Steak League

If you subscribe to Real Man Sports, you know all too well what this is. After the damage I did to these dudes a few weeks back, I had to take this auction seriously.

It’s a 14-team, half-PPR format with IDPs, small benches and a $200 budget.

Here are the results:

My aim in an auction is first and foremost to get rid of my money. To that end, I typically spend about two-thirds to three-quarters of my budget on 3-4 star players and then I wait for bargains. The key is not to overpay for the middle tier of players — the drops in quality are often sudden and not incremental as you go down.

I did a short video describing the strategy last summer:

Alan Seslowsky @AlanSeslowsky

#1 Salary Cap League (FNA "Auction") Draft strategy. @Chris_Liss nails it 🔨

In any event, it went more or less as I had hoped. One thing I did not mean to do was get so many of the same players I drafted earlier today in Beat Chris Liss 3 including Saquon Barkley, Javonte Williams, Elijah Moore and Skyy Moore — $109 of my $200 budget.

But it’s not entirely surprising I’d like the same players more than anyone else in both rooms. I’ve intentionally consolidated as much as possible this year, not wanting to diversify across seven teams wherein I’d be rooting for and against half the league simultaneously every week, but this is extreme even for me. Barkley, Moore and Travis Etienne, whom I passed up in this auction, had better stay healthy.

I did finally get a share of Ja’Marr Chase who I had initially tabbed as my top receiver. Justin Jefferson and Cooper Kupp typically go ahead of him for good reason, but Chase is probably the most talented of the three, and with Joe Burrow already a rising superstar (which was not the case before last year) and Chase in Year 2, we could see a season for the ages.