Do You Nominate a Player You Want Early in a 2024 Fantasy Football Auction/Salary Cap Draft? YES!

And we figured out exactly when you should do it.

For decades, pundits have said “some of the time you want to nominate a guy you want early in the draft, before the market is set. Then you get him for a discount.” But nobody, ever, has been able to tell readers/viewers exactly when that “some of the time” is. As a result, most of us 2024 fantasy football salary cap/auction advice-givers shy away from saying that. If I’m putting one of MY GUYS out on the line, I don’t want to see him bid up to way over projected and realize I should have waited. That feeling sucks. So we instead give the time-tested advice of nominating big-name players you don’t want to pay up for. Because nobody can predict which drafts are going to be the ones where you should nominate your guys early. No one can see the future.

Until now.

 

I analyzed dozens of drafts and have figured out the exact right time to nominate a big name guy you really want in order to get a discount. But first, I want to give you my methodology. Time to sit through some math class. HOWEVER, Football Absurdity was founded on the principle that you should never have to feel like you’re in math class if you don’t want to. So if you want to skip right to the answer to “when do you nominate a player you want early in a 2024 fantasy football auction/salary cap draft” click here.

Our 2024 Fantasy Football Auction/Salary Cap Draft Methods

First, let me tell you about our data. The thing that absolutely hurts about trying to collect 2024 fantasy football auction/salary cap draft data is the bots. If a few bad apples spoil the batch, a few bots definitely spoil the draft. Bots can be made to do a decent job with snake drafts, but with the auction/salary cap method, they go INSANE. They’ll look at CMC’s $75 projected value, look at the high bid of $60 and immediately say $87. Then they will keep doing that until they are down to $1 max bids. Salary cap bots will draft 3 mediocre defenses in leagues where you start 1. All that disregard of logic creates draft results that absolutely can not be used to determine anything about how our actual drafts will go.

That’s why, a few years ago, I created a method for filling mock draft queues with humans in June and July. It’s called trawling, and I use it to get all or almost all humans in a draft for real data. We use a handful from our Discord but it’s mostly a wide assortment of randos from the Internet. Join our Discord if you like a chill vibe and want to get in on these bot-free drafts.

I then take all the data from these drafts and dump it into a spreadsheet. The spreadsheet spits out everyone’s average price, minimum, maximum, and other such stats into a convenient table. I do all this and then make these tables available because you deserve it, dear reader, for finding Football Absurdity: A Place Where We Take Auction Data Super Seriously.

10-team 2024 All-Human Auction Values

12-team 2024 All-Human Auction Values

This week, I wanted to figure out if there was ever a way to predict when someone would go low. First I looked at our 23 ten-team and 11 twelve-team drafts. I picked Jahmyr Gibbs, a guy I’m really high on who sometimes goes early but sometimes goes late. I compared the prices to his average. Here’s how the data broke down:

• If Gibbs is nominated among the first three backs, he goes for a discount 33% of the time
• If Gibbs is nominated around where he is listed based on his projected price (13th) he goes for a discount slightly more than 33% of the time
• If Gibbs is nominated 10+ spots after where he is listed, he goes for a discount 62.5% of the time

Staggering evidence that I should not just come out and nominate Gibbs early if I wanted him for a bargain.

But I had issues with my methodology. In particular, choosing “among the first three RBs nominated” doesn’t really fall into what I would call “before the market is set.” But Gibbs rarely got nominated first, so I shoehorned him into that category.

Realizing this, I decided to look at just the first player nominated at each position. I wanted to see how often the first player at a position would go for a discount. This is how the data looks:

• The first QB nominated went for a discount slightly less than 33% of the time
• The first RB nominated went for a discount slightly more than 33% of the time
• The first WR nominated went for a discount slightly less than 33% of the time
• The first TE nominated went for a discount slightly more than 33% of the time

Notice a pattern? Randomly throwing out a position that hasn’t been nominated works about 33% of the time. Not enough that I want to pick it over the strategy of “nominate players I don’t want to get a lot of money out of the pool,” which works 100% of the time.

Okay I’m back. Only one child was bleeding.

However, while I was poring over this data, I thought I perceived a trend. I remembered seeing a lot of times where, when the first overall player went for a discount, another position went for a discount when it came up. So I went back and compiled the data, and the results were staggering:

When the first player nominated went for a discount, the first player nominated at some other position went for a discount FOURTEEN OUT OF FIFTEEN TIMES. Not only that, but two other positions went for a discount the first time they were nominated eight out of fifteen times, more than half.

So, the big conclusion you’ve all been waiting for:

If the first player nominated in your draft goes for less than their projected value, start nominating players you want from positions that haven’t been nominated. If CMC (proj. $75) goes for $73, nominate a WR or TE or QB you really want. They might go for a deal. If they don’t watch for the first player nominated from the other positions (and nominate them yourself if you get the chance). One of those first noms will go for a discount, at least according to 93% of the drafts I analyzed.

Okay, back to the dungeon, to pore over more data and feed my children. I shall return!