August 21, 2025 • 41 mins
Are you looking for a quick primer before you head into your auction? The Auction Brief is here for you. The show finishes up draft season with a tight, sleek 40 minutes that crystallizes the entire summer into five key ways to dominate your auction. Your host not only gives you five mantras to repeat in your auction room, but he also drops his six favorite players that are being consistently undervalued in the dozens of auctions he's been in so far this summer. The combination of these six foundational players plus the five foundational auction concepts are all you need to know to go into your auction on draft day and come away with a championship roster. Don't miss the final draft episode that takes all your knowledge and all the hours of content and distills them down for you in a neat package so you can crush your auction. The Auction Brief may be saying goodbye for now, but not before one last episode to make you an elite auction player. Don't miss the Auction Primer! @DrewDavenportFF
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to the Auction Brief.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
There's a joy in these game, sir.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Not taking you on a journey through fantasy football, the law,
and life.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
The saw yours take. It depends on how much you want.
And now you're legal analyst and auction draft expert here
to help you.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
Dominate your fantasy drafts. Your host, Drew Davenport, there are
full hearts.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Hey, everybody, welcome in to the Auction Brief. As Liddy said,
I'm your host, Drew Davenport. You're a fantasy football lawyer,
and thank you so much for joining me for the
last episode of draft season for the Auction Brief, not
coincidentally the most important episode of the season. It is
(00:54):
time for our auction Primer, everything you need to know
for your auction in one episode. We've retooled this show
a little bit from prior years. I did the auction
Manifesto the past couple of years, but I retooled the
whole show this summer, and the auction Manifesto is part
(01:14):
of that. What I did with the manifesto in the
past was tried to jam as much information as I
could from the summer into that manifesto that I thought
that you needed, but it was really full, chock full
of stuff, and I had an idea for how we
could retool this episode. So I'm calling it the Auction Primer,
not the Auction Manifesto, because it's going to get you
(01:35):
thinking the right way to be thinking when you go
into the draft, not necessarily cluttering up your brain with
a lot of stuff that maybe you aren't going to remember.
So we're going to talk about that in just a second.
But I love this episode because we've got five simple,
crystal clear points that you're going to take into your
draft room, and I've got six players that I want
(01:56):
you to build on in your auctions. I think the
combination of those two things is going to be dynamite.
And this is all you're gonna need before you walk
into your room and you're gonna feel confident about your
auction draft. So welcome into the Auction Brief for the
last episode of Draft season. Don't worry, We're not going anywhere.
It's just goodbye for now. There will be episodes of
the Auction Brief this season, don't worry about that, but
(02:17):
this will be the last one before you draft, because
this is coming down to the wire and we've only
got a couple weekends left to draft your fantasy teams,
and I hope this is going to help you do that.
But I want to say, first of all, the last
time you're gonna hear it, or to your draft boards
from fjafantasy dot com. They are the best draft boards
in the business. Use my code Auction twenty twenty five
(02:39):
Auction two zero two five and get ten percent off
your order. I love the fantasy draft boards over there
at fjfantasy dot com. Also, you can find me on
Twitter at Drew Davenport FF, on TikTok and Patreon at
the Fantasy Football Lawyer. And I am happy to say
that you're joining me on a pretty fun occasion because
not only is our last episode, but we hit a
(03:01):
couple milestones here on the auction brief. Two big things
happened really this week for me and for the content
surrounding auction drafting this week. First of all, we just
are fresh off the salary Cap summit. The last couple
of nights, we did three nights of auction draft centered material. Nothing.
We're not talking ADP or snake drafts or late round steals.
(03:25):
We're talking all auction all the time, and all three
of those episodes you can find those over on my
YouTube channel, the Auction Brief YouTube channel. You can find
all three of those episodes. That's about seven and a
half hours of content on auction stuff alone. We did
two live drafts, and Folks, the first night that we
were doing that live draft, we got to almost five
thousand people watching that episode at one time. That's an
(03:48):
incredible number. I am so proud of that, and I
want to thank all of you for showing up, for
coming into the comments, for participating, for being excited about it,
and for being part of my triumph because it was
a big deal. It was an unqualified success for me,
for the Auction Brief, but really for the community surrounding
our love, which is auction drafting. So that's big. But
(04:11):
the other big news I have is we're going to
episode eleven. You're listening to episode eleven right now. We're
gonna end up doing over twenty five thousand downloads this
summer alone, which is a bit crazy because normally we
go twelve or thirteen episodes in the summer. But I
was sick at the beginning of the summer and couldn't
manage it, and We're in episode eleven now, so that
means through ten episodes. Boy, that is a big number.
(04:34):
And I'm surprised by that because I was a little
bit nervous at the beginning of the summer with some
of the numbers I saw coming in. I was I
was a little bit concerned. I thought, boy, these are
pretty low. But things have exploded over the last couple
of weeks. And the other thing that I have to
share is that we're just a couple hundred downloads away
from one hundred thousand downloaded episodes of the Auction Brief. Folks.
(04:56):
That's incredible. I don't know what to even think about that.
When I started the this thing, I thought, man, I
hope I get one hundred listeners and we have one
hundred thousand downloads of the show. That's all thanks to you,
all of you listening supporting me, and I have to
give a shout out to a couple people that have
been instrumental in the success, and then we'll get onto
the content. I promise this is going to be a nice,
(05:17):
tight episode, but this is important stuff. First of all,
shout out to the guy who made this all happen.
In the beginning Brian Drake. When I came up with
this idea, he was the one who got me on
the air. I pitched this to several different places, nobody
took me up on it. Brian Drake got me on
the air, and I appreciate him for that. He supports
everything I do in this space. He's been a great friend.
Thank you, Brian. Also, a couple other guys I have
(05:39):
to shout out here, Mike Bottomley and JJ Winner. These
guys are behind the scenes listening to me, talking to
me about my content, helping me through this entire process
of becoming somebody that you know actually has a voice
in this space. And so JJ, Mike, thank you very
much for that. And also just a quick shout out
to Marcus Grant, who has been a supporter of the
show from day one one, has never said note of
(06:01):
the auction brief and is the person who's been on
the show the most. So thanks to Marcus. Thank you
to all of you who are in the shadows just
hanging out, listening to my stuff and supporting me every
single week. Thank you, thank you, thank you. One hundred
thousand downloads is no joke, folks. We are becoming a
force here at the Auction Brief, and I have all
of you to think, so let's get into the Auction Primer,
(06:23):
and I want to talk to you a little bit
about how I retooled the show, because, like I said
in the past, what I've done with the manifesto was like,
I'm going to jam as much stuff as i can
into your brain in this hour that I'm talking. But
today's going to be a little bit shorter. And I
know some of you are out there rolling your eyes, like, yeah,
Drew says it's going to be short, but it's not.
I'll tell you what. This is going to be tight,
I promise you, because I had a conversation with somebody
(06:46):
the other day that really stuck with me. I'm in
Canton a couple weeks ago and I'm hanging out on
the patio with JJ, the aforementioned JJ Winner and Jamison Hutchison,
and we're talking about the latest episode of the Auction Brief,
and this was the one I had dropped the beginner, intermediate,
advanced lenses of the five pillars of auction Drafting. Now
(07:08):
I love that episode, but they pointed out very correctly
it was a lot. There was a lot in there,
and when there's so much to a digest, it becomes
a little bit muddied, it becomes difficult to comprehend. And
that's entirely on this side of the mic, because being
an effective communicator is learning how to do things that
are going to help people and not just things that
(07:30):
I enjoy or sound good or think sound good. I mean,
I didn't do it. It wasn't a vanity project. I thought
it was helpful, but I think it was just a lot.
And so that was the impetus for what I'm going
to do today and how I'm changing the Auction Manifesto
into the Auction Primer. Instead of having every single thing
in the manifesto, We're going to slow down, we're going
to back up, and I'm going to help you because
(07:51):
I'm going to operate as though this is what you're
listening to on the way to your auction draft or
the night before your draft. And unfortunately, that's bad news
for some of you who have been listeners for a
long time, because you're going to know all these concepts again.
Unfortunately the problem is that a lot of people are
going to find my show right before the draft, and
they're going to be like, what can I do quickly?
(08:13):
That's what this episode's designed for. I'm not telling all
of you hardcore people to turn it off. I think
you're going to benefit from this because it's going to
clarify some things for you too. It's going to really
solidify some simple lessons for you before you walk in
to your auction draft and I hope you like it.
We've got five crystal clear points, but we've also got
six players I want you to build your auctions on.
(08:33):
So both of those things, I think together are going
to be awesome. I know I've told you all this before,
but I was in debate in high school. I know
it's super cool, right, but I got pretty good at it.
And one of the things about debate that is interesting
is it would be like a forty five minute debate
or forty two minutes, I can't remember exactly how long.
But over a forty five minute debate, you're doing a
lot of talking, and you're doing a lot of talking
(08:55):
off the cuff, and so when you get to the
end of the debate, the judge is sitting there having
heard twenty thirty forty arguments over the course of a
forty five minute debate, and they're going to decide who wins.
