Salary Cap Confidential: Rookie Draft Strategy
There are few moments a cap owner has that rival the rush of being on the clock in a rookie draft, but there are many considerations an owner should make as the timer ticks down on his or her pick. Like much of Salary Cap Confidential to the point, understanding your league settings is a big part of making strong decisions for your franchise.
Rookie Wage Scale
A rookie wage scale is used in nearly every salary cap league with a rookie draft. Similar to how the NFL assigns rookie salaries based on where they’re selected in the NFL draft, a cap league pre-determines how much space an incoming rookie will take of an owner’s salary cap based on which selection they’re taken with in the rookie draft.
Typically, the top draft pick in a rookie draft will require an average of 6% – 10% of a team’s salary cap each year, with some leagues being even higher. That percentage typically lowers to around 3% – 4% for the final picks of the first round, 2% – 3% for second round selections and 1% – 2% for third round picks.
Understanding how expensive (or reasonable) these pre-determined salaries are compared to what you can get in a free agent auction with the same amount of money can go a long way towards putting the proper value on draft picks both when making selections and trades. Obviously, valuing these draft picks from year to year can change due to the players available in a particular draft but it’s good to have a baseline.
Cap Penalties
Most owners don’t want to consider the future costs of releasing a player when we make a rookie draft pick but it’s a major piece of the puzzle of trying to identify the value of a selection. Because we’ve already covered penalties in depth earlier in the series, I’ll give the Cliffs Notes here.
Leagues where 50% or more of rookie salaries are guaranteed (including fully guaranteed) are leagues that I consider to have severe cap penalties. Leagues that guarantee less than 50% of rookie salaries are considered lenient. Lenient leagues offers owners the flexibility of shooting for the fences in rookie drafts while severe penalty leagues should be handled a little more carefully and add more value to high-floor prospects.
Contracts
Along with the rookie wage scale, rookies are often given a standard contract length after being taken in a rookie draft. Most leagues award a contract of between three and five years to incoming rookies.
This is where understanding cap penalties (above) once again factors in. Leagues with severe penalties and longer contracts (five years) make adding rookies with already enough unknowns even more risky. Meanwhile, leagues with lenient penalties and shorter contracts (three to four years) give owners the flexibility to take more chances with their selections.
If you have the ability to select the length of a rookie contract, there’s also strategy in that decision. Refer to the Managing Contracts portion of Salary Cap Confidential for more.
Retainability
Retainability in a salary cap league is the probability an owner has to keep a player beyond the length of his current contract. Whether this means by placing a franchise, developmental or restricted free agent tag on him, re-signing him to a new contract or any other means, understanding how likely you are to keep a player beyond his rookie contract – and taking this a step further, how the retainability of a player on a rookie contract compares to the retainability of a veteran player – should factor in to not only who you pick, but also if you should make a pick at all.
It’s impossible to mention every possible scenario or setting that can affect the retainability of a player but here are a few scenarios.
- A league where it’s cheaper to tag a player following his rookie contract than it is to tag a veteran adds value to rookie picks.
- Value can also added to rookie picks in leagues with a bargain priced rookie wage scale that allows the re-signing of players when a player’s previous salary is factored into the re-sign amount.
- The value of draft picks would take a hit in leagues with little to no retainability and an expensive rookie wage scale (particularly in severe cap penalty leagues) because that cap space can often times be spent on a veteran that is more predictable and therefore safer.
The best way to gauge retainability in a league is by understanding the rules as well as possible and with experience handling these situations.
I’ve found that the most fun leagues work hard to blend the four rookie settings above (cap penalties, contract length, and retainability) to offer a strong challenge while also creating a fair playing field. Merging a cheaply priced rookie wage scale with a severe cap penalty, short contract lengths and the availability to retain rookies is just as fun as playing in a league with an expensive rookie wage scale, lenient cap penalties, long contract lengths and expensive retainability.
Before wrapping up this edition of Salary Cap Confidential, there are a few strategies worth noting when it comes to making rookie picks in salary cap.
