HURL FFL Draft Results

Coinciding with the first day of the 2005 NFL draft, Saturday was also the innaugural draft of the HURL fantasy football league (the newest fantasy league for me). This new league is going to be a keeper league, so we didn’t draft full rosters. Instead, we drafted 8 players each, and we will cut that list down to 6 in mid-August and complete our rosters with “normal” draft in late-August or early-September.

Saturday’s draft had an auction format. Each of the 12 teams had 1000 “dollars” to spend on their 8 players. In order, we each nominated a player. If no one bid on that player, the nominator got him for free. Otherwise, high bid wins.

I came in with a strategy and a ranked list of players with dollar values attached. Part 1 of my strategy was to get the best fantasy player in the league – Ladainian Tomlinson – for 700 or less. From there, I had budgeted 100 for a QB, 800 total for my RBs, 90 for WRs and 10 for a TE. Based on my estimated values for players, here’s what I thought I might be able to get in the draft:

• Tomlinson – for 700
• Michael Vick – for 100
• Fred Taylor – for 50
• Chris Brown – for 50
• Hines Ward – for 25
• Steve Smith – for 25
• Drew Bennett – for 25
• Alge Crumpler – for 15

That would’ve been less than 1000, so I knew I had some room to play with.

Of course, things didn’t work out exactly like that…

If I had the first nominating choice, I would not have done this, but Ladainian Tomlinson was the first player thrown out there. Bids quickly rose for him, and I was very active. In the end, just like I had hoped, he was mine. In fact, I got him for 620, which was less than my budgeted value of 700. So, I felt really good.

For the next several nominations, my bids were pretty much mainly intended to drive up values. Shaun Alexander also went for 620, Priest Holmes went for 570, and I nominated Curtis Martin with the full hopes that people would overpay. I think they did — spending 380 to pick him up.

Then, Corey Dillon went on the board. I had him rated as my 8th best overall player, with a budgeted value of 450. I stayed in this bidding for a while, and ended up getting him for 350. This obviously blew my RB budget out of the water, and I really had mixed feelings about what happened here. On the one hand, I got two players in my top 10, so I’m very happy about that. On the other, I was left with only 30 to play with, and I knew I was going to be out of the bidding for pretty much every other player in my top 50.

Here’s where my lineup ended (with corresponding auction values):

• Ladainian Tomlinson – 620
• Corey Dillon – 350
• Roy Williams – 30
• Alge Crumpler – 0
• Tom Brady – 0
• Ashley Lelie – 0
• Larry Fitzgerald – 0
• Jerome Bettis – 0

Overall, I’m happy with it. Assuming good health, LT should put me in a position to win any game, and if I can build out a WR corps, get a good year from Dillon and a solid year from Brady and Crumpler? Well, I feel good about things. Plus, in this keeper format, I should be able to build this franchise around LT for the next four years. I like that.

I’m also even more intrigued by the auction format than ever before. I really want to join a complete auction draft league now. I think it would be really fun to see how all this stuff plays out when you are fielding a complete roster.

Lessons Learned
I think you have to choose between basically two strategies to field a competitive team in an auction draft. You can either do what I did here and spend big on 1 or 2 studs and build out your roster with a bunch of “decent-but-not-great” players; or, you can try to build out a roster with as many 200-300 type value players as possible — in other words, build your roster from the 11th-50th ranked players on the board. I think both can be successful.

The other key is bidding up other players appropriately, forcing another team to overspend at times on a player you really don’t want to end up with. This is key so that you bring more teams either to your balance level or below your balance so you can gain control of the board.

Overall, it was a helluva fun Saturday!