This coming season will mark the seventh year I have participated in The Huddle Expert Auction League. Over the previous six seasons, FF Today has made the six-team playoff every season (finishing with no worse than a No. 4 seed) and advanced to the championship game in four of the last five seasons – winning two of the last three after last year’s third-place finish despite feeling the brunt of the Adrian Peterson suspension. Suffice it to say that my methods have proven to be fairly effective. It should be noted that I have relied exclusively on my Big Boards to determine the dollar amounts I assign to players in preparation for my auction drafts.

This year’s draft was held on August 19, so keep that date in mind as you review the prices below (both the price each player went for and the value at which I set for him). That date was the same day the news broke about Kelvin Benjamin’s season-ending ACL injury, which had a dramatic effect on my approach. Below, you will find the values I used to prioritize the players and the rationale I used in selecting my team.

Pre-draft

While I don’t find it necessary to land the top running back on my board every year, I feel it is very important to single out the 4-6 players each year that I feel will be the most consistent players in the game and make sure I secure one of them. My auction plan usually consists of taking the safest RB1 that will cost me the least and pairing him up with at least one of my top 10 receivers and a top-five quarterback. (If I can squeeze in a top-five tight end or another top-10 back – or sometimes both – into the mix, I am willing to sacrifice quality depth because experience in this league has taught me that I will be able to build my bench from the waiver wire. In auction drafts, I am less concerned about entering the season with depth and more concerned with acquiring “special” players (i.e. players that will cost a fortune to acquire via trade during the season).

I also make it a point to pay less than my valuation on just about every player, knowing the depth at receiver will allow me to find a bargain or two. Ideally, I’ll come away from a draft with two surefire starters at running back and another mid-priced player I believe will be an RB2 to use as my flex, but it doesn’t always work that way. Whereas I used to operate under a must-have-two-stud-backs approach when I first joined this league, I am happy nowadays to come away with a definite RB1, an undervalued RB2 and two 80-plus catch receivers.

Although it is a complete departure from conventional auction-draft strategy, I’ve never been a big fan of setting pre-draft positional budgets – such as spending 30 percent on my top two receivers or 50 percent at running back. My method isn’t unlike my approach in serpentine (snake) drafts: highlight the players that I really want to build my team around, put them in tiers and set them aside in a different place on your spreadsheet.

Much like a snake format, value is only truly recognized during the course of the draft. If half the owners are willing to spend nearly half of their budget in order to lock up top-flight running backs and you are not (but you entered the draft placing a high priority on the position), you are forced to reassess your budget in the middle of the draft or face the possibility of ending up with a deep team with few superstars. While that strategy can win, superstars tend to carry the day in fantasy while complementary players can generally be found on the waiver wire throughout the year.

One of the best things an owner can do in the days leading up to the draft is to identify players in predictable situations (in terms of role, scheme and past performance) and set them at the top of the draft board. I find it amazing how often I end up with players from New England, Denver and Green Bay each year without giving it a second thought. If you are consistently drafting players with defined roles from good offenses, fantasy success should not be too far behind.

In my experience, auction drafting is all about believing in your evaluations of players, anticipating what elite players will be the cheapest option in their tier and asking yourself: “Can I build my team around him?” Every dollar saved in auctions will often help owners snag 1-2 more important players they may otherwise not have been able to afford.

The Draft

This year, I set things up a bit differently in order to give readers a better idea of how I organize everything:

Players with bolded names are ones that I specifically selected before the draft as players I was targeting.

For quarterbacks, the green highlight represents the end of the first wave of quarterbacks I wanted starting for me, blue denotes the last quarterback I wanted as a matchup-based starter and red represents the last of the group I wanted to draft period.

For running backs, receivers and tight ends, green represents the end of the elite group of players, blue denotes the end of the RB2/WR2/high-endTE1 pool and red represents the end of the RB3/WR3/low-end TE1 crowd.

Below you will find the prices that secured that player’s services (Actual $) and the price I valued them at before the draft (My $). A dash in the first column reflects the fact that player was not drafted. The yellow highlight represents winning bids for FF Today. Finally, I will follow each position with a brief comment.

All values are based on a $200 cap and players are organized by “My $”. All players that were nominated are included, but I removed a number of players that are unlikely to go in auctions in leagues with 12 teams and 18-man rosters.

Required starters: 1 QB, 2 RBs, 3 WRs, 1 Flex, 1 K and 1 Defense/Special Teams unit.

Observations: Luck ($28) and Rodgers ($28) were two of the first nine players to be nominated and quickly established that most of the owners planned on bypassing the elite options in order to spend their dollars elsewhere. The next quarterback to come up for bid was Wilson ($14) three full rounds later. I’m not sure why Wilson fetched only half the bid the first two did, but I found it notable nonetheless (almost as the owners were lulled to sleep by the long gap between quarterbacks). Ten quarterbacks came up for bid over the next 23 nominations, so the action was fast and furious after that. By far, the most surprising winning bids were Eli Manning ($6), Stafford ($4) and Rivers ($3). Quarterbacks – especially those that don’t run much like the aforementioned veterans – are a bit devalued in leagues that reward four points per passing touchdown, but are any of those players going to finish that far behind Peyton Manning ($17) and Brees ($14)? The depth at this position further reduces how much owners should pay for a quarterback after Luck and Rodgers are off the board, so owners shouldn’t have to bid more than $3-4 for a quality backup.

