Mastering Salary Cap Drafts: Part 1, Beginner Mistakes

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Note: This series is designed to take salary cap drafters of any ability and refine their skills to those of seasoned veterans. The articles will go from simple concepts to the most advanced salary cap draft theories. Each article is designed to build on the previous articles in the series. For best results, read each article before proceeding to the concepts in the next article.

So your league has decided to give salary cap drafting a try. It may seem daunting at first, and it is natural to have some anxiety about it, but being aware of some beginner tendencies can put you ahead of a good portion of your league before you get there. Drafting in salary cap format is at once both exciting and stressful. It requires a level of attention that serpentine drafting does not, and there is a lot of emotion involved as well. Controlling that emotion with preparation and sound strategy is how you win your salary cap draft. Here are some common issues beginners face and how to handle them.

Beginner Mistake #1 – Poor Budget Management

The first thing to know is that you can't show up to a salary cap draft with a few pieces of paper and a pen. There are so many variables to keep track of that you need to have a computer program to help you keep everything straight as the draft happens. At a minimum, you should be keeping track of your own cap down to the exact dollar. Estimations are ok in the beginning, but past the halfway point of your draft, you should know exactly what you can spend with every player you roster. In reality, that's just the bare minimum to be a competent drafter, but if you want to become top-tier at this format, you should be keeping track of everyone's available cap. Get the Draft Dominator from Footballguys to help you, as it is the best tool out there for salary cap drafts. But if not, at least create a spreadsheet on your own because your upside in a salary cap draft has a ceiling if you don't know what every team has available to spend at every point in the draft.

Those who fail to keep track of their cap, and that of their opponent, will fall prey to a couple of simple mistakes. They'll either take themselves out of the draft too fast, or they won't spend their money when they should. The difficult thing for salary cap drafters is finding that balance. Early in a draft, the top players will be flying off the board, and managers new to the format can get carried away with spending too fast. Conversely, some managers will be intimidated by the moment and won't end up with any elite players.

To control spending early in a draft, you need to have a plan ahead of time. Figure out what you want to spend on your top targets and what their approximate prices might be. Once you get in the draft, you may have to adjust those numbers a little bit, but if you try to roughly follow what you budgeted ahead of time, it will prevent you from going overboard when the excitement is heightened at the beginning of the draft. For example, if you budget $50 for a top running back but they are going for $55+ early in the draft, you know that you have to spend a few extra bucks or pivot to a backup plan. Having gone through that process and preparation ahead of time helps to calm you down and guide you as money is flying around the room.

Some drafters have another kind of problem when the bids start flowing - they get nervous and have trouble spending money. So, if that's you, when the bidding gets high, you should think of it like this: Would you leave a snake draft and not have a first or second-round pick? Of course not. But that's what happens when you don't land any elite players near the beginning of a salary cap draft. So make sure you land a few top guys but stick with your pre-draft budget, and you'll keep your spending under control to keep you in the draft as it moves forward.

The most important thing to remember is that you'll rarely regret spending a few extra dollars on the top players, but you'll regret leaving money on the table. Leaving even $4-$8 of unspent money means you could've drastically upgraded one of your starters by using that money. You must spend all your money yet do it while keeping flexibility. This series should help you walk that fine line.

Beginner Mistake #2 – Lack of Preparation

Doing a salary cap draft requires an altogether different level of preparation than a conventional draft. Printing out a cheat sheet or looking at some rankings on a phone may be an easy and even somewhat reasonable way to pick players in a serpentine, but that is not the case in a salary cap draft if you want to succeed. This type of draft forces you to form an opinion on every single player that will be available during the draft. That's because you don't know when players will be nominated, and you won't have a long period of time to ponder your next move like you can in a serpentine draft. When a player is nominated, it can often be when you aren't expecting it, and you must be able to react. If Tyler Lockett is nominated, you have to not only know what you think about Lockett at a moment's notice, but you also have to know what you think about Lockett in comparison to the players around him with similar value. This tells you whether or not you should be bidding or letting someone else have him. If you aren't prepared with an opinion on every player in the draft pool, then your results will reflect that.