Basic Tools for Salary Cap Leagues

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The Salary Cap Roundtable Series

Joining a salary cap league can be intimidating for even a seasoned fantasy football player. Fortunately, the Footballguys staff has experience in this format and will help you. Over the summer, we'll cover various topics ranging from basic to advanced strategies.

What tools helped you when you were starting out with salary cap leagues?

Drew Davenport

Having average salary cap values from a source you trust is important. You don't need to follow these rigidly or it will handcuff you in the draft. Think of these average values as more of a preparatory tool. The numbers from a good value sheet will give you the starting point from which you can build out your strategy. Each individual salary cap draft will have its own tendencies and price fluctuations, but knowing average values ahead of time will tell you if what is happening in the draft room is out of line with expected outcomes.

Jason Wood

While you must be flexible in a salary cap, you must also have a baseline of salary cap values you trust. That serves as your skeletal system. It's much easier to adjust an existing set of values (to deal with inflation or deflation in the live salary cap) than it is to just bid on feel as you might be able to in a redraft league.

These days there are great calculators (like our Draft Dominator) that dynamically adjust salary cap values in real-time to match what's happening in the room. But be mindful of how quickly a real salary cap can go and first-timers may find it difficult to both update salary cap values in their app while also strategizing their own roster plans.

The best data to have is prior salary cap values in your specific league. While no two salary caps drafts are similar, individual managers do have tendencies. Some tend to avoid paying for elite-tier players and build their roster with a bunch of middle-tier players. Others like to push aggressively and pay at the top, having confidence they can find bargains for $1 or $2 late in the draft. Some may like to pay for a specific position or avoid paying high marks for other positions. If you have the data from prior salary cap drafts, you should be able to parse out patterns and help codify your go-to-market plan.

Jeff Haseley

If you can view previous drafts from the same league it will give you an indication of how much each player or each level of player from various positions and rankings is going for. From there, you can begin to surmise specific cost patterns and see who is a value based on cost and average ADP from traditional drafts. For example, if there is a player who has an ADP of mid-second round pick, and you're finding a dip in dollar value, compare to others in that grouping, that may be a player you want to target.

If you cannot view previous results from your league or a similar league be sure to have data that shows the average value of each player by position.

Ryan Weisse

When I got started, simply using a spreadsheet was one of my best tools. I went in with each position in one column, how much I planned to spend in the next column, and finally, a third column that showed how much I overspent or saved. Having this very simple math easily accessible let me adapt my strategy quickly as the draft moved along. If I saved a lot of salary on my RB1, I knew I could overpay to get an elite TE1.

There are far more advanced tools these days, like the Footballguys Draft Dominator, and the more you put into it, the more you'll get out of it. Failing to prepare is preparing to fail.

Jeff Bell

A customizable value sheet based on league settings. This allows you to develop ranges of player values while presenting a guideline. If drafting through an app, it will likely have preset suggested values. This allows you to develop mispriced players.

Chad Parsons

The Draft Dominator is a tremendous tool for tracking and managing an auction in progress. When I first started, finding some example auction values online and creating an Excel sheet that totals the salary cap was a big benefit. Knowing how spending big at each position will impact the overall team and adjusting during the auction, will put you ahead of the average auction leaguemate.