Auction drafts are easy to “win” but even easier to “lose.” Dave Caban overviews the preparation, thought processes, and in-auction strategies needed to ensure that you’re ready for the intensity and challenges auctions will throw at you and are poised to leave your draft with a contender.
If you haven’t done so yet, please read through the introductory article, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4 of this year’s guide.
THE HUDDLE EXPERT AUCTION
The Huddle auction took place on Tuesday, August 20th. I didn’t head into this auction with a defined strategy that I wanted to execute and ended up building a slightly different construction than I had in previous years. This construction had me heavily invested in two elite wide receivers, a very solid running back, and a promising young WR. I took notes of the thoughts going through my head at each nomination for a long portion of the auction and then discussed them in the recording below. If you’re interested in listening, I think it will be helpful to get some perspective on how I used the information that became available during the auction to react, strategize, and consider how I could build my team as the auction progressed. I didn’t leave the auction feeling that it was my best auction ever. I likely would have benefited from being a little bit more deliberate in navigating this team into a pivotable configuration such as those we outlined in Part 4. But hopefully, this underscores why much of the prep and content we’ve covered in this guide is important, and after reviewing the rosters of other managers, I can confidently say that I feel better about sinking my dollars into a very strong anchoring player group, as opposed to trying to spread my dollars across a larger collection of ‘good’ players.