Salary Cap Draft Mastery: Part 7, Inflection Points

Photo: USA Today Sports

By now, if you've made it this far, you've read about all the different parts of a salary cap draft:

Part 1, Basic Concepts
Part 2, Building Your Skill Set
Part 3, Preparation
Part 4, Nomination Strategies
Part 5, Bidding Strategies
Part 6, Reading Your League

However, the skills you've learned don't have the maximum impact until you use them correctly during your unique salary cap draft. Spotting those moments is the final move you have to learn to unlock your full potential in a salary cap draft. Those moments are called inflection points. While technically a math term, in common parlance, an inflection point is a time of change in a particular situation or, more succinctly, a turning point. Your salary cap draft will contain several mini-drafts separated by shifts or inflection points that tell you it's time to shift your strategy or take advantage of an opportunity.

Inflection points occur multiple times in each salary cap draft, and the resulting conditions can last for different lengths of time. Remember, inflection points are when things start to change. Your job is to take advantage of the resulting conditions after the shift. Paying attention to when they hit will give you opportunities others may not see because they aren't watching for the changes. Remember that you may not always be able to capitalize on these inflection points, but if you are watching for them, you are more likely to be ready to take advantage. You will struggle if you are constantly behind when those shifts occur.

Not all inflection points fit neatly into these boxes, but in general, here are the six major ones you're likely to see in every salary cap draft.

#1 – Settling Into Your Salary Cap Draft

The first portion of a salary cap draft is the easiest to deal with. When the draft begins, there will be a period right at the beginning when people are still getting settled. They will be thinking big picture about the draft, organizing their papers or computer programs in front of them, and getting ready to battle. With the whole player pool spread out before them and their full $200 left, there will likely be a subconscious mental barrier to spending top dollars on the first couple of nominated players. After all, why worry about Ja'Marr Chase when you want five other receivers just as much? But this often means the early nominations will go below market value. This is purely a human psychology play, but it's common. Some rooms don't have much of a settling-in period, but others can see it last as much as a round or more.

What You Can Do – It may feel counterintuitive to be too active early in a salary cap draft because you don't want to spend your cap too quickly. But if the room is cold and players continue to go below market value, you must trust the process. That means that prices will be too high later in the draft, and you'll be able to watch as people wake up to this fact and begin to overspend as tiers dry up. So, jump in and land a few players as long as these conditions persist.

Don't forget that this can also recur during a salary cap draft if there is an extended break at some point. Just before going on a long break, or just after a food break where you have been paused for a while, can replicate the behavior you saw from other managers at the beginning of the draft.

#2 – Fast Spending, Top Talent

You'll notice the next inflection point when the first couple of players go for market or above-market value. If you see Tyreek Hill go for $55 and then A.J. Brown goes for $47, you can conclude that this part of the draft has officially arrived. People will get excited and anxious to land top players, and for the most part, they'll hammer the top of the positional groups with their nominations. This portion of the draft is at least three to four rounds long, and while some lower-ranked players will be nominated here and there, generally, it will be elite talent only.

What You Can Do – You don't have much control over the runaway spending at this point. Managers want to get their top guys, and they have trouble remembering that this isn't a serpentine draft where they aren't required to nominate the elite players. However, now is the time for you to start defining your own draft, as discussed in Part IV. At this point, you'll see the market getting set for the top guys and know if you will be competing for them. You should be landing the players that allow you to eliminate all but one of your par sheets so you can focus on one strategy. Remember that if the spending is wild, you should force yourself to relax and wait. The draft will come back to you for deals later when the money is thinning out. One major caveat to this idea, though: you can't completely pass on all the players during this period. If you do, you won't have any elite impact players. If the prices are too hot, you'll have to overpay for one or two guys to ensure you have your cornerstones and then go back to waiting. Patience and surgical strikes are the name of the game during this part of the salary cap draft.

Because you're setting up your whole salary cap draft during this phase, it is hard to overstate how critical the first quarter of the draft is. It is where you decide on a strategy and watch everything flow from the decisions made during that crazy first run of players. The purse strings are loose, the talent is elite, and the bidding is usually wild, but you must control the moment to set up the rest of your draft.

#3 – Scarcity Creeps into the Salary Cap Draft

At this juncture, plenty of players are left, but two major things have changed: a substantial amount of money is subtracted from the room, and tiers begin to show scarcity. Managers have secured several players, and plenty of elite talent has already been rostered. This is not to be confused with a lack of total available players. This might be one of the longest stages in the draft. Some teams have already taken themselves out of the running for big players, but others have quietly spent almost no money. As a result, prices will become the least predictable they will be for the rest of the draft. There will be big spikes as managers panic and try to secure the final guys in their respective tiers, or there will be huge discounts as managers have their eye on players they want to the exclusion of others.

What You Can Do – First, don't be one of the ones panicking, but do find some urgency to land more of your team's core. The name of the game in this mini part of your salary cap draft is to hurry! Because you have read this series, you now know you cannot allow positional runs to dry things up before securing the players you need. So when you see the draft move to this point, speed is of the essence. You may feel you are spending more on a player than you wanted, but the alternative is to pay a lot more for someone later because they're the last good player remaining. You still have some freedom to maneuver here, but that freedom shrinks with every player rostered during this phase of the salary cap draft. The worst-case scenario is that you get bid up on someone and don't like the price, so you stop and think, “I'll get one of the couple of others who are left.” Someone else is likely thinking the same thing. If you don't buy that player now it will not just get worse for you in a minute, it will get much worse. The random spikes in pricing will be challenging, but it is what you have prepared for.