One of the things that we came up with when
I was doing this was something called crystallization. It was
saying to the judge at the end of the debate,
(09:16):
here's how I win in five simple steps. Here's how
I win in three simple concepts. Because you have to
distill down for the judge what happened over the course
of the debate and help that judge make the decision.
And that's exactly what I want to do for you.
Because we've done ten episodes of the Auction Brief, most
of them average two or more hours. We're over. We're
(09:37):
at twenty two to twenty three hours of content this
summer that you've listened to, and I've said a lot
of stuff, right, So what I'm doing today is taking
a page out of my old school debate handbook, and
I'm going to crystallize the entire summer into five easy
clear points. So what we're gonna do is we're going
to lay out the five crystal clear points for your
(09:58):
auction draft that we're going to talk about six players
I want you to try to build around in your
auction drafts. And then I'm going to drill down a
little bit on those five crystal clear points to end
the show. So we're gonna have a little bit of
a discussion and explanation of exactly what I mean near
the end. But it's all going to be very simple
with these five things that I believe cover ninety five
(10:20):
percent of the things that you're going to see in
any auction draft room. We've learned a lot this summer,
and if you want to go into some of these
more these concepts a little bit more, you can go
back and listen to the other episodes this summer, but
that's not what this episode is for. What it's for
today is to crystallize the entire summer so you can
go in the auction draft room think about these six
(10:41):
players and these five simple points to crush your auction draft.
Let's get it.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
Going, auction talk.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
One of the side effects of being a debater in
high school is that I still have this thing in me.
Has anybody ever heard of the term spreading. It's the
term that base means speaking quickly, to get all of
your points in as quickly as you can, because you
know you have a specified amount of time to make
your argument and I'm going to treat today's show a
little bit like that, so you might see a different
(11:12):
side of your host, Drew Davenport today because I want
to get this stuff in, and I want to get
it in quickly, because I don't think it helps anybody
to sit here for an hour and discuss every eventuality
in an auction draft room. That's not what we're here
for today. It is crunch time, and I want to
hit these points as quickly as I can, and so
I'm going to get on a roll here and we're
going to move fast. So let's do it. Let's start
(11:34):
with the five crystal clear points that I'm pulling from
this summer of content. Point Number one, prep your par
sheet and prep your tear sheet. Prep your par sheet,
and prep your tear sheet. The prep is the prep,
and that's what helps you succeed inside the auction draft room.
Crystal Clear Point number two, be mostly player agnostic. Be
(11:58):
mostly player agnostic. When you walk into an auction draft room.
You do not want to care what you think about
most of the players in the room. We're going to
discuss this in more detail. Don't forget. I'm laying out
these labels here for you, and I hope these labels
stick with you. We're going to talk about that a
little bit. But I don't want you to go into
the room caring too much about who you end up with.
(12:19):
Number three Crystal clear point number three. Be multiple. You
must have variety in your auction game. You just simply must,
and if you don't, you will suffer because of it.
Crystal clear point number four. Never lose focus of the
macro trends that are happening in the draft. That means,
quite simply, there are things going on in the draft
(12:41):
that you won't be paying attention to because you'll be
too focused on the thing right in front of you.
Never lose focus on the shifts that are happening, the
evolution of the draft, the macro trends that are running
throughout the draft. It's like a river of water, and
you can either stand against it or you can use it.
You can float with it, and you can be sixful
by watching as it's happening. Number five Crystal clear point
(13:04):
number five layer your human and game psychology over all
of this. You have to use the human and game
psychology aspect of all of this. You simply cannot divorce
human behavior from your success in an auction draft room.
You can't. It is right there in front of you,
and it is one of the bigger factors because you're
(13:27):
going to layer it over every single decision you make.
Crystal clear points. There's five simple points. Prep your par sheet,
in your tear sheet. Be mostly player agnostic, be multiple,
have variety in your game, never lose focus of the
macro shifts in the room. And layer your human and
game psychology over all of this. All right, those are
(13:50):
your five crystal clear points. Write those down on a
post it, Write it down on a piece of paper,
have it next to you while you're drafting. Before we
dive into the details of the things, I want to
get into six players that I consistently see in auction
draft rooms that I think we need to be paying
attention to. Now, I'm not here to tell you these
(14:16):
six players are always going to be a deal, and
I'm not here to tell you that I want you
to get all six of these players. And I'm not
here to tell you that you're not going to get
value on anyone else. I'm just telling you that, over
the course of the summer, I've done real auction drafts
I've done mock auction drafts. I've done a lot of them,
and the players I continue to see over and over
get no respect in auction draft rooms. Are these six players,
(14:39):
and I believe it's the foundation of having a dynamite
auction squad. Let's start out in Tennessee with Calvin Ridley.
I know that Calvin Ridley is becoming a bit more
of a trendy player to have at this point, but
for right around fifteen bucks or less, in almost every
auction draft room, you can get a player that had
a thousand yards last year with Mason Rudolph and Will Levis,
(15:00):
he now has a number one pick throwing him the football.
He's being drafted below where he finished in Fantasy football
last year, and you can get him for fifteen dollars
or less. Now keep in mind when I tell you
these six players, I'm telling you the price I like
as well. I don't want to be in on twenty
dollars Calvin Ridley. That's not what we're doing here. If
you can get him fifteen, maybe sixteen bucks or less than,
(15:21):
I want to be in on Calvin Ridley, he makes
a wonderful wide receiver. Four David Montgomery. He is also
being disrespected right around in the same price range fifteen
sixteen dollars or less. If you wait long enough and
he doesn't get nominated, you're going to get him for
far less than that, because everybody believes that Jamior Gibbs
is about to take over this backfield. I am not
(15:42):
one of those people, and if you are, you can
ignore me. On David Montgomery, but he was the PPR
RB nine before he got hurt last year. Dan Campbell
wants to have two guys. He wants to have two
players run the football. This team wants to go to
the super Bowl. They want to go to the Super Bowl.
Do you think the paths of the Super Bowl is
giving Jamiir Gibbs three hundred and eighty regular season touches? No,
(16:04):
David Montgomery will be a factor. He will be involved.
You can get him for fifteen bucks or less in
most auction draft rooms. He makes a wonderful RB two
or a dynamite flex player. Courtland Sutton, I don't want
to be in the Courtland Sutton for twenty seven dollars business,
but anything under twenty three I want to go twenty
two or less. On Courtland Sutton. He makes an awesome
(16:24):
wide receiver three or very solid wide receiver two. He
was the PPR wide receiver twelve over the last nine
weeks of the season when Boonicks got it going and
the offense figured everything out. Courtland Sutton has top twelve potential.
He's being drafted far below that, and you can have
him for twenty bucks or less than some draft rooms.
But even if it's not below twenty twenty or twenty
(16:44):
one dollars, this in my builds is a perfect wide
receiver three. Dak Prescott five dollars or less in just
about every single auction I do. Sometimes it's two or
three dollars. This guy, when he finishes the season is
a top eight quarter back. Sign me up for Dak
Prescott for five dollars or less. James Connor. Connor, year
(17:05):
in and year out, delivers value. I understand that people
have an id in their head that Connor is about
to fall off a cliff, But you know what, if
you just count on a missing four games those other
twelve or thirteen games, he's going to provide weekly RB
one upside with the middle of the road RB two production,
and he's going to do it for twenty dollars or
less in your auctions. Again, I don't want to be
(17:27):
in the twenty four dollars James Connor business, But twenty
dollars or less makes a perfect target, a perfect RB
two or depth piece. Kyron Williams. Yes, folks again, Kyron Williams.
People are worried about Matt Stafford, and they're worried about
the efficiency. But I'm going to tell you something. They
just handed him a contract and they have one of
(17:48):
the best backup quarterbacks in the league. Do we love
Jimmy G. No, we don't love Jimmy G. But he
can keep the offense moving. And I have faith in
Sean McVay that he can get the most out of
Jimmy G that the offense won't fall off a cliff
if we don't have Matt Stafford. Kyron Williams can be
had in most auction drafts for less than thirty dollars.
Less than thirty dollars for a guy that's been in
(18:08):
the top eight at the position in the last two years.
This is wild stuff, Folks. Again, I don't want to
be in the thirty five dollars Kyron Williams business, but
for thirty bucks or less. He's absolutely a slam dunk.
So what have we done here. We've got six players
that we can think about when we go into an
auction draft room. I'm not telling you to get all six.
In fact, there it will be very likely that several
(18:31):
of these six players will go for too much money,
and then you don't worry about it. You let them go,
You let somebody else have them. But if they're going
for reasonable prices like I've laid out here, Let's say,
for example, you walked into your auction draft room and
you got all six of these guys for these prices,
you would spend one hundred and eight dollars on all
six guys. You could still go out and buy two
really solid, thirty five to forty five dollars players to
(18:54):
add to this squad. And let me tell you, these
players are taking advantage of them magnification effect that I
talk about all the time. Don't forget the magnification effect
if you're new here, It's a very simple concept. People
spend all summer long shrugging their shoulders at certain players
that they don't really care about. As producers, and in
(19:15):
an auction draft room, we see the prices go down
more than they should for a player like that because
we spend the summer double and triple counting our opinions.
