Salary Cap Confidential: Free Agent Auction Strategy
If you’ve been following along the Salary Cap Confidential series, you know a big part of my strategy as a cap owner lies in preparation and that starts with a budget. Although we covered building a budget extensively in the Startup Auction section of the series and tracking future spending in the Managing the Cap installment, it’s important to emphasize the importance of preparation and budgeting for a free agent auction as well.
It’s crazy to me that some owners don’t take the time to figure out exactly what they need to accomplish at a free agent auction. Many of those owners make downright silly mistakes. So I take four steps when prepping for a free agent auction, to safeguard from making those mistakes and guarantee I’m properly prepared to improve my team during the free agent auction.
Step One: Identify team needs and weaknesses
The first step is pretty self-explanatory. A quick look at your depth chart will tell you exactly where your roster is lacking and should paint a pretty clear picture of the positions you should attack in free agency.
Step Two: Scout available players
Again, relatively self-explanatory. I like to start this step by listing all roster-worthy players available in the auction, by position, in a spreadsheet. Taking the time to rank the players and create tiers, as we did in the startup auction, is critical when making decisions mid-auction and can prove especially valuable when bids are live.
Step Three: Understanding exactly what is available to spend
This is where those silly mistakes come into play.
All cap owners know to keep a close eye on their salary cap before, during and after a free agent auction but it’s incredible to me how many of don’t account for roster maximums when making bids. One common mistake by owners is failing to account for their future draft picks (if the auction predates the rookie draft) and the salaries those rookies will hold against their cap.
It’s a good idea to add rookie picks to your franchise’s budget before free agency to keep you from overfilling your roster when the draft comes around. Your budget may look something like this.
Because this particular league has a set salary for each pick in a rookie draft (as most leagues do), I can add the picks (2.12 and 3.12) onto my roster which takes up two roster spots and their salaries into my budget which keeps my salary cap as accurate as possible.
Another mistake many cap owners make entering an auction is a failure to know exactly how many roster spots they intend to fill. Whether that happens because they’re planning to add “quantity” rather than “quality” when they don’t have roster space for “quantity” or another reason, it’s a mistake that is made regularly in cap leagues.
As I mentioned earlier in the series, I make it a priority to fill every available roster spot whenever possible. In the example above, our league allows a maximum of 27 players. 19 roster spots are filled with players, two more are reserved for rookies and the remaining spots are vacant. Therefore I know that I have as many as six roster spots available and $15 in cap space to fill them.
If you want to take your pre-draft budgeting a step further, you can begin placing player positions you hope to add in free agency on the document, and even add the max salary you intend to spend. (In yellow below).
Step Four: Understanding the salary cap league-wide
Once you’re in full control of your own cap, you can get a leg up on the rest of the league by taking the time to understand exactly where you stand among your competition. This is done by making a list of every owner in the league along with their cap space – minus the space they’ll use on draft picks. This will tell you exactly where you rank in available funds during the auction and can help you make bidding decisions.
Furthermore, the total of the cap space available for every team in the league when considered along with the list of roster-worthy players you created in step two, will help create an accurate expectation for how free agency will go. And the best part about that is you can test out those expectations by taking that list of free agents and adding the salary you expect the player to get during the auction. If the total of all those expected salaries comes close to the available cap space in the league, you know you’re on the right track. If your number is low however, there is a good chance players in the auction will go for more than you anticipate which could force you to change the budget you created in step three.
Each of these four steps have assisted me to make good decisions leading up to and during a free agent auction, but it should be stated that there is no better preparation for a free agent auction then experience. Competing against the same group of owners year after year and learning how they attack free agency will not only help you create accurate expectations for the auction, but also create ways to use those habits to help your team via trade. That experience is better than any tip listed above.
Free Agent Auction Bidding Strategies
There are several ways to attack free agency and the preparation from above can help decide how aggressive to be at the onset of the auction. Owners with multiple holes to fill and a modest budget might let the auction come to them, simply taking the cheapest options which fill needs. Other owners looking for a specific playmaker to put themselves over the top might bid aggressively, posting the highest bid their budget will allow – particularly in a slow, proxy (eBay) auction – to try to catch the rest of the owners off guard.
Personally, I believe that the preparation I did above affords me the luxury to always be aggressive. The confidence of knowing what each player is worth and what they should go for at auction along with knowing exactly how much money I can spend on a player makes it nearly impossible to second-guess a bid.
Opening Nomination
Often, league owners who are unprepared to spend the start of an auction reacquainting themselves with player values or trying to getting a feel for which players will be bargains. When I have a specific target in mind during free agency, I like to nominate that player as soon as possible and place an aggressive bid. Often times, the offer will slide through without another bid and more often than not, it’ll prove to be one of the bargains of the auction when the dust settles.
Rebuilding Bids
A common misnomer among teams that are in the rebuilding process is that spending on veterans is misguided but that’s hardly the case. In fact, adding veteran free agents while rebuilding can be a great strategy when done correctly.
Savvy owners who are truly rebuilding use all their resources which includes cap space and roster spots. One way to accomplish this is by adding talented players on one-year contracts (to limit risk) in free agency with the intent to trade that player before the trade deadline. Obviously, this is only a useful strategy to those who have cap room when there aren’t young players worthy of multi-year deals in a free agent class to use the space on. Flipping these veterans for future draft picks (and typically covering that player’s salary) as quickly as possible is a good way to use otherwise worthless cap space during a re-build.
Track Other Owners’ Bids
Tracking who you’re bidding against (or who is bidding on any player) is another subtle way to create an edge during a free agent auction. Most likely, if an owner is bidding on a player, they like that player. That will absolutely be a good thing to remember when you’re trying to deal the player later that year.
Remember the Golden Rule
Do you remember the golden rule from the Managing Contracts edition of Salary Cap Confidential? If not, you need to ask yourself…
What are the chances the player outperforms the salary I’m offering him this year? If the answer isn’t “good” or better, he’s not worth a multi-year contract offer.
Giving long-term contracts –particularly on low salary players – can be incredibly profitable, but should only be done when the chances of the player outperforming his salary are really good. As I’ve mentioned a few times in this series, I’m a fan of limiting risk (especially in leagues where a large percentage of player salaries is guaranteed.) But tactfully using long-term contracts can turn your salary cap franchise into a dynasty so it shouldn’t be ignored.
Continue to Budget
More importantly than anything else listed here, continuing to update your budget will continue to pay off. Adding players you win via auction and moving the cap space saved to another space on the budget will keep you in full control as nominations continue.
Track Salaries League-Wide
Remember the list of free agents we made while preparing for the auction? Taking the time to jot down the winning bid for each auction can prove valuable. Because they’re ranked – and even better, tiered – it’ll become abundantly clear when a bargain hits the auction block.
Plan for In-Season Roster Moves
I covered this in another section but it’s worth mentioning quickly here. Make sure you have a sufficient plan for in-season transactions.
The budget I showed above is from a league that offers cap relief when releasing some contracts so it’s not necessary to keep cap space available when the auction ends. In a fully guaranteed league, it’s absolutely necessary to keep as much as 5%-10% of your cap space free for future use.
Come back next week for Salary Cap Confidential: Rookie Draft Strategies.
- League Tycoon: Dynasty Salary Cap Fantasy Football - December 15, 2023
- Final Dynasty Rookie Report Card: Wide Receivers, Part Two - March 22, 2023
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