Fantasy Football Auction Mock Drafts: Different Strategies Bring Christian McCaffrey, Jayden Daniels, Dalton Kincaid and More

Auction drafts are more fun than snake drafts. Everyone gets a chance at every player, and you can choose how you are going to build your team rather than being held at the mercy of your draft position, forced into certain pockets of players.

More people still play with conventional drafts, making auctions more of a niche thing. Auctions can be intimidating if you’ve never done one or have little experience. In preparation for this season, I have been doing mock auction drafts to see how different strategies worked out and what I enjoyed most.

I am sharing the outcomes of four auction mocks, each performed with different intentions, whether that was attacking the top superstars, distributing money more evenly, or picking spots to spend big. I will explain what I was going for in each, but this is far from a complete list of auction strategies.

My goal is to share my experiences to help increase your knowledge from a first-hand account. You can (and should) try plenty of your own mock drafts to gain even more experience. Our FantasySP Mock Draft Simulator is a perfect tool to complete your mocks quickly and get extra practice.

Spread the Wealth

QB: Anthony Richardson

RB: Rhamondre Stevenson, Jonathon Brooks, David Montgomery, D'Andre Swift, Aaron Jones

WR: Brandon Aiyuk, Nico Collins, D.J. Moore, Zay Flowers, Cooper Kupp, Jayden Reed

TE: Dalton Kincaid, George Kittle

Top Defense

Top Kicker

$43 leftover

In this exercise, I spent less than $25 on every player. The idea was to build a deep team of mid-level players with whom I could play matchups without having to stream through the free agent pool. With the amount of money left over, you can see that I could have been more aggressive with a top quarterback, like Lamar Jackson, and/or at tight end with a guy like Travis Kelce.

I like the idea here, but the running backs are too weak for my taste. There’s probably at least one top-20 scorer in that group, but there’s also a lot of bust and injury potential, especially with guys fighting for work in their own backfield.

The receivers are strong: Aiyuk, Collins, Moore, Flowers and Reed could all be argued as the WR1 on their team. Kincaid and Kittle are a good combination at tight end, even with the caveat that I could have spent more on an elite player. The pass catchers are deep here.

Top defense and top kicker essentially mean you can have any player at the position you want. With $45 in the bank, no one was going to outbid me for the Browns and Justin Tucker (or whomever you prefer at the top).

This team is OK, but the money left in the bank is annoying (unless it would go toward your free agency pool or something, in which case that’s great). I’d prefer stronger running backs, but I could trade from the receiver stash to pick up another RB2 guy like James Cook or Isiah Pacheco.

Quality Quantity

QB: Kyler Murray, Jayden Daniels

RB: Kenneth Walker III, James Cook, Jonathon Brooks, D'Andre Swift, David Montgomery, Rhamondre Stevenson

WR: Marvin Harrison Jr., Brandon Aiyuk, Michael Pittman Jr., Malik Nabers, D.J. Moore

TE: Dalton Kincaid

Top Defense

Top Kicker

$4 Leftover

This is similar to the last strategy in which I avoided the elite stars, but this time I spent more money on my top backs and receivers. Where Aiyuk was WR1 last round, he’s now pushed down a slot with the uber-prospect Harrison added to the fray. Pittman, Nabers and Moore are all the WR1s on their team.

Brooks, Swift, Montgomery and Stevenson were all on the last team. Instead of being the featured guys, though, I added two top-15 backs in Walker and Cook who will mostly be weekly starters while the other guys battle over the flex spot. There’s also enough depth to easily cover when bye weeks start or there’s a really tough matchup.

Murray and Daniels are both running quarterbacks. That’s the best asset in fantasy football, and I could very well be holding two top-10 guys at the end of the year; that’s also more trade bait.

Kincaid is back. You’ll notice that he’s on both teams so far, a sign that I’m in on Kincaid. With the lack of top-tier wide receiver talent in Buffalo, the 2023 first-round pick may be leaned on more as a top receiver than a true tight end. That would boost his stock, and the downside is still a good tight end.

