On Sunday night, August 28th, 2016, we had our annual fantasy draft for the NFL football season. This was the 7th year of my league, so I decided to deviate from our normal course and change the format of our draft from “Snake” to “Auction”. The more traditional “Snake” draft allows teams to pick players one by one in an order determined before the draft and the order is inversely flipped each round. In an “Auction” draft, teams nominate players one-by-one and everyone bids on the player. Everyone starts out with the same budget and spends their money as they please.
I went with a conservative strategy. I had done a couple mock drafts and got an idea of the strategies teams would implement. We all started with $200 to use on 16 players. The bids in the first two rounds went really high. One going as high as $67. I attempted to bid on a couple high projection players, but the bids went higher than I was willing to pay, so I wasn’t able to secure any players until the 3rd round. Despite the late start, I was able to complete my roster first. I had more flexibility with my large budget, so I was able to bid higher then most teams in the later rounds. Honestly, I think I had one of the best, if not THE BEST draft of league. (team “screenshotted” below)
Aside from TWO people (Stevie P and Migs), we all enjoyed the auction draft. Actually, it was REALLY FUN. Definitely required more concentration than a snake draft, but it was more interactive, more strategical, and more unpredicatable. It took just under 2 hours to complete. The first couple rounds took awhile to get through, but once budgets were depleted, the late rounds flew by. Depending on how the league plays out this year will determine whether we maintain the auction league structure. Last year was one of our most competitive seasons ever. After the top two overall seeds, everyone else was separated by 1 or 2 games. I think I’m going to continue league coverage from the blog throughout the season, so STAY TUNED!
JM The Dev
melbewriting
TJ
Stevie P
Gotham's Tribe 