We hear things from different sources. We hear different podcasts,
different analysts, different articles. Things that we see tell us
all summer long that David Montgomery's a boring pick, or
they don't even talk about him at all, that James
(19:37):
Connor is not that important, that Kyrin Williams is going
to have efficiency problems. We hear that stuff all summer long,
and that's why the prices are down there. And let
me submit something to you that I think might make
you a little uncomfortable. If you got to the end
of these six players and you thought Ridley Montgomery, Sutton,
Dak Connor, Kyron, I don't like any of those guys.
Those guys are boring or I don't really like them.
(19:58):
That is the point. Let that sing in sink in
for a second. That is the entire point. Your opinion
about them is what the general public feels about them.
And I'm here to tell you these are still solid
fantasy producers. These are still guys with spike weak potential.
They're not just guys that are gonna limp to fifty
yards and get a chance at a touchdown every week.
These are actual solid NFL producers with a track record
(20:21):
and a history of high level fantasy production. And they're
too cheap because they're thinking the same thing you are
right now. Eh, they're not exciting. Eh. It's not Ricky
pearsall Eh, it's not Jamiir Gibbs. I get it. I
get that opinion. I understand where that comes from. But
you're gonna take advantage of that. And if you get
into the room. Let's say, for example, you were to
(20:42):
get five of these players and you missed out on
James Connor because he was too expensive. Subtract twenty from
the hundred and eight you were gonna spend. You got
the five players I talked about Without Connor for eighty
eight dollars. You can still go buy two forty five
dollars players, two elite level players, and then you plug
them in with Ridley Montgomery, Sutton, Kyrin Williams, and Dak
(21:04):
you're gonna have a monster squad. So you may not
get all six, you may not get five, you may
not get four. See which one of these guys you
can land in your draft room and take the value
and move on and go get some elite players to
pair with them, and you're gonna have a dynamite auction squad.
So let's build on these crystal clear points and these
six players, and how are we going to do that.
(21:26):
Let's talk a little bit more in detail about each
one of these points, and when you get done, you're
gonna be ready to crush your auction drift. All right,
let me say these points one more time, because I
believe the repetition is what helps it work its way
into your brain, and it's gonna help you when you
(21:47):
walk into the room. Crystal Clear points one through five.
Number one, prep your par sheet and your tear sheet.
Number two be mostly player agnostic. Number three be multiple,
have variety in your game. Number four, never lose focus
of the macro trends in how the draft is shifting.
Number five. Layer your human in game psychology over all
(22:11):
of it. Let's go back to number one here, prepare
your par sheet in your tear sheet. I made the
comment earlier when I introduced this concept, the prep is
the prep. Well, what the heck does that mean? Does
everyone remember the Zach Morris reference? I think I'm going
to make this the Zach Morris rule. This is the
Zach Morris corollary going forward. What that means is that
(22:32):
when you prepare for the draft, you unknowingly prepare yourself
to make the tough decisions in the draft room. The
reason I call it the Zach Morris corollary is because
there's an episode of Saved by the Bell where he
cheats on a test by writing all the answers on
the bottom of his shoes. But when he gets into
the exam, he realizes he doesn't need to cheat because
(22:53):
he wrote down all the stuff and had to learn
it to write it down on his shoe. That's the
same thing here. When you spend time in your tiers sheets,
you spend time thinking to yourself, what do I think
about this player versus this player. It's all about comparison.
It's all about telling yourself which player you like versus another,
and that's how you put them in the tiers. When
(23:13):
you do the act of preparation, you prepare yourself to
make tough decisions in the auction draft room. The prep
is the prep, and I'm here to tell you the
tear sheets are important, but the par sheet isn't more
important than anything you're going to do. If you're new here,
what is a par sheet? Let me explain that to
you in one second. But I want to say this
about par sheets in general. There is nothing that I
(23:36):
have contributed to the auction industry, and there is nothing
that I have contributed to auction day preparedness that has
a more positive expected value than a par sheet. Hands down,
it is the simplest, quickest, most effective way to increase
your ability to win in an auction draft room by
(23:56):
having a PAR sheet. So, if you're new here, what's
a par sheet. Here's a brief explanation of what it is.
You can go back and get deeper explanations in other locations.
A par sheet is this. Let's say you have sixteen
roster spots and a two hundred dollars cap. Pretty typical stuff.
What you're going to do is put a specific dollar
amount for what you want to spend at every single
(24:18):
position on your page. Kicker one dollar, defense one dollar, last,
two bench spots one dollar each. You're going to go
forward and tabulate exactly what you can expend expect to
spend wide receiver one forty seven dollars. And then what
happens is in the middle of the draft, you're going
to have these exact numbers and you're saying to me, Drew,
doesn't that mean that I'm just locked in on that price? No,
(24:40):
quite the contrary. You're going to land a wide receiver,
one that you like from your tear sheet, and then
you're going to write them in the spot. And if
you spend forty five and expected to spend forty seven,
you know that you just made up two dollars and
you could spend that two dollars elsewhere. The par sheet
has all your answers. When you're in the middle of
a situation, can you bid or not look at your
part and see how much it's gonna hurt you or
(25:02):
help you? On your par sheet and where you can
slot that player in. There is no greater positive gain
to your auction draft than having that par sheet. And
I'm telling you again the preparation of the tear sheets
and of the par sheets. The prep is the prep
and it makes you better in the auction draft room.
You don't even know it, but your preparation is how
you handle those tough moments when things are tough. Number one.
(25:25):
Prep your par sheet in your tear sheet. The prep
is the prep number two. Be mostly player agnostic. We
talked about this early in the summer, but I think
it's so unbelievably important I'm making it one of my
crystallized points. What does it mean to be agnostic? Well,
when when you're talking about believing in something or believing
in God, basically people say, well, agnostic is I don't
(25:48):
really know. I'm not really sure if there's a God,
I don't know if I believe in God, you're unsure
about it. That's what it means to be agnostic. I
want you to treat most of the fantasy for ball
player pool exactly like that. Folks. This is something that
is a little uncomfortable for people because you must check
your ego at the auction door. You must treat all
(26:11):
players as though they are a value proposition and not
fall in love with them. Seventy eighty percent, even north
of eighty percent of the player pool should be players
that you don't have a strong opinion about whatsoever. That
you don't have an opinion about whatsoever. Yes, we have targets,
that's part of the fun of auction drafting. But having
a target and forcing the issue with that player are
(26:34):
two different things. If you force things, you will suffer.
Your team will suffer when you try to force the action.
So number two could just be called don't force it.
Be mostly player agnostic by not having these strong opinions.
And something that you have to get comfortable with is
that you're going to see deals on draft day that
make you want to bid, and you have to get
(26:56):
comfortable with the idea that you need to pass on
some of those deals. What's more important than having that
deal at the moment. There are two things that are
more important. Number one is the power that your money
buys by holding onto the money, and number two is
holding on to your roster spots. Roster spots and money
equal power in an auction draft room. And if your
(27:18):
player agnostic, you can pick off some deals and you'll
realize that other deals aren't as important or aren't that interesting.
Once you try to start forcing things, that's when things
go wrong. You want a player and you overpaid by
twelve bucks. That's how you get screwed. That's how you
end up with a team that you don't like. Don't
force it, b player agnostic, pass on some deals. Land
(27:41):
some deals and you're going to find that you like
the build of your roster much better. Number three crystal
clear point Number three, be multiple. Have a variety of
moves in your game. We can talk about specific moves
all we want. We've talked about the stop and go
this summer, we talked about the precision shows to bid.
We talked about bidding plus two or building bidding plus six,
(28:04):
or nominating this player or that player. We can talk
about specifics all day long, but none of that really
matters because they're all just a variation on one simple
thing that you have to have different kinds of plays
in your tool belt. It doesn't matter what the plays are,
but you have to be different. And how do we
determine when we should be different or how we should act.
(28:24):
That's very simple. Always know the why of what you're
doing when we talk about decisions that we have to make.
This chiefly applies to bidding and nomination strategies, but it
also applies to your approach in the draft room. If
you come to your home league draft every single year
and you have the same idea about what you're going
to do, people are going to know. I know that
people don't pay attention. But even the most dense person
(28:47):
sitting in your room that doesn't care is going to notice.
Every year when you buy jamar Chase, They're going to notice.
Every year when you come in and buy the overall
RB one, people are going to notice. So you always
have to have a reason why, and you always have
to mix up your game. It's not just bidding a nomination,
it's your approach to the entire auction. So when it
comes to bidding and nomination strategies, there's a couple simple
(29:10):
things we can remember. We always have to be planning
for our next move, our next bid, and our next nomination.
But this applies chiefly to nominations in the different stages
of the draft. So we're always planning what we're going
to do because there is a perfect nomination. You may
not always find it, but we have to try. And
the thing that people forget is that every time something
(29:31):
happens in the draft room, your calculus of what you
should do should change because you're never going to get
stuck in a run and do things the same way
all the time. Right. That's how you become predictable. What's
the goal in the draft room. It's to make everyone
else uncomfortable by what you're doing. You want to make
them uncomfortable in off balance and have to react to
you instead of the other way around. So how how
(29:54):
do you get variety and your bidding and your nomination.
