Thank you for your patience,
@ultraviolet ! Drew Davenport got back with some answers:
The first rule of 14-teamers is that the increased dollars in the room don't get sprinkled down the player sheets like you'd think. Instead, the money gets squeezed to the top. So if you're thinking about a stars and scrubs build, try to keep it to the guys in the range of guys ranked 5th or so down to about 10th. That will allow you to get top-level players without paying the tax at the top.
The other thing to affect pricing here is the smaller starting lineup. You're only starting 8 guys, as opposed to the normal 9 or 10. This is also likely to make things tougher.
The flip side of this is that there is usually a point where prices fall off a cliff and you can snap up RB/WR3- and RB/WR4-types fairly cheaply. Take that into account when you're deciding what to spend on your 'stars'. You can easily put together some nice 'scrubs' by playing it smart near the end of the draft.
I don't usually advocate putting too much stock into scoring wrinkles like PPFD. It's extremely unpredictable when players will get first downs and building in a price bump for players 'good' at getting first downs is extremely fraught with problems. Just remember the better players on better offenses are largely going to be successful here just like they are in fantasy land. Tyrone Tracy may be a good player, but he'll take a backseat to a similar RB on a better offense. But again, I almost totally ignore this in my auctions. Lamar Jackson, Derrick Henry, even Kyren Willams, they'll all be successful in this scoring, but I wouldn't adjust my ranks more than a slot or two for guys that can be exceptionally strong in a particular role. Jordan Mason comes to mind, as does Tank Bigsby. They aren't pass-catchers as much for PPR value, but they will be asked to pound the ball and that is value-added.
There are some guys I'm watching in every salary cap draft this summer because of prices being so dependent on community opinion. Nobody likes David Montgomery right now. They don't care about Courtland Sutton either. They're boring. So people shrug and think "there are so many more fun players left to bid on." That's depressing prices on some guys I'm consistently ending up with because at this point in this summer these guys are being consistently pushed down from double-counting our feelings about these guys. But what you can do is grab 3 to 5 of these guys cheap and it leaves you money to still land 2 elite guys for market price. That is the backbone of a dynamite salary cap squad.
- David Montgomery - consistently around $15 or less, he has weekly Top 12 upside and a defined role
- James Conner - See Montgomery, David
Those two guys are easy targets in just about every auction I've done when I want to spend at WR.
A few more:
- Courtland Sutton - He's a little more expensive, but shouldn't cost more than about $20 or so. He's a dynamite WR3 with the right budget
- Dak Prescott - $5 or less - If he finishes the season he is usually a Top 8 guy. That's easy for 5 bucks or less
- Matthew Golden - $10 or less - I'm not a Golden guy. I'm not even saying they'll give him enough volume. But I'm trying to be in on one of the only healthy guys in this WR corps for single digits as a back of the roster guy I can stash.
- Calvin Ridley - $15 - He's rising in drafts lately, but not enough is being made of the dramatic improvement in QB play. Having him as a WR4 is cheating.
- Kyren Williams - $30 or less - I don't want to be in the business of having Williams for 36 bucks, but when the price dips I am snapping him up. He's an RB1 with an RB2 price and I've seen him go as low as $26 in some auctions.
If you got to the end of this list and thought to yourself, "meh, these guys are boring," let me say that this is the entire point. Everyone else thinks so too. That's why they're salary cap gold. You can have several of these 'boring' guys cheaply and still land 2 elite players with them. That's how I've built some of my best teams.
I hope this helped and good luck in your draft!