Post-draft

The FFToday team
QB: Russell Wilson, Teddy Bridgewater
RB: Adrian Peterson, Todd Gurley, Danny Woodhead, Shane Vereen, Alfred Blue, Knile Davis, Jerick McKinnon
WR: Demaryius Thomas, Anquan Boldin, Charles Johnson, Devin Funchess, Rueben Randle
TE: Greg Olsen, Vernon Davis
K: Mason Crosby
D/ST: Houston Texans

I have a pretty simple philosophy when it comes to fantasy football. Give me at least one player that can finish in the top five at each of the four core positions and I’ll show you a team that has a realistic shot at winning it all. With Wilson, Peterson, Thomas and Olsen, I believe that is exactly what I have. Somehow, I was also able to build a deep bench despite the fact I have a fair amount of star power at each position. Assuming relatively good health, I have no doubt this is a title-contending team if Gurley gives me anything close to RB2 production in the second half of the season and Boldin continues to produce at the level he has over the last two seasons. I don’t see either of those as big “ifs” at this point.

Wilson is my third-rated quarterback, so to get him at half the price of Andrew Luck and Aaron Rodgers was a nice surprise. The fact he has set a pretty healthy bar of 25-plus touchdowns (27 in 2013 and 26 last year) and at least 500 yards rushing (539 in 2013, 849 last year) gives him a pretty safe floor each week. Further consider that up until Jimmy Graham arrived, Wilson’s best playmaker in the passing game was Golden Tate. I’d be surprised if he doesn’t see a fairly significant increase in touchdown passes this year. Bridgewater has a ton of weapons at his disposal, one of the game’s best play-callers in Norv Turner and a running game that figures to open up plenty of one-on-one opportunities for his receivers and tight ends. The second-year signal-caller should be a fine bye-week fill-in and solid short-term option in case something happens to Wilson.

You may remember I was burned by Peterson last year, but that isn’t going to stop me from taking another shot at seeing what happens when the game’s most talented back gets to work with an offensive coordinator that has been leading highly-productive ground games in the NFL for over 20 years. Turner likes using his backs in the passing game as well, so it would not surprise me to see Peterson top 40 catches for only the third time in his career. Gurley is arguably the best runner to come of the draft since (you guessed it) Peterson and I really don’t care if he makes it back before the Rams’ Week 6 bye or not. The most recent reports have suggested he is in the final stage of his rehab from an ACL tear last year and I believe a Week 7 return is the latest we will see him. Woodhead and Vereen are essentially the same player for fantasy purposes and are ideal flex options in a PPR format; both backs could catch 60-70 passes if they stay healthy. Blue may end up only being a roster-filler for me while I wait on Gurley, although I really like three of his first four matchups. Davis is the kind of $1 flyer I love to take in auctions; if something happens to Charles, then I have another RB1 at my disposal. McKinnon isn’t the clear handcuff for Peterson, but last year pretty much proved he is the back to own in Minnesota should something happen with AP.

With his early-career injury woes hopefully a thing of the past, Thomas is perhaps the safest elite fantasy receiver available. With Calvin Johnson-like size and speed combined with one of the greatest quarterbacks in league history and his main competition for red-zone catches now in Jacksonville, it is scary to think what he can do. Boldin was the last of my WR2 candidates and also the cheapest. While 34-year-old receivers tend not to be great fantasy investments, Boldin continues to turn in 80-catch, 1,000-yard receiving seasons like they are going out of style. This year, the Niners plan on playing with tempo and passing more often. If anyone is going to benefit from that transition, it figures to be him. Johnson is probably at the low end of the WR3 totem pole for most owners, but should he be? At 6-2 and 225 pounds, Johnson has incredible athleticism and proven chemistry with Bridgewater. I’ll take my chances with the “X” receiver in a Turner-run offense. If Johnson fails to live up to my expectations, Funchess is the most likely to replace him. I don’t expect Kelvin Benjamin-like production, but I do expect him to gobble up a number of red-zone targets that his injured teammate hauled in last season. Randle had 71 receptions for 938 yards in what was considered a disappointing year for him last season, but Eli Manning has sung Randle’s praises (specifically for his commitment) for most of this offseason. Even if Randle does nothing more than repeat last year’s numbers and double his TD output from three to six (what he had on 41 grabs in 2013), he’ll easily be worthy of my WR5 slot.

Once it was confirmed that Benjamin was lost for the season, I knew I wanted Olsen because he becomes Cam Newton’s clear top target in the passing game. Carolina probably isn’t going to field a great offense, but a 70-80 catch tight end in a PPR format is hard to find. Olsen has never scored more than six touchdowns, so I don’t expect that part of his game to change much. However, whereas I doubted he could match last year’s reception and yardage totals before, I think he has a great shot of reaching those marks now. I’m buying into Davis this season, in part because the Niners will be forced to throw. Even at age 31, Davis has the speed and athleticism to be a matchup nightmare for linebackers and safeties. I don’t expect a return to his 13-TD season of 2013, but a 60-catch and 6-7 score season is realistic.