumb A lot of guys are going for six seven bucks right in this range and then Ramandre goes for 18 and Gainwell for 14 I don't believe that Gainwell's a 14 dollar player nor is Ramandre an 18 dollar player Although that might be reasonable value I believe that they went there because of inflation and when they were nominated So how did I finish out my roster? Okay, so at this point we're sitting there with May, Barkley, Warren, St. Brown and Waddle And at this point I started to get a little bit nervous about my tight end and as you can see I didn't finish it well And I decided I just didn't care. You know, it's old time like 700 yards last year. I'm totally fine with them for three bucks He sucks, but I'm totally fine with them there But uh, so at this point I text JJ went on and I said hey, I really got a pound on some flexes now And I thought that the prices were going to come down and I had to wait a little bit longer than I wanted to But I do believe I finished the way that I wanted to and here's where I talk about all the time about your planning ahead of time I knew that at the end of the draft my plan needed to be better than it was in the last couple of years Because last year I ended up spending on some guys that really just were sort of wild spends for not much money And I know that sounds funny but it's like taking a chance on this idiot for four bucks that's really not the way you should spend your money And I wanted to spend a little bit more on those flexes and not care so much about my bench because spreading that money out led to me getting players that had such a lower hit rate that I wanted That I thought the back on my roster the last couple of years was complete nonsense Now I'm not saying that some of these guys that I got don't aren't going to suck because they are and that's why I got them But my plan was I wanted to spend a little bit more on the flexes and on rounding out my actual starting lineup And not worry about the rest and I did that really well In fact I hit my par sheet numbers pretty strongly the rest of the way Like I said I was still behind when I got those main five guys on my roster so I needed to cut a little bit at wide receiver three Michael Pittman fell in my lap at the 8.08 for 12 bucks Quentin Johnston went for 15 bucks right after And I tell you what I didn't like a lot of the mid prices here as we got into the wide receiver three and four territory People got a little bit nervous about the depth there Jordan Madison goes for 14 Marvin Harrison goes for 20 DK Metcalf goes for 15 If you listen to my show you know what I think about that Matthew golden 11 KC concepcion 11 Josh Downes 16 I'm just going to tell you Pittman for 12 I like better than every one of those guys Now I'm not saying I'm going to be right I just do I like him better I think he's a really talented receiver that doesn't get enough respect and we got guys like Casey concepcion going for $1 less than Pittman I just think that's a little bit bizarre and you can't give me any argument about the offense or the quarterback there In fact I think Pittman's got a better offense and a better quarterback so I'm not really sure what's going on there And then I needed some running back depth so I ended up with JK Dobbins for 7 bucks and boy oh boy If you feel comfortable with JK Dobbins as your RB three then you are telling yourself a lie and I said I got to get an RB four who touches the ball Because at some point I'm going to miss Dobbins I didn't end up getting Jonah Coleman which I wanted to do because I didn't have the money But I end up getting Kyle Monangai for 9 at the 11.04 and he was the last player to approach 10 bucks before the end of the draft I like the price don't get me wrong I don't think it's a bad price for a guy that's going to touch the ball as much as he does and who does have a goal line role But I'm not a common fungi guy at all but that's where being played or agnostic comes in I said I got a slam some flexes So then I end up getting one day Robinson for 11 bucks as well and then Romeo Dops for 5 So that's really the end of the conversation because I don't want to talk about the back of the roster guys they're just complete nonsense dark throws that I don't care about They're going to be cut quickly if Wix looks like he's not getting enough targets he's done you know it's easy But I do like that Dobbins for 7 bucks and Monangai for 9 they're going to combine for 4 to 450 touches And if I can put them in my flex spots that is exactly what we're trying to do in this league Now I don't know about Romeo Dops I haven't heard great things as the Patriots have opened camp but you know he's learning a new offense and I think he's a solid NFL receiver We'll see but one day Robinson for 11 makes me feel a little bit more safe as well So my finish ends up being a somewhat low cost of malgamation of guys who are going to touch the ball but I like their cost Because all of them were for $12 or less but all have the potential to be fantasy producers So in the end I end up nailing most of my flexed prices because I wanted to spend $11, $9, $8 and I ended up spending $11, $9, $7 And then I wanted to spend $10 in my first two bench spots and I spent $10 in my