How do you remain multiple in those phases and not
become predictable. Well, first of all, early on with your nominations,
you have cornerstone players that you want to go after.
There are certain players that you want that's okay. You
want to get those players out and find out whether
or not you're going to end up with them. That's
really important. That is massively important for how your draft
(30:18):
is going to be going forward, because those initial decisions
nominations and bids that you make are going to set
up the rest of your draft. So early on you
want to call some cornerstone players. You want to see
if you get them. You don't want to force it,
you don't want to be all in on them and overpay,
but you want to see if you're going to land them.
In the middle stages of nominations, you're going to be
attacking the shifts and the draft. You're going to be
(30:39):
attacking before things shift, so that you don't get caught
or you're going to be biding your time. You're going
to be hanging out and waiting for the draft to
come back to you late in the draft. Your nominations
are going to be all about massaging the perfect end
to your draft, because sometimes you're going to call out
a player and you're going to get stuck with that player.
(31:00):
So you can't call out a one dollar player you
don't want. You don't want to get stuck. Late game
nominations are huge, but you also want to land the
players that you do want, So you have to come
out with the perfect time for these nominations where you
don't get stuck, but you land the players that you want.
What about your bidding, How do we mix things up
with our bidding. Well, I'll tell you this. There's two
different things we can talk about. We can talk about
(31:21):
how we bid against other players. We can also talk
about bidding because we need to bid for our own self,
all right. The first part of it is bidding against
other players. That involves either bidding someone up or bidding
because the price is too low. Those are two different plays, right.
One is a play against the human the other is
(31:42):
a play against the market. So when you're bidding and
you want to bid someone up they want Drake London
and they're wearing a Falcons jersey. That's a play on
the player. You know a certain player likes top running backs,
You're going to bid them up when be Jean Robinson's
on the board. These are human plays. If you see
the person leans forward, whatever the case may be, they're
really interested you're bidding them up. That's a human tell.
(32:04):
But sometimes there's a market play. Sometimes the players just
too cheap and you have to bid because you got
to get them up higher. That leads me into the
final thing that you want to think about. With bidding.
There is a push and pull of need versus price
with bidding, because sometimes the player is going to be
way too cheap and you have to bid even though
you already have a player like that. Sometimes they're going
to be too expensive and you have to bid because
(32:26):
you don't have a player like that. Justin Jefferson at
twenty two bucks, I have to bid twenty three. It
doesn't matter that I already have my wide receiver one right,
that's way too cheap. Justin Jefferson at thirty eight. Now
that's a different proposition. Do I have to say thirty
nine there probably, but I don't know is that going
to ruin my draft. There's a million factors that go
into that. The push and pull of what you need
(32:46):
versus the price at that moment is always shifting. The
one thing you remember with point number three, don't let
other people get comfortable crystallize point number four, don't forget
the draft is always changing and you must pay attention
to the macro trends, the evolution of the draft that
involves your inflection points and how things are changing player
(33:08):
by player by player. It's easy to get focused on
just your team and what you need to accomplish and
forget that there's another nine other people or eleven other
people in the room who were doing things. And I
tell you what, this was never hammered home more than
the two nights that I did the live commentary for
the live auctions on Sunday and Monday night for the
(33:30):
Salary Cap Summit, because I was sort of like a
dealer where I can see all the action going on
around me in a poker game, and I can tell
what's happening because I'm not emotionally invested the same thing
with the salary cap summit drafts. I sat there for
five hours and watched two auctions and commented on them
the whole time, and you know what, got a lot easier.
(33:51):
I was spotting everything that was happening in the room
and everything that was about to happen in the room.
And I tell you what, when you're in the middle
of it, you have the tendency to lose what happening
all around you in the room because of the laser
focus on yourself. Don't forget that these inflection points and
these shifts in the draft will happen and you can
take advantage of them if you're quick. Speed is of
(34:12):
the essence when you're trying to either beat a shift
or take advantage of a shift. If you see that
it's coming, get your player out there or land a
player before you get hurt by the shift. Because sometimes
things change, and they change quickly. Before you were thinking, hey,
I'm biding my time, and all of a sudden, you
see something happen. You say, uh, oh, I'm shifting from
biding to buying. That stuff happens. Quick Speed is of
(34:36):
the essence and what I want you to accomplish in
number four by paying attention to the macro shifts in
the room is I want you to try to position
yourself about seventy five or eighty percent of the way
through the draft as not having the most money, but
having maybe the third, fourth, or fifth most money in
the room. Why is that Because when you get to
(34:56):
that point in the draft, there are going to be
some players that are somewhat valuable. You want the people
at the top to be fighting for those players, not you,
because those players aren't likely to be league winners at
that point. They're likely to be important, but they're not
likely to be legal winners. Sometimes they'll hit. Yes, I
understand that, but hopefully you've already landed the core of
your team. You're going to see some random player price
(35:19):
spikes at this point in the draft, and when those
people at the top are fighting over those random players
and paying too much money, you're going to be sitting
back and picking off the next couple of tiers and
the value that presents itself there. You know what this
gives you? This move gives you freedom. It frees you
up to ignore the top of the draft board and
to pick off the value behind it. Because I guarantee
(35:41):
you everybody in that room that has a little bit
of money is staring at those top players, and you're
going to pick off the guys below that. So don't
lose sight of the shifts. In the draft room. It's
like an ever flowing river. Things are going to move constantly.
You can either go with the flow and handle it
by trying to harness what's happening in front of you,
(36:02):
or you can stand there and get knocked down. And finally,
crystal clear point number five, you must layer your game
and human psychology over all of it. It is impossible
to divorce the human aspect from the art of the auction.
And that is, after all, what we're doing because a
lot of the times we're gonna have tough decisions in
(36:22):
the moment, and you need things that are gonna help
you decide what to do. There are two types of
those things. There are two types of psychological factors we're
paying attention to. One is game theory related and one
is human related. In the game theory aspect, you're thinking
to yourself, Hey, why is this person bidding because they
need a wide receiver? Why is this person bidding because
(36:45):
we're about to run out of wide receiver twos. Those
are game theory ideas that should help you. But then
on top of that, you've got human tells. Like I
said earlier, is the person wearing a Bengals jersey and
they're bidding on a Bengals player. Is the person loose
with their money because they're drinking. Is the person acting
in a certain way that tells you when they're about
to bid? Are they only bidding on players they like?
(37:07):
Are they only nominating players they don't like? The human
aspect is often going to give you that final answer.
You must take the first four crystal clear points and
subject them to the lens of game theory in human psychology,
Ladies and gentlemen, I believe that these five crystallized points
from the Summer of the Auction Brief, along with these
(37:30):
six foundational auction players that are going too cheap in
your drafts, I believe the combination of these two things
is all you really need to know to go into
a room and dominate most of the draft rooms that
you're going to walk into. Unless there are multiple people
in your draft listening to the auction Brief, you're going
to be ahead of ninety nine percent of players when
(37:51):
you walk into any auction draft room simply by listening
to this episode. Folks, people are not spending the time
on this stuff that you are. And if you took
the time to download the show before you went into
your draft today, you're going to use that stuff to
dominate your draft room. Let's not forget. I'm going to
say it one more time. Your five crystal clear points
(38:12):
for how you're going to dominate your auction. Number one,
prep your tear sheet, Prep your par sheet. The prep
is the prep. When you prep that stuff, you will
learn it and you will know how to react in
the draft room. Number two B player agnostic. B player agnostic.
Don't get stuck bidding on a player just because you
(38:34):
love that player. Don't try to force it. You could
rename number two. Don't try to force it. But I
want you to walk into the room and say, I
don't care what happens with eighty five percent of these players.
I'm going to take their names off and I'm going
to bid on value. And that's how you build a
dynamite team. Number three, be multiple. You're attempting to be unpredictable.
(38:56):
The whole goal of auction draft rooms is to put
the pressure on other PEPs, to make them uncomfortable, to
make them feel the pressure of what's happening in the room.
Because you're bidding quickly, You're getting stuff into up to
the right price quickly. You're bidding when you know that
you can take advantage of their weaknesses or when you
can take advantage of a market price. You have to
(39:17):
have that variety, that savvy to always be switching things up,
to be monitoring yourself and what you're doing and what
you're giving off. You're bidding, your nominations, your approach to
the draft. You have to have variety in your game.
Number four, the shifts in the room are real. You
must try to beat the shifts or take advantage of
(39:37):
the shifts by always focusing on the macro trends in
the room. And Number five, layer your human and game
psychology over all of it. Prep is the prep. Be agnostic,
be multiple, have variety in your game, follow the macro
trends and shifts in your draft, and layer human and
game psychology over all of it. I believe you're ready.
(40:00):
If you've been listening to me all summer, I know
you're ready. But if this is the only episode that
you're listening to before your auction draft, write these five
points down. Think about those six players as a foundation
of your auction squad, and I think you're going to
walk in to every auction room more prepared than anybody
else in that room. Thank you so much for a
fantastic summer of The Auction Brief. It's been the thrill
(40:22):
of a lifetime building the show up to one hundred
thousand downloads, and I have all of you to thank
for that. Go be a killer, go in there and
smash it and have a great time. Thank you all
for joining me. It's been a pleasure this summer. Love
you all. Thank you for the support. Thank you for
making this what it is. One hundred thousand downloads is
(40:43):
no joke, and I appreciate all of you sincerely, and
I can't wait for the next one hundred thousand. The
Auction Brief is now adjourned, and I am out.