Early ROI Matters
The most significant difference between valuing rookies in dynasty as compared to salary cap is that while it’s favorable in dynasty to get early returns from your investments, it’s almost necessary in salary cap due to the expiration date of the contract a rookie gets. Obviously this isn’t quite as important in leagues that offer reasonable retainability but it’s a factor nonetheless and leads us directly to…
Talent Doesn’t Necessarily Trump Opportunity
The age old debate of talent versus opportunity is one that seems to come up every off-season – particularly when owners are on the clock in a rookie draft. And while it completely reasonable to value the talent of a prospect over the immediate opportunity presented to that player in a dynasty league, that shouldn’t always be the case in salary cap.
When valuing players – especially when the group is closely rated based on talent alone – the situation each player is drafted into should be weighted heavier in a league with contracts. I’ve gone as far as recommending owners look closely at re-draft rookie rankings before determining salary cap values – not as a strict guide but instead to offer a different and more short-term perspective. As I’ve written often, salary cap is a blend of re-draft and dynasty and the rookie draft is the time is shows through most.
Contract Length Differences
Many leagues have different lengths of contracts based on what round a player is picked in the rookie draft. For example, first round picks might get a five year contract, second round picks a four year deal and third rounders get a three year pact. This can create a drastic differences in rookie draft pick value between the last pick in one round and the first pick in another – particularly in leagues with little retainability and lenient cap penalties. Trading up from the 2.01 to the 1.12 can be a savvy move in such leagues.
Positional Preferences
There is plenty of data available about hit rates by position and the expected wait times for a player to develop into a useful fantasy asset so let’s bypass that. I have come up with a few fairly obvious conclusions that have helped me on the topic however.
- Only rookie QBs with elite upside have value in single-quarterback leagues. Signal callers drafted inside the top-15 picks(ish) of the NFL draft and with a very clear, immediate path to a starting job are worth a draft pick. Sure, Drew Brees and Brett Favre were second round picks but even they didn’t offer much help to a cap owner in their first couple years.
- Only rookie QBs with high upside have value in super-flex or 2QB leagues. I stretch this typically to quarterbacks drafted in the first round of the NFL draft with a clear path to a starting job in the next one to two years.
- Late-round running backs are much more likely to produce than late round picks at any other position. Simply put, take a flier on a fifth-round tailback over a fifth-round wideout every time.
- Wide receivers and tight ends take more time to develop so expectations should be lowered unless they are taken extremely high in the NFL draft.
- Drafting for need is a fool’s errand as much in salary cap as it is in dynasty. You’re likely going to have ups and downs with whomever you select so take the prospect with the highest likeliness of producing the most points for your team.
Rankings
The most important step for preparing for a rookie draft is creating a custom set of rookie rankings factoring in everything mentioned above from the rookie wage scale and contract length to retainability and talent versus opportunity. Listing the players in the order I would take them is followed by creating tiers inside the rankings. Tiers are never more important than they are in a salary cap rookie draft.
Because of the slowly decreasing salaries of players due to the rookie wage scale, it’s incredibly important to lump similarly valued players together inside your rankings so you know you’re getting the best value you can with your draft pick and the salary cap space associated with it.
Imagine being on the clock at 1.03 with the top two players on your rookie board having already been taken. Why would you pay a player ranked third in your rookie rankings 8% of your cap when the player you have ranked fifth is in the same tier? Such a situation paints a very clear picture that you should trade down to fourth or fifth in the draft. You’ll get a similar player (if not the one you have ranked third) at a discounted rate along with additional assets. I’ve even been known to trade down from 1.03 to 1.05 without getting anything in return but a two pick swap in the third round just so I can save 1%-2% in cap space.
In the next Salary Cap Confidential we’ll cover the strategies associated with player retention.
- League Tycoon: Dynasty Salary Cap Fantasy Football - December 15, 2023
- Final Dynasty Rookie Report Card: Wide Receivers, Part Two - March 22, 2023
- 2023 NFL Scouting Combine: Offensive Player Dynasty Review - March 10, 2023