first two bench spots It's hard to hit those marks I don't always do it but I love how I finished the draft I'm not here to tell you that this is a championship roster I think there are things I could have done differently And I certainly could have sat there not paid for Amon Ross ain't Brown and instead paid $27 for Rice, gotten Jacob says my RB2 and gotten a much better wide receiver 3 and 4 But I love the star power of having Barclay and St. Brown and Waddle and then Sneaking Drake May in there for $6 So it's not like I don't have star power I've got arguably 4 star fantasy players Drake May was a top 3 guy last year, St. Juan Barclay's been RB1 at the position in his career St. Brown, top 5 Locke, Jaylen Waddle, he knows how to produce as a top 5 player I've got 4 guys that can be top 5 in their position I'm not saying they're gonna be, I'm just saying they can be So it's not like I don't have top end potential but then I've got some nice 4 Jaylen Warren 40 to 50 catches Michael Pittman, I believe he can reach 70 catches I believe Wanda Robbins can reach 70 or 80 catches working with Dable So I like how I finished it out but I'm gonna be totally honest with you As I said to Scott Pianowski, nothing in this draft ever made me feel super comfortable But I think that's okay because I think that's the whole point here right That we're not always gonna be comfortable but we have to continue to soldier through With what we're seeing in front of us And I can't always make the right moves but I can certainly go back and look and see why it wasn't the right move I felt like I played it pretty well, it's a top room and it was a tough draft But hey, coming out of the draft I feel pretty darn good and I feel like I'm going to be starting a nice roster week one We'll see how things go there as far as luck and as far as some of my calls on the back end Well don't forget the themes here before I let you go There's a tight conservative room, how do we attack it? There's a lot of time for people to think that leads to stability and pricing So make sure that you're paying attention to your tears, it becomes ever more important to watch your tears before they dry up Don't forget that running backs are cheaper in that mid RB2, RB3 range They're cheaper than the wide receiver 2s and 3s And so you're buying fantasy points cheaper when you're going for those mid-level running backs And then also don't forget about stubborn quarterback rooms That if you want to try to land one of those top guys for a cheaper price You need to make sure and get them out there 4th, 5th, 6th round, maybe 7th round Make sure you get them out there not too early but not too late Take a look at them and if it doesn't work it doesn't work then you wait and wait and wait and wait and pay 3 bucks for 2 guys Okay, I hope that you enjoyed my walkthrough of the King's Classic I feel like I didn't hit anything while I feel like at the same time I just took a shotgun and blasted information in your ear for an hour I know it's probably a lot to take in but I think it's worth going back and listening to it again if it felt like a lot I believe that this kind of information is absolute gold Taking you into the mind of somebody in a tough auction room and how they pivoted, how they approached it, whether they approached worked and what exactly happened to the room So I hope you enjoyed it and that's going to do it for the auction talk of the King's Classic today. Let's get you out of here. All right, the episode's gone on long enough, so let me do a quick rundown of things that you need to be remembering. The salary cap summer is coming up Sunday Monday and Tuesday at seven Eastern time. Two live auctions followed by an auction panel with some of the best auction minds in the business on Tuesday evening. Also use my code auction brief over at FJ Fantasy Sports to get your draft boards and get 10% off your boards are the best in the business. Find me on Twitter @DrewDab and pour to FF and don't forget the Patreon network for bucks a month for the best auction content in the business and you can go over there and find more about my opening nomination of Sequel on Barclay and my criticism of what I did and how maybe I could have played it differently. So go over there and check that out as well. Thank you so much everybody for being here. The next time I talk to you it's going to be August. Keep your fingers crossed for health and happiness and all NFL locker rooms as we head into training camp. Love you all for being here. Thank you so much for anybody who came up to me at the Expo and talked to me and told me they liked my work and said that they love my show or my legal stuff or whatever the case may be. Thank you to anybody who came up to me at the Expo. I hope that we had a fun conversation and there was a lot of you. So I really enjoyed that and I really enjoyed my time off this weekend. It's time for a four-week sprint to the finish. Don't go anywhere. Thank you for joining me for another episode of the auction brief and we're officially adjourned and I am out. The auction brief is adjourned. That'll do it for this week's episode. See you next time on the auction brief. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]