Speaker 1 (40:54):
The Auction Brief is adjourned. That'll do it for this
week's episode. See you next time on the Auction Brief.
Welcome to the Auction Brief.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
There's a joy in these game, sir.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Not taking you on a journey through fantasy football, the law,
and life.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
The saw yours take. It depends on how much you want.
And now you're legal analyst and auction draft expert here
to help you.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
Dominate your fantasy drafts. Your host, Drew Davenport, there are
full hearts.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Hey, everybody, welcome in to the Auction Brief. As Liddy said,
I'm your host, Drew Davenport. You're a fantasy football lawyer,
and thank you so much for joining me for the
last episode of draft season for the Auction Brief, not
coincidentally the most important episode of the season. It is
(00:54):
time for our auction Primer, everything you need to know
for your auction in one episode. We've retooled this show
a little bit from prior years. I did the auction
Manifesto the past couple of years, but I retooled the
whole show this summer, and the auction Manifesto is part
(01:14):
of that. What I did with the manifesto in the
past was tried to jam as much information as I
could from the summer into that manifesto that I thought
that you needed, but it was really full, chock full
of stuff, and I had an idea for how we
could retool this episode. So I'm calling it the Auction Primer,
not the Auction Manifesto, because it's going to get you
(01:35):
thinking the right way to be thinking when you go
into the draft, not necessarily cluttering up your brain with
a lot of stuff that maybe you aren't going to remember.
So we're going to talk about that in just a second.
But I love this episode because we've got five simple,
crystal clear points that you're going to take into your
draft room, and I've got six players that I want
(01:56):
you to build on in your auctions. I think the
combination of those two things is going to be dynamite.
And this is all you're gonna need before you walk
into your room and you're gonna feel confident about your
auction draft. So welcome into the Auction Brief for the
last episode of Draft season. Don't worry, We're not going anywhere.
It's just goodbye for now. There will be episodes of
the Auction Brief this season, don't worry about that, but
(02:17):
this will be the last one before you draft, because
this is coming down to the wire and we've only
got a couple weekends left to draft your fantasy teams,
and I hope this is going to help you do that.
But I want to say, first of all, the last
time you're gonna hear it, or to your draft boards
from fjafantasy dot com. They are the best draft boards
in the business. Use my code Auction twenty twenty five
(02:39):
Auction two zero two five and get ten percent off
your order. I love the fantasy draft boards over there
at fjfantasy dot com. Also, you can find me on
Twitter at Drew Davenport FF, on TikTok and Patreon at
the Fantasy Football Lawyer. And I am happy to say
that you're joining me on a pretty fun occasion because
not only is our last episode, but we hit a
(03:01):
couple milestones here on the auction brief. Two big things
happened really this week for me and for the content
surrounding auction drafting this week. First of all, we just
are fresh off the salary Cap summit. The last couple
of nights, we did three nights of auction draft centered material. Nothing.
We're not talking ADP or snake drafts or late round steals.
(03:25):
We're talking all auction all the time, and all three
of those episodes you can find those over on my
YouTube channel, the Auction Brief YouTube channel. You can find
all three of those episodes. That's about seven and a
half hours of content on auction stuff alone. We did
two live drafts, and Folks, the first night that we
were doing that live draft, we got to almost five
thousand people watching that episode at one time. That's an
(03:48):
incredible number. I am so proud of that, and I
want to thank all of you for showing up, for
coming into the comments, for participating, for being excited about it,
and for being part of my triumph because it was
a big deal. It was an unqualified success for me,
for the Auction Brief, but really for the community surrounding
our love, which is auction drafting. So that's big. But
(04:11):
the other big news I have is we're going to
episode eleven. You're listening to episode eleven right now. We're
gonna end up doing over twenty five thousand downloads this
summer alone, which is a bit crazy because normally we
go twelve or thirteen episodes in the summer. But I
was sick at the beginning of the summer and couldn't
manage it, and We're in episode eleven now, so that
means through ten episodes. Boy, that is a big number.
(04:34):
And I'm surprised by that because I was a little
bit nervous at the beginning of the summer with some
of the numbers I saw coming in. I was I
was a little bit concerned. I thought, boy, these are
pretty low. But things have exploded over the last couple
of weeks. And the other thing that I have to
share is that we're just a couple hundred downloads away
from one hundred thousand downloaded episodes of the Auction Brief. Folks.
(04:56):
That's incredible. I don't know what to even think about that.
When I started the this thing, I thought, man, I
hope I get one hundred listeners and we have one
hundred thousand downloads of the show. That's all thanks to you,
all of you listening supporting me, and I have to
give a shout out to a couple people that have
been instrumental in the success, and then we'll get onto
the content. I promise this is going to be a nice,
(05:17):
tight episode, but this is important stuff. First of all,
shout out to the guy who made this all happen.
In the beginning Brian Drake. When I came up with
this idea, he was the one who got me on
the air. I pitched this to several different places, nobody
took me up on it. Brian Drake got me on
the air, and I appreciate him for that. He supports
everything I do in this space. He's been a great friend.
Thank you, Brian. Also, a couple other guys I have
(05:39):
to shout out here, Mike Bottomley and JJ Winner. These
guys are behind the scenes listening to me, talking to
me about my content, helping me through this entire process
of becoming somebody that you know actually has a voice
in this space. And so JJ, Mike, thank you very
much for that. And also just a quick shout out
to Marcus Grant, who has been a supporter of the
show from day one one, has never said note of
(06:01):
the auction brief and is the person who's been on
the show the most. So thanks to Marcus. Thank you
to all of you who are in the shadows just
hanging out, listening to my stuff and supporting me every
single week. Thank you, thank you, thank you. One hundred
thousand downloads is no joke, folks. We are becoming a
force here at the Auction Brief, and I have all
of you to think, so let's get into the Auction Primer,
(06:23):
and I want to talk to you a little bit
about how I retooled the show, because, like I said
in the past, what I've done with the manifesto was like,
I'm going to jam as much stuff as i can
into your brain in this hour that I'm talking. But
today's going to be a little bit shorter. And I
know some of you are out there rolling your eyes, like, yeah,
Drew says it's going to be short, but it's not.
I'll tell you what. This is going to be tight,
I promise you, because I had a conversation with somebody
(06:46):
the other day that really stuck with me. I'm in
Canton a couple weeks ago and I'm hanging out on
the patio with JJ, the aforementioned JJ Winner and Jamison Hutchison,
and we're talking about the latest episode of the Auction Brief,
and this was the one I had dropped the beginner, intermediate,
advanced lenses of the five pillars of auction Drafting. Now
(07:08):
I love that episode, but they pointed out very correctly
it was a lot. There was a lot in there,
and when there's so much to a digest, it becomes
a little bit muddied, it becomes difficult to comprehend. And
that's entirely on this side of the mic, because being
an effective communicator is learning how to do things that
are going to help people and not just things that
(07:30):
I enjoy or sound good or think sound good. I mean,
I didn't do it. It wasn't a vanity project. I thought
it was helpful, but I think it was just a lot.
And so that was the impetus for what I'm going
to do today and how I'm changing the Auction Manifesto
into the Auction Primer. Instead of having every single thing
in the manifesto, We're going to slow down, we're going
to back up, and I'm going to help you because
(07:51):
I'm going to operate as though this is what you're
listening to on the way to your auction draft or
the night before your draft. And unfortunately, that's bad news
for some of you who have been listeners for a
long time, because you're going to know all these concepts again.
Unfortunately the problem is that a lot of people are
going to find my show right before the draft, and
they're going to be like, what can I do quickly?
(08:13):
That's what this episode's designed for. I'm not telling all
of you hardcore people to turn it off. I think
you're going to benefit from this because it's going to
clarify some things for you too. It's going to really
solidify some simple lessons for you before you walk in
to your auction draft and I hope you like it.
We've got five crystal clear points, but we've also got
six players I want you to build your auctions on.
(08:33):
So both of those things, I think together are going
to be awesome. I know I've told you all this before,
but I was in debate in high school. I know
it's super cool, right, but I got pretty good at it.
And one of the things about debate that is interesting
is it would be like a forty five minute debate
or forty two minutes, I can't remember exactly how long.
But over a forty five minute debate, you're doing a
lot of talking, and you're doing a lot of talking
(08:55):
off the cuff, and so when you get to the
end of the debate, the judge is sitting there having
heard twenty thirty forty arguments over the course of a
forty five minute debate, and they're going to decide who wins.
One of the things that we came up with when
I was doing this was something called crystallization. It was
saying to the judge at the end of the debate,
(09:16):
here's how I win in five simple steps. Here's how
I win in three simple concepts. Because you have to
distill down for the judge what happened over the course
of the debate and help that judge make the decision.
And that's exactly what I want to do for you.