There were a few dollars left to get me the defense and kicker of my choosing, all of which went down to a nice, tidy, $4 left.

I like this team, but there’s a lack of high end, impact talent again. That’s why I tried the next strategy, which may be my new favorite…

Stars and Scrubs

QB: Jayden Daniels

RB: Christian McCaffrey, Breece Hall, Devin Singletary, Raheem Mostert, Austin Ekeler

WR: Tyreek Hill, Terry McLaurin, Xavier Worthy, Jaxon Smith-Njigba, Jameson Williams, Jakobi Meyers, Jerry Jeudy

TE: Dalton Kincaid

Low-to-mid-level Defense

Low-to-mid-level Kicker

$0 leftover

That’s the top two running backs and the top wide receiver on the board all on my team. The plan here was to add the best players I could at the beginning of the draft before sitting out most of the middle and filling my team toward the end. I have to say: I really like this team.

Every owner who gets one of McCaffrey, Hall, or Hill will be happy; I have all three. A lot of talent left the board before I started filling out the roster, though, meaning it was down to time-share running backs and second and third receivers mostly.

There is some boom potential among that group, though. Mostert was in the top five among running backs in both standard and PPR scoring last season and will likely play a similar role. McLaurin has basically been a lock for 1,000 yards each season. Worthy, Smith-Njigba, Williams and Jeudy were all first-round picks.  There’s enough to start while being active on the free agent market.

Kincaid is back again; we already covered that. Daniels also returns, and he is my favorite quarterback pick this preseason. That doesn’t mean he’ll score the most points, but I think he will return the most value based on where he is drafted among the QBs (and going for $1 or $2). He is likely to use his legs a lot, the best way to score consistent points.

The “low-to-mid-level” moniker just means I couldn’t spend $2 for the top defenses or kickers and had to wait my turn to get who was left. Kansas City’s D is either not drafted or taken late in most mocks; I see that as a value play, as they had one of the top defenses in the league last season and return a lot of pieces and highly regarded defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo.

Follow the Rules

QB: Jayden Daniels

RB: Saquon Barkley, Travis Etienne, D'Andre Swift, Brian Robinson Jr., David Montgomery, Raheem Mostert

WR: A.J. Brown, Marvin Harrison Jr., Jaxon Smith-Njigba, Jordan Addison, Ladd McConkey, Jameson Williams

TE: Dallas Goedert

Mid Defense

Mid Kicker

$1 leftover

This is the boring auction: You just take players the same way you would in a snake draft, getting an RB1, WR1, RB2, WR2, etc. It makes sense, but it takes away the fun and randomness of an auction. This is a dull way to bid.

As far as the team, I like the top-end talent, but there was a large section of the draft that I had to sit out because of money, just like in the “Stars and Scrubs” method. The difference is that in the previous exercise I started with McCaffrey, Hall and Hill, each a higher level of fantasy player than anyone here.

There is more depth than the S’n’S team, as Mostert and Williams are at the bottom of the roster rather than guys counted on to contribute at the flex. I had to go with a $1 tight end rather than a higher upside option, and the defense and kicker were better than the worst options (for whatever confidence that gives you).

Takeaways

There are many, many more auction strategies than these four; this is just an idea of what could happen if you ignore the top players, go after the best of the best, or try to thread the needle between the two extremes. There are a few lessons I learned through the trial-and-error:

• Spend all your money. Don’t wait for prices to drop at the top. Grab a few of the top guys (maybe an RB/WR combo) and spread out your money later.
• There’s a lot of receiver depth. I just wrote an article looking at running backs versus wide receivers at different levels of fantasy drafts and concluded that there are a lot more fantasy-relevant receivers available, so grabbing a few running backs early and/or spending a little extra to get four or five good backs will strengthen a tough position to fill while allowing you to collect comparable receivers later.
• There are a lot of good quarterbacks and tight ends. Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson, Travis Kelce and Sam LaPorta will probably all have great fantasy years. There are players at their positions who offer much more value later in drafts and at lower auction prices, though, so it’s OK to wait and grab a player or two at each position later and maybe play the streaming game.