Fantasy Football: Key tips to crushing salary cap drafts

I fell asleep in less than a minute on Saturday night, which is rare for me. But I was wiped out, spent, out of gas. A full day of friends and great conversations at the Fantasy Football Expo made for a blast of a day.

Of course, there were drafts involved. In the morning, I was part of a 14-manager snake draft, part of the Jim Brown League. After a brief lunch, we reconvened for a salary cap draft, the same 14 managers. And if you want to scramble your mind, get into a salary cap draft.

I only mean that in the most positive of ways.

Snake drafts are the dominant format in the fantasy football space, and I get that. They’re the standard. They’re shorter than salary cap drafts. They’re the known commodity.

But salary cap drafts have some cool advantages. Your roster-building options are wider; the entire player pool is accessible to you. These drafts are more dynamic, more strategic. A snake draft is like playing a game of limit poker. Salary cap drafts are no-limit poker.

Drafts are linear, salary cap drafts are non-linear. Remember how Pulp Fiction changed all the movie rules in the mid-90s? Salary cap drafts offer the same juice.

Let’s get some salary cap tips out to you. Sure, some of this will be review content. But you never know who’s reading for the first time.

Salary Cap Draft Tips

Vary your nomination style

Again, we’re talking about poker here. You want to be difficult to read. If you’re always chasing the players you nominate or eschewing the players you introduce, seasoned opponents will quickly catch on. You don’t need a screwball strategy of player introduction; just try to vary it mildly and it will be mission accomplished.

Of course, sometimes it’s fun to mess with the room a bit. Nominate the understudy back before his starter teammate. Nominate an early sleeper after a handful of vanity players fly off the board. See who’s on their toes and who isn’t. Have some fun. Mess things up.

Get money off the table

A lot of your early nominations should be the highest-ranked players that for whatever reason you don’t feel good about. You want to get leverage in this league, and a lot of that comes from your opponents depleting their budgets and filling up some of their slots.

Your mid-game nominations will often be players who don’t fit your roster shape. After I landed Terry McLaurin on Saturday, I quickly pitched Jahan Dotson to the room. I knew he’d fetch more than the $1 minimum, and I didn’t want two Washington receivers. Done and done. (These nominations also come in handy if you need a quick bathroom break but the room isn’t stopping for you, though you might want to nominate someone more likely to induce a lengthy bidding process.)

Try to shop when your opponents have reasonable alternatives

It’s critical to land your players before tiers get barren and players start to look isolated on the tier sheet. You need someone good to be remaining on the board, so rivals can rationalize why it’s okay to bow out of the current chase. When a few managers realize there’s scarcity in a specific tier (or heaven forbid, just one significant player), that’s when panic buying and inflationary fear kick in.

My style is usually to sit back in salary cap drafts, sure. But if you wait too long and the tiers start to deplete, you’re likely headed for a snake pit.

Before the endgame, introduce your players at the minimum

Some will view this as a waste of time — why nominate Ja’Marr Chase for $1 when he’s going to push far past that number? I hear you. But in pretty much every salary cap draft I do, I see at least one person open with a non-minimum nomination and regret it.

One year it was a manager introducing Le’Veon Bell at a juicy number, not realizing he was deep into a holdout that threatened to (and actually did) carry into the season.

This past weekend, one manager already had Josh Allen and decided to introduce Patrick Mahomes, a reasonable idea. But the initial offer of $15 (which seemed tame enough) was collectively shrugged at by the entire room. Now this team had two star quarterbacks in a league where only one was required. Not optimal.

Know the key endgame numbers

Most of the time the introductory $1 offer makes a lot of sense. But when the end of the salary cap draft comes along, it’s often critical to get to a key number before someone else.

Let’s say you and a couple of other managers have the same maximum offer left of $2. In theory, you all could pitch that $2 for a key targeted player, but only the first person to say (or enter) that $2 salary will land the player. This could mean you introduce said player at the $2 number, and it also means you’re ready to shout out “two” if someone else introduces him at $1. It will take a few reps for you to get the hang of endgame strategy, but negotiating these ebbs and flows is critical if you want to finish your draft in a satisfying way.

Stars and scrubs vs. balanced and deep

If your league has a small number of managers or a modest set of starting requirements, it’s probably best to steer into a stars-and-scrubs approach, where you land a few signature players and are content to have $1 options in the second half of your roster. These leagues are usually dominated by top-heavy teams, and the replacement value is so good on the waiver wire, it doesn’t matter if most of your bench fliers fizzle out.

Stars and scrubs could work in a deeper league as well, but in those formats, I tend to focus less on superstar power and more on depth and having the best flexes in the room. This was the build I opted for at the Expo, where I probably don’t have a first-round talent but I have strong options to fill the requirements (three wideouts and three more flexes start every week).

Don’t confuse the room

If you don’t intend to salary-enforce on a nominated player (salary enforcing means you’ll be the manager who keeps bidding to make sure the other engaged team doesn’t get a bargain), don’t enter the middle of the bidding. You give a confusing signal to the room, which thinks you’ve taken on this task. I get it, it’s fun to bid, it’s fun to hear your own voice sometimes. But if there are already two engaged managers battling for a player and you don’t want to take it to the end, don’t confuse everyone in the middle. Just stay silent, work on your list, think about your strategy, maybe look for an opponent tell or two. Breathe. Hydrate.

New salary-cap leagues versus experienced ones

I’ve found that when a league of new salary-cap managers gets going, the early spending is usually chaotic. Think of freshmen in college with their first credit cards — let’s push to the limit as quickly as possible. But when experienced salary-cappers get together, often there’s an internal pull to not be too active early — which often leads to some shocking discounts in the opening nominations. The latter rule is not set in stone, but it’s common. The first rule, the concept about fresh leagues usually starting off with spending sprees — that’s almost always true.

One final word about salary-cap drafts

I’m experienced in the salary cap draft world and I think it’s one of my better formats. But I have never left a salary cap draft without regrets and internal second-guessing. And honestly, perhaps counter-intuitively, this is a good thing — this is feature, not bug. I want to be challenged. I want the most dynamic game possible. I want all the choices.

If this is all new to you, I hope you consider a salary cap draft this year. Let me know how you like it.