Because we've done ten episodes of the Auction Brief, most
of them average two or more hours. We're over. We're
(09:37):
at twenty two to twenty three hours of content this
summer that you've listened to, and I've said a lot
of stuff, right, So what I'm doing today is taking
a page out of my old school debate handbook, and
I'm going to crystallize the entire summer into five easy
clear points. So what we're gonna do is we're going
to lay out the five crystal clear points for your
(09:58):
auction draft that we're going to talk about six players
I want you to try to build around in your
auction drafts. And then I'm going to drill down a
little bit on those five crystal clear points to end
the show. So we're gonna have a little bit of
a discussion and explanation of exactly what I mean near
the end. But it's all going to be very simple
with these five things that I believe cover ninety five
(10:20):
percent of the things that you're going to see in
any auction draft room. We've learned a lot this summer,
and if you want to go into some of these
more these concepts a little bit more, you can go
back and listen to the other episodes this summer, but
that's not what this episode is for. What it's for
today is to crystallize the entire summer so you can
go in the auction draft room think about these six
(10:41):
players and these five simple points to crush your auction draft.
Let's get it.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
Going, auction talk.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
One of the side effects of being a debater in
high school is that I still have this thing in me.
Has anybody ever heard of the term spreading. It's the
term that base means speaking quickly, to get all of
your points in as quickly as you can, because you
know you have a specified amount of time to make
your argument and I'm going to treat today's show a
little bit like that, so you might see a different
(11:12):
side of your host, Drew Davenport today because I want
to get this stuff in, and I want to get
it in quickly, because I don't think it helps anybody
to sit here for an hour and discuss every eventuality
in an auction draft room. That's not what we're here
for today. It is crunch time, and I want to
hit these points as quickly as I can, and so
I'm going to get on a roll here and we're
going to move fast. So let's do it. Let's start
(11:34):
with the five crystal clear points that I'm pulling from
this summer of content. Point Number one, prep your par
sheet and prep your tear sheet. Prep your par sheet,
and prep your tear sheet. The prep is the prep,
and that's what helps you succeed inside the auction draft room.
Crystal Clear Point number two, be mostly player agnostic. Be
(11:58):
mostly player agnostic. When you walk into an auction draft room.
You do not want to care what you think about
most of the players in the room. We're going to
discuss this in more detail. Don't forget. I'm laying out
these labels here for you, and I hope these labels
stick with you. We're going to talk about that a
little bit. But I don't want you to go into
the room caring too much about who you end up with.
(12:19):
Number three Crystal clear point number three. Be multiple. You
must have variety in your auction game. You just simply must,
and if you don't, you will suffer because of it.
Crystal clear point number four. Never lose focus of the
macro trends that are happening in the draft. That means,
quite simply, there are things going on in the draft
(12:41):
that you won't be paying attention to because you'll be
too focused on the thing right in front of you.
Never lose focus on the shifts that are happening, the
evolution of the draft, the macro trends that are running
throughout the draft. It's like a river of water, and
you can either stand against it or you can use it.
You can float with it, and you can be sixful
by watching as it's happening. Number five Crystal clear point
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number five layer your human and game psychology over all
of this. You have to use the human and game
psychology aspect of all of this. You simply cannot divorce
human behavior from your success in an auction draft room.
You can't. It is right there in front of you,
and it is one of the bigger factors because you're
(13:27):
going to layer it over every single decision you make.
Crystal clear points. There's five simple points. Prep your par sheet,
in your tear sheet. Be mostly player agnostic, be multiple,
have variety in your game, never lose focus of the
macro shifts in the room. And layer your human and
game psychology over all of this. All right, those are
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your five crystal clear points. Write those down on a
post it, Write it down on a piece of paper,
have it next to you while you're drafting. Before we
dive into the details of the things, I want to
get into six players that I consistently see in auction
draft rooms that I think we need to be paying
attention to. Now, I'm not here to tell you these
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six players are always going to be a deal, and
I'm not here to tell you that I want you
to get all six of these players. And I'm not
here to tell you that you're not going to get
value on anyone else. I'm just telling you that, over
the course of the summer, I've done real auction drafts
I've done mock auction drafts. I've done a lot of them,
and the players I continue to see over and over
get no respect in auction draft rooms. Are these six players,
(14:39):
and I believe it's the foundation of having a dynamite
auction squad. Let's start out in Tennessee with Calvin Ridley.
I know that Calvin Ridley is becoming a bit more
of a trendy player to have at this point, but
for right around fifteen bucks or less, in almost every
auction draft room, you can get a player that had
a thousand yards last year with Mason Rudolph and Will Levis,
(15:00):
he now has a number one pick throwing him the football.
He's being drafted below where he finished in Fantasy football
last year, and you can get him for fifteen dollars
or less. Now keep in mind when I tell you
these six players, I'm telling you the price I like
as well. I don't want to be in on twenty
dollars Calvin Ridley. That's not what we're doing here. If
you can get him fifteen, maybe sixteen bucks or less than,
(15:21):
I want to be in on Calvin Ridley, he makes
a wonderful wide receiver. Four David Montgomery. He is also
being disrespected right around in the same price range fifteen
sixteen dollars or less. If you wait long enough and
he doesn't get nominated, you're going to get him for
far less than that, because everybody believes that Jamior Gibbs
is about to take over this backfield. I am not
(15:42):
one of those people, and if you are, you can
ignore me. On David Montgomery, but he was the PPR
RB nine before he got hurt last year. Dan Campbell
wants to have two guys. He wants to have two
players run the football. This team wants to go to
the super Bowl. They want to go to the Super Bowl.
Do you think the paths of the Super Bowl is
giving Jamiir Gibbs three hundred and eighty regular season touches? No,
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David Montgomery will be a factor. He will be involved.
You can get him for fifteen bucks or less in
most auction draft rooms. He makes a wonderful RB two
or a dynamite flex player. Courtland Sutton, I don't want
to be in the Courtland Sutton for twenty seven dollars business,
but anything under twenty three I want to go twenty
two or less. On Courtland Sutton. He makes an awesome
(16:24):
wide receiver three or very solid wide receiver two. He
was the PPR wide receiver twelve over the last nine
weeks of the season when Boonicks got it going and
the offense figured everything out. Courtland Sutton has top twelve potential.
He's being drafted far below that, and you can have
him for twenty bucks or less than some draft rooms.
But even if it's not below twenty twenty or twenty
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one dollars, this in my builds is a perfect wide
receiver three. Dak Prescott five dollars or less in just
about every single auction I do. Sometimes it's two or
three dollars. This guy, when he finishes the season is
a top eight quarter back. Sign me up for Dak
Prescott for five dollars or less. James Connor. Connor, year
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in and year out, delivers value. I understand that people
have an id in their head that Connor is about
to fall off a cliff, But you know what, if
you just count on a missing four games those other
twelve or thirteen games, he's going to provide weekly RB
one upside with the middle of the road RB two production,
and he's going to do it for twenty dollars or
less in your auctions. Again, I don't want to be
(17:27):
in the twenty four dollars James Connor business, But twenty
dollars or less makes a perfect target, a perfect RB
two or depth piece. Kyron Williams. Yes, folks again, Kyron Williams.
People are worried about Matt Stafford, and they're worried about
the efficiency. But I'm going to tell you something. They
just handed him a contract and they have one of
(17:48):
the best backup quarterbacks in the league. Do we love
Jimmy G. No, we don't love Jimmy G. But he
can keep the offense moving. And I have faith in
Sean McVay that he can get the most out of
Jimmy G that the offense won't fall off a cliff
if we don't have Matt Stafford. Kyron Williams can be
had in most auction drafts for less than thirty dollars.
Less than thirty dollars for a guy that's been in
(18:08):
the top eight at the position in the last two years.
This is wild stuff, Folks. Again, I don't want to
be in the thirty five dollars Kyron Williams business, but
for thirty bucks or less. He's absolutely a slam dunk.
So what have we done here. We've got six players
that we can think about when we go into an
auction draft room. I'm not telling you to get all six.
In fact, there it will be very likely that several
(18:31):
of these six players will go for too much money,
and then you don't worry about it. You let them go,
You let somebody else have them. But if they're going
for reasonable prices like I've laid out here, Let's say,
for example, you walked into your auction draft room and
you got all six of these guys for these prices,
you would spend one hundred and eight dollars on all
six guys. You could still go out and buy two
really solid, thirty five to forty five dollars players to
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add to this squad. And let me tell you, these
players are taking advantage of them magnification effect that I
talk about all the time. Don't forget the magnification effect
if you're new here, It's a very simple concept. People
spend all summer long shrugging their shoulders at certain players
that they don't really care about. As producers, and in
(19:15):
an auction draft room, we see the prices go down
more than they should for a player like that because
we spend the summer double and triple counting our opinions.
We hear things from different sources. We hear different podcasts,
different analysts, different articles. Things that we see tell us
all summer long that David Montgomery's a boring pick, or
they don't even talk about him at all, that James
(19:37):
Connor is not that important, that Kyrin Williams is going
to have efficiency problems. We hear that stuff all summer long,
and that's why the prices are down there. And let
me submit something to you that I think might make
you a little uncomfortable. If you got to the end
of these six players and you thought Ridley Montgomery, Sutton,
Dak Connor, Kyron, I don't like any of those guys.
