Hi all,
I am starting up an auction dynasty in the next few weeks and am struggling with something in the by-laws. My plan is to allow keepers for up to 3 years with a 10% bump each year. However, what I am struggling with is ensuring that the "weakest" teams get an opportunity to get the help they need. Obviously, with the year over year auction, they won't get the top pick. How do your leagues account for that? Have you heard anything where additional auction dollars are awarded based on winning a consolation tournament in order to help those teams on the bottom?
Thanks for any input.
My main league has struggled with this idea for years.
One thing to note is that a salary element will automatically create more roster turn over than you think it will (provided you can release players who are under contract) simply because a players current value will always fluctuate relative to his previous year's value. Example, Melvin Gordon isn't going to cost in 2016 what he cost as a rookie when people thought he might be the next big thing. He got cut when it became clear to his owner that he wasn't worth that much money to sit on his bench or be a bye week fill-in. So there absolutely can be "from worst to first" turn arounds each year because the top talent (and thus most expensive talent) tends to go back into the free agent pool each year.
The key is striking a balance between allowing owners to keep their discoveries while also making them a pay enough to do so that can't sit on someone for years and it not hurt a little to do so.
We adopted a stair step approach for salary increases and also adopted a cap hit plan which tends to pressure teams to not keep players as long. I'd say that roughly one-third to one-half of the highest paid and highest performing players at each position are available each year in our auction because they tend to cost enough that owners only sign them to 1 or 2 year deals (if they were expensive) or they are young players coming to end of their initial contracts.
You can sign a player for up to 5 years with the year 2 salary being the year 1 salary + 5%, year 3 costing year 2 + 10%, year 4 costing year 3 + 15% and year 5 costing year 4 + 20%. It's basically compound interest. But when you cut a player, the salary increases over and above the original purchase price count against your cap as dead money.
With the salary increases and cap hits, if you sign a player to 5 years and then cut him a year or two later, you are looking at a cap hit that is roughly 60% of what the original purchase price was. So that tends to cause owners to hedge their bets and sign players to shorter term deals which tends to keep plenty of proven and speculative talent rolling back through the annual auction each year. This is what helps the worst to first hopefuls...that churning and turn over in rosters.
We also set a minimum contract price per player position if you want to sign a player to a 4 or 5 year deal. This keeps someone from snagging a guy at the end of the auction for nothing and locking him up for 5 years. An example is that you must bid $20 or more on a RB or you are capped at a 3 year deal. At $20, the cap hit on a 5 year deal is more than $11. Considering you can buy a good DE or LB for that same $10, you tend to be careful about locking guys up for 5 years unless you are confident they are going to pan out. That forces an owner who really believes in a prospect to pay a bit for that privilege. No taking a late auction flier for $1 and crowing over your draft prowess for the next 5 years when it was really just a matter of you having that extra dollar or roster spot at the end of the night. You kinda have to call your shot a little bit with this minimum price limit in place.
One option to further aid the weaker teams would be to let the auction call-out order matter. You could use a reverse-finish order for calling out players for bid. Last place team calls out the first player for bid and so on. But then you let the calling out owner silently watch the bidding and either match the highest bid or waive the player to the high bidder. That keeps the calling out owner from having to bid, so he doesn't show his hand to other owners. And the other bidding owners, whether they intend to win the player or just want to run the price up, must gamble on what the silent owner is thinking. That tends to add some value to the order of call out which can then be set up for the benefit of the weaker teams.
I love this type of format because it keeps an element of dynasty to it but also allows for the worst to first turn around that a redraft format allows. If you are bold and good at talent evaluation, you can still use that skill. But you can also fix mistakes in a season or so rather than digging yourself a 5 year rebuild hole.