#4 – Max Bids in Play in a Salary Cap Draft

The next shift happens when you start to see the raw dollar prices drop regardless of what player is up for bid. Now, the game of a salary cap draft is truly afoot. Most teams have a maximum bid that is in play, and that limits their desire to spend on players they are not targeting. The elite talent is gone, as are most of the tiers directly below the top guys. At this stage, the buying power in the league becomes unequal. The playing field is slanted substantially with cap dollars, affecting who people nominate. As a result, your draft is affected by other people's decisions more than your own. Remember also that managers start to get hyper-focused at this stage on landing their favorite players. They'll be trying to land Khalil Shakir or Christian Watson, so they won't bid on otherwise productive players who are too cheap because they don't care. The fact that Keenan Allen is about to go for $9 isn't important to someone who wants to land Brian Thomas Jr. at all costs. Dropping $10 on Allen hurts their ability to land Thomas, so they'll sit there as good players sometimes inexplicably go way below their value.

What You Can Do – This is prime deal-getting territory. Since drafters are more carefully monitoring their cap and have several players on their team, you can start to think about which managers will want to bid, which won't, and what managers are trying to accomplish. This helps you start to be able to aim nominations at players you consider a threat and attempt to fill their rosters with players you don't want.

You should try to snap up the first couple of deals that work for your build so that you can control the end stage of the draft. Remember, you aren't falling in love with certain players; you're here to fill a few spots during this period (not a lot—a few!) with good players at rock-solid prices.

Stacking a few deals is the best way to assemble a dominant roster while remaining relevant through the draft. You still have to keep your roster flexible, but it is a mistake to pass on some of these deals by trying to save your money for someone better. You can't get those deals back when you pass on them! You must grab a few deals during this particular period, or your chances at a next-level roster are gone.

#5 – Low Caps – High Competition

There is a tendency to lump this particular phase of your salary cap draft with #6 below (Low Cap – Low Competition). But that is a mistake. After #4 is winding down you will see a lot of people with smaller amounts of money that seem too low to be much of a factor. Assuming this is dangerous. Even if a team has eight roster spots left and $31, you may not be aware of their intention to spend $24 (their max bid) on one final player. It is common to make the mistake of saying that this period is like the period of the draft at the end, where there are lower cap amounts, but almost nobody is capable of spending more than a few dollars on any one player. When you reach point #5, the competition for players will still be fierce, and teams will be trying desperately to finish strong. Raw dollars spent will become smaller, but each dollar will matter more and more.

What You Can Do – Hopefully, you have saved your least important nominations, like your kicker, defense, and backup tight end/quarterback for this phase. This is when they come in handy to effectively punt your nomination instead of having to call out someone you could get stuck with or someone you want to sit on for later in the draft. Now is when waiting is usually the optimal play. To do so, your nomination game takes on the most extreme importance. You must call players out that other managers will want to spend money on or fill a roster spot with. This is also one of the more critical moments for using your tells when a player is nominated. Pay attention to the teams that can compete with you in remaining cap dollars and analyze what they need. Your goal at this moment is to start to fill up your roster. You'll stall as long as you can by getting your kicker and your defense wrapped up, and then, hopefully, you will be in a position to nab the top available player(s) left before the next inflection point hits.

#6 – Endgame - Low Cap, Low Competition

The final shift in a salary cap draft happens when the draft turns into a modified serpentine draft. There will be several teams who can't bid more than $3-$5 for anyone, and some teams begin to grab their last players. This part of the draft is still important! You have gone from competing for players everyone wants to landing your favorite late-round targets. You will want to be on the lookout for players with big upside that have been ignored to this point because of some major flaws. They will be popular targets, but you have been cagey and saved enough to get them if you want them. For example, would you rather grab Jameson Williams or Khalil Shakir for $4 or Jakobi Meyers? Meyers may provide some sort of fantasy value, but he is an easy salary cap draft fade if players like Williams or Shakir are still on the board. If you have done your job to this point, you have plenty of wide receivers, and Meyers does nothing for your team. Williams or Shakir, on the other hand, can make your roster special if they hit. Taking a shot on that possibility, however small, over a veteran like Meyers is almost always a better play. This point in the draft is for long shots with upside and players people have forgotten about.

What You Can Do – The idea during the endgame is to have enough money to get the lottery tickets you want while also spending your money before a salary cap draft gets to the true $1 per player point. Aim to finish your draft before most of your leaguemates by fixating on a couple of players you have isolated for this stage in your pre-draft preparation. Is there someone suspended that can be a factor down the road? Hurt and out for a month? A backup you need for your top guy? No matter the case or reason, grab your guys and get out. Nothing is more frustrating than sitting there watching your favorite guys go because you spent your money too early. The endgame doesn't have the pressure of the previous stages because you should've already set yourself up to finish strong, and if you didn't, it's too late anyway. Paying attention to physical tells and nominations is still important, but the difficulty level is substantially lower as you finish the draft.

Series Conclusion

So there you have it. You've followed along with the Salary Cap Draft Mastery series as you learned the most basic concepts and the most advanced analysis on when your room is shifting during your salary cap draft. There is no substitute for experience when identifying the right moves to make in a salary cap draft room. Often people can forget that instincts are built through experience and preparation. You don't gain instinct by finishing your third salary cap draft. You need repetitions. And you must make those repetitions count by carefully studying these concepts, preparing for your drafts, and then observing and implementing everything you can every time you draft.

When all of the skills in this series are mastered, or at least thoroughly understood, then the instinct for crushing a salary cap draft becomes the drafter's best friend. You'll see the shifts as they happen, spot the tells on the fly, and instantly know which buttons to press, when to bid, and how to dominate your salary cap draft.

You'll likely never leave a salary cap draft in your fantasy career thinking that you had a perfect draft. There will always be a move you could've made that you failed to make. That is what makes this type of drafting so much fun and why it is so important to push every edge in the pursuit of Salary Cap Draft Perfection. Good luck and happy bidding!

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