Those guys are boring or I don't really like them.
(19:58):
That is the point. Let that sing in sink in
for a second. That is the entire point. Your opinion
about them is what the general public feels about them.
And I'm here to tell you these are still solid
fantasy producers. These are still guys with spike weak potential.
They're not just guys that are gonna limp to fifty
yards and get a chance at a touchdown every week.
These are actual solid NFL producers with a track record
(20:21):
and a history of high level fantasy production. And they're
too cheap because they're thinking the same thing you are
right now. Eh, they're not exciting. Eh. It's not Ricky
pearsall Eh, it's not Jamiir Gibbs. I get it. I
get that opinion. I understand where that comes from. But
you're gonna take advantage of that. And if you get
into the room. Let's say, for example, you were to
(20:42):
get five of these players and you missed out on
James Connor because he was too expensive. Subtract twenty from
the hundred and eight you were gonna spend. You got
the five players I talked about Without Connor for eighty
eight dollars. You can still go buy two forty five
dollars players, two elite level players, and then you plug
them in with Ridley Montgomery, Sutton, Kyrin Williams, and Dak
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you're gonna have a monster squad. So you may not
get all six, you may not get five, you may
not get four. See which one of these guys you
can land in your draft room and take the value
and move on and go get some elite players to
pair with them, and you're gonna have a dynamite auction squad.
So let's build on these crystal clear points and these
six players, and how are we going to do that.
(21:26):
Let's talk a little bit more in detail about each
one of these points, and when you get done, you're
gonna be ready to crush your auction drift. All right,
let me say these points one more time, because I
believe the repetition is what helps it work its way
into your brain, and it's gonna help you when you
(21:47):
walk into the room. Crystal Clear points one through five.
Number one, prep your par sheet and your tear sheet.
Number two be mostly player agnostic. Number three be multiple,
have variety in your game. Number four, never lose focus
of the macro trends in how the draft is shifting.
Number five. Layer your human in game psychology over all
(22:11):
of it. Let's go back to number one here, prepare
your par sheet in your tear sheet. I made the
comment earlier when I introduced this concept, the prep is
the prep. Well, what the heck does that mean? Does
everyone remember the Zach Morris reference? I think I'm going
to make this the Zach Morris rule. This is the
Zach Morris corollary going forward. What that means is that
(22:32):
when you prepare for the draft, you unknowingly prepare yourself
to make the tough decisions in the draft room. The
reason I call it the Zach Morris corollary is because
there's an episode of Saved by the Bell where he
cheats on a test by writing all the answers on
the bottom of his shoes. But when he gets into
the exam, he realizes he doesn't need to cheat because
(22:53):
he wrote down all the stuff and had to learn
it to write it down on his shoe. That's the
same thing here. When you spend time in your tiers sheets,
you spend time thinking to yourself, what do I think
about this player versus this player. It's all about comparison.
It's all about telling yourself which player you like versus another,
and that's how you put them in the tiers. When
(23:13):
you do the act of preparation, you prepare yourself to
make tough decisions in the auction draft room. The prep
is the prep, and I'm here to tell you the
tear sheets are important, but the par sheet isn't more
important than anything you're going to do. If you're new here,
what is a par sheet? Let me explain that to
you in one second. But I want to say this
about par sheets in general. There is nothing that I
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have contributed to the auction industry, and there is nothing
that I have contributed to auction day preparedness that has
a more positive expected value than a par sheet. Hands down,
it is the simplest, quickest, most effective way to increase
your ability to win in an auction draft room by
(23:56):
having a PAR sheet. So, if you're new here, what's
a par sheet. Here's a brief explanation of what it is.
You can go back and get deeper explanations in other locations.
A par sheet is this. Let's say you have sixteen
roster spots and a two hundred dollars cap. Pretty typical stuff.
What you're going to do is put a specific dollar
amount for what you want to spend at every single
(24:18):
position on your page. Kicker one dollar, defense one dollar, last,
two bench spots one dollar each. You're going to go
forward and tabulate exactly what you can expend expect to
spend wide receiver one forty seven dollars. And then what
happens is in the middle of the draft, you're going
to have these exact numbers and you're saying to me, Drew,
doesn't that mean that I'm just locked in on that price? No,
(24:40):
quite the contrary. You're going to land a wide receiver,
one that you like from your tear sheet, and then
you're going to write them in the spot. And if
you spend forty five and expected to spend forty seven,
you know that you just made up two dollars and
you could spend that two dollars elsewhere. The par sheet
has all your answers. When you're in the middle of
a situation, can you bid or not look at your
part and see how much it's gonna hurt you or
(25:02):
help you? On your par sheet and where you can
slot that player in. There is no greater positive gain
to your auction draft than having that par sheet. And
I'm telling you again the preparation of the tear sheets
and of the par sheets. The prep is the prep
and it makes you better in the auction draft room.
You don't even know it, but your preparation is how
you handle those tough moments when things are tough. Number one.
(25:25):
Prep your par sheet in your tear sheet. The prep
is the prep number two. Be mostly player agnostic. We
talked about this early in the summer, but I think
it's so unbelievably important I'm making it one of my
crystallized points. What does it mean to be agnostic? Well,
when when you're talking about believing in something or believing
in God, basically people say, well, agnostic is I don't
(25:48):
really know. I'm not really sure if there's a God,
I don't know if I believe in God, you're unsure
about it. That's what it means to be agnostic. I
want you to treat most of the fantasy for ball
player pool exactly like that. Folks. This is something that
is a little uncomfortable for people because you must check
your ego at the auction door. You must treat all
(26:11):
players as though they are a value proposition and not
fall in love with them. Seventy eighty percent, even north
of eighty percent of the player pool should be players
that you don't have a strong opinion about whatsoever. That
you don't have an opinion about whatsoever. Yes, we have targets,
that's part of the fun of auction drafting. But having
a target and forcing the issue with that player are
(26:34):
two different things. If you force things, you will suffer.
Your team will suffer when you try to force the action.
So number two could just be called don't force it.
Be mostly player agnostic by not having these strong opinions.
And something that you have to get comfortable with is
that you're going to see deals on draft day that
make you want to bid, and you have to get
(26:56):
comfortable with the idea that you need to pass on
some of those deals. What's more important than having that
deal at the moment. There are two things that are
more important. Number one is the power that your money
buys by holding onto the money, and number two is
holding on to your roster spots. Roster spots and money
equal power in an auction draft room. And if your
(27:18):
player agnostic, you can pick off some deals and you'll
realize that other deals aren't as important or aren't that interesting.
Once you try to start forcing things, that's when things
go wrong. You want a player and you overpaid by
twelve bucks. That's how you get screwed. That's how you
end up with a team that you don't like. Don't
force it, b player agnostic, pass on some deals. Land
(27:41):
some deals and you're going to find that you like
the build of your roster much better. Number three crystal
clear point Number three, be multiple. Have a variety of
moves in your game. We can talk about specific moves
all we want. We've talked about the stop and go
this summer, we talked about the precision shows to bid.
We talked about bidding plus two or building bidding plus six,
(28:04):
or nominating this player or that player. We can talk
about specifics all day long, but none of that really
matters because they're all just a variation on one simple
thing that you have to have different kinds of plays
in your tool belt. It doesn't matter what the plays are,
but you have to be different. And how do we
determine when we should be different or how we should act.
(28:24):
That's very simple. Always know the why of what you're
doing when we talk about decisions that we have to make.
This chiefly applies to bidding and nomination strategies, but it
also applies to your approach in the draft room. If
you come to your home league draft every single year
and you have the same idea about what you're going
to do, people are going to know. I know that
people don't pay attention. But even the most dense person
(28:47):
sitting in your room that doesn't care is going to notice.
Every year when you buy jamar Chase, They're going to notice.
Every year when you come in and buy the overall
RB one, people are going to notice. So you always
have to have a reason why, and you always have
to mix up your game. It's not just bidding a nomination,
it's your approach to the entire auction. So when it
comes to bidding and nomination strategies, there's a couple simple
(29:10):
things we can remember. We always have to be planning
for our next move, our next bid, and our next nomination.
But this applies chiefly to nominations in the different stages
of the draft. So we're always planning what we're going
to do because there is a perfect nomination. You may
not always find it, but we have to try. And
the thing that people forget is that every time something
(29:31):
happens in the draft room, your calculus of what you
should do should change because you're never going to get
stuck in a run and do things the same way
all the time. Right. That's how you become predictable. What's
the goal in the draft room. It's to make everyone
else uncomfortable by what you're doing. You want to make
them uncomfortable in off balance and have to react to
you instead of the other way around. So how how
(29:54):
do you get variety and your bidding and your nomination.
How do you remain multiple in those phases and not
become predictable. Well, first of all, early on with your nominations,
you have cornerstone players that you want to go after.
There are certain players that you want that's okay. You
want to get those players out and find out whether
or not you're going to end up with them. That's
really important. That is massively important for how your draft
(30:18):
is going to be going forward, because those initial decisions
nominations and bids that you make are going to set
up the rest of your draft. So early on you
want to call some cornerstone players. You want to see
if you get them. You don't want to force it,
you don't want to be all in on them and overpay,
but you want to see if you're going to land them.
In the middle stages of nominations, you're going to be
attacking the shifts and the draft. You're going to be
(30:39):
attacking before things shift, so that you don't get caught
or you're going to be biding your time. You're going
to be hanging out and waiting for the draft to
come back to you late in the draft. Your nominations
are going to be all about massaging the perfect end
to your draft, because sometimes you're going to call out
a player and you're going to get stuck with that player.
(31:00):
So you can't call out a one dollar player you
don't want. You don't want to get stuck. Late game
nominations are huge, but you also want to land the
players that you do want, So you have to come
out with the perfect time for these nominations where you
don't get stuck, but you land the players that you want.
What about your bidding, How do we mix things up
with our bidding. Well, I'll tell you this. There's two
different things we can talk about. We can talk about
(31:21):
how we bid against other players. We can also talk
about bidding because we need to bid for our own self,
all right. The first part of it is bidding against
other players. That involves either bidding someone up or bidding
because the price is too low. Those are two different plays, right.
One is a play against the human the other is
(31:42):
a play against the market. So when you're bidding and
you want to bid someone up they want Drake London
and they're wearing a Falcons jersey. That's a play on
the player. You know a certain player likes top running backs,
You're going to bid them up when be Jean Robinson's
on the board. These are human plays. If you see
the person leans forward, whatever the case may be, they're
really interested you're bidding them up. That's a human tell.
(32:04):
But sometimes there's a market play. Sometimes the players just
too cheap and you have to bid because you got
to get them up higher. That leads me into the
final thing that you want to think about. With bidding.
There is a push and pull of need versus price
with bidding, because sometimes the player is going to be
way too cheap and you have to bid even though
you already have a player like that. Sometimes they're going
to be too expensive and you have to bid because
(32:26):
you don't have a player like that. Justin Jefferson at
twenty two bucks, I have to bid twenty three. It
doesn't matter that I already have my wide receiver one right,
that's way too cheap. Justin Jefferson at thirty eight. Now
that's a different proposition. Do I have to say thirty
nine there probably, but I don't know is that going
to ruin my draft. There's a million factors that go
into that. The push and pull of what you need
(32:46):
versus the price at that moment is always shifting. The
one thing you remember with point number three, don't let
other people get comfortable crystallize point number four, don't forget
the draft is always changing and you must pay attention
to the macro trends, the evolution of the draft that
involves your inflection points and how things are changing player
(33:08):
by player by player. It's easy to get focused on
just your team and what you need to accomplish and
forget that there's another nine other people or eleven other
people in the room who were doing things. And I
tell you what, this was never hammered home more than
the two nights that I did the live commentary for
the live auctions on Sunday and Monday night for the
(33:30):
Salary Cap Summit, because I was sort of like a
dealer where I can see all the action going on
around me in a poker game, and I can tell
what's happening because I'm not emotionally invested the same thing
with the salary cap summit drafts. I sat there for
five hours and watched two auctions and commented on them
the whole time, and you know what, got a lot easier.
(33:51):
I was spotting everything that was happening in the room
and everything that was about to happen in the room.
And I tell you what, when you're in the middle
of it, you have the tendency to lose what happening
all around you in the room because of the laser
focus on yourself. Don't forget that these inflection points and
these shifts in the draft will happen and you can
take advantage of them if you're quick. Speed is of
(34:12):
the essence when you're trying to either beat a shift
or take advantage of a shift. If you see that
it's coming, get your player out there or land a
player before you get hurt by the shift. Because sometimes
things change, and they change quickly. Before you were thinking, hey,
I'm biding my time, and all of a sudden, you
see something happen. You say, uh, oh, I'm shifting from
biding to buying. That stuff happens. Quick Speed is of
(34:36):
the essence and what I want you to accomplish in
number four by paying attention to the macro shifts in
the room is I want you to try to position
yourself about seventy five or eighty percent of the way
through the draft as not having the most money, but
having maybe the third, fourth, or fifth most money in
the room. Why is that Because when you get to
(34:56):
that point in the draft, there are going to be
some players that are somewhat valuable. You want the people
at the top to be fighting for those players, not you,
because those players aren't likely to be league winners at
that point. They're likely to be important, but they're not
likely to be legal winners. Sometimes they'll hit. Yes, I
understand that, but hopefully you've already landed the core of
your team. You're going to see some random player price
(35:19):
spikes at this point in the draft, and when those
people at the top are fighting over those random players
and paying too much money, you're going to be sitting
back and picking off the next couple of tiers and
the value that presents itself there. You know what this
gives you? This move gives you freedom. It frees you
up to ignore the top of the draft board and
to pick off the value behind it. Because I guarantee
(35:41):
you everybody in that room that has a little bit
of money is staring at those top players, and you're
going to pick off the guys below that. So don't
lose sight of the shifts. In the draft room. It's
like an ever flowing river. Things are going to move constantly.
You can either go with the flow and handle it
by trying to harness what's happening in front of you,
(36:02):
or you can stand there and get knocked down. And finally,
crystal clear point number five, you must layer your game
and human psychology over all of it. It is impossible
to divorce the human aspect from the art of the auction.
And that is, after all, what we're doing because a
lot of the times we're gonna have tough decisions in
(36:22):
the moment, and you need things that are gonna help
you decide what to do. There are two types of
those things. There are two types of psychological factors we're
paying attention to. One is game theory related and one
is human related. In the game theory aspect, you're thinking
to yourself, Hey, why is this person bidding because they
need a wide receiver? Why is this person bidding because
(36:45):
we're about to run out of wide receiver twos. Those
are game theory ideas that should help you. But then
on top of that, you've got human tells. Like I
said earlier, is the person wearing a Bengals jersey and
they're bidding on a Bengals player. Is the person loose
with their money because they're drinking. Is the person acting
in a certain way that tells you when they're about
to bid? Are they only bidding on players they like?
(37:07):
Are they only nominating players they don't like? The human
aspect is often going to give you that final answer.
You must take the first four crystal clear points and
subject them to the lens of game theory in human psychology,
Ladies and gentlemen, I believe that these five crystallized points
from the Summer of the Auction Brief, along with these
(37:30):
six foundational auction players that are going too cheap in
your drafts, I believe the combination of these two things
is all you really need to know to go into
a room and dominate most of the draft rooms that
you're going to walk into. Unless there are multiple people
in your draft listening to the auction Brief, you're going
to be ahead of ninety nine percent of players when
(37:51):
you walk into any auction draft room simply by listening
to this episode. Folks, people are not spending the time
on this stuff that you are. And if you took
the time to download the show before you went into
your draft today, you're going to use that stuff to
dominate your draft room. Let's not forget. I'm going to
say it one more time. Your five crystal clear points
(38:12):
for how you're going to dominate your auction. Number one,
prep your tear sheet, Prep your par sheet. The prep
is the prep. When you prep that stuff, you will
learn it and you will know how to react in
the draft room. Number two B player agnostic. B player agnostic.
Don't get stuck bidding on a player just because you
(38:34):
love that player. Don't try to force it. You could
rename number two. Don't try to force it. But I
want you to walk into the room and say, I
don't care what happens with eighty five percent of these players.
I'm going to take their names off and I'm going
to bid on value. And that's how you build a
dynamite team. Number three, be multiple. You're attempting to be unpredictable.
(38:56):
The whole goal of auction draft rooms is to put
the pressure on other PEPs, to make them uncomfortable, to
make them feel the pressure of what's happening in the room.
Because you're bidding quickly, You're getting stuff into up to
the right price quickly. You're bidding when you know that
you can take advantage of their weaknesses or when you
can take advantage of a market price. You have to
(39:17):
have that variety, that savvy to always be switching things up,
to be monitoring yourself and what you're doing and what
you're giving off. You're bidding, your nominations, your approach to
the draft. You have to have variety in your game.
Number four, the shifts in the room are real. You
must try to beat the shifts or take advantage of
(39:37):
the shifts by always focusing on the macro trends in
the room. And Number five, layer your human and game
psychology over all of it. Prep is the prep. Be agnostic,
be multiple, have variety in your game, follow the macro
trends and shifts in your draft, and layer human and
game psychology over all of it. I believe you're ready.
(40:00):
If you've been listening to me all summer, I know
you're ready. But if this is the only episode that
you're listening to before your auction draft, write these five
points down. Think about those six players as a foundation
of your auction squad, and I think you're going to
walk in to every auction room more prepared than anybody
else in that room. Thank you so much for a
fantastic summer of The Auction Brief. It's been the thrill
(40:22):
of a lifetime building the show up to one hundred
thousand downloads, and I have all of you to thank
for that. Go be a killer, go in there and
smash it and have a great time. Thank you all
for joining me. It's been a pleasure this summer. Love
you all. Thank you for the support. Thank you for
making this what it is. One hundred thousand downloads is
(40:43):
no joke, and I appreciate all of you sincerely, and
I can't wait for the next one hundred thousand. The
Auction Brief is now adjourned, and I am out.
Speaker 1 (40:54):
The Auction Brief is adjourned. That'll do it for this
week's episode. See you next time on the Auction Brief.
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