What You Must Take to Your Salary Cap Draft

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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 do you bring into a salary cap room? Average Salary cap Values? Rankings that are broken down into tiers? A laptop or phone loaded with the Draft Dominator? Nothing? What things do you feel like you need in front of you to do a good job in a salary cap?

Drew Davenport

I think the longer you do salary cap drafts, the fewer materials you need to bring into a draft room. But when you're just starting out there are two things you must have.

The first of these is a system of record-keeping. You can't be successful at salary cap drafts unless you keep track of your cap and the cap of all other teams as the draft is happening. The Draft Dominator is an excellent tool for this, but if you don't use the Dominator, get some kind of program that allows you to enter the dollars paid for players as they are rostered during the draft.

The second thing you must have is different sheets of paper with different possible roster combinations based on your spending limits. Allocate your $200 on your proposed roster sheets based on how you want to approach the draft. Do you want to be heavy on running backs? Do you want to pay for a top quarterback? For example, if you want to roster Travis Kelce then you should have a roster sheet allowing for you to spend a certain number of dollars on your top tight end. This will dramatically affect what you can spend in different areas of your roster. You should know what that looks like before you try it. i.e. If I spend $38 on Kelce what can I spend on my top running back? Where do I have to pull money from to accomplish that goal? Or if you want to draft Jonathan Taylor then you should have a sheet that allocates $65-$70 for your RB1, and then adjusts the rest of the positions accordingly. Having several sheets with different salary combinations for your different strategies allows you to see what develops early in the draft and then select the sheet that best fits what you can do in that particular room.

Jason Wood

I always try to set salary cap values that I think are reasonable. There are a lot of apps to help do that for you, but I do it by hand taking my own projections, and then the number of players at each position I expect will be drafted. I use X-values (value over replacement) to determine salary-cap values.

In today's day and age, I cannot fathom showing up to a salary cap draft with just your wits and a sheet of paper to write down the choices. It would be like showing up to an Old West gunfight with a butter knife. Have your values, preferably loaded into a draft app that can track the league progress and help you identify price inflation/deflation, as well as where the tiers are so you can be sure not to suffer an unintended drop-off.

Jeff Haseley

I will always draft using my laptop. It has access to the data that I need including average salary cap values, rankings that fit my scoring format, as well as a source for player news, depth charts, previous results from other leagues, etc. Depending on what site I am using for the salary cap draft I may already have access to the amount spent, the amount remaining, and rosters for each team. It's always good to keep track of your spending, but also every other team's spending. This can come in handy later to give you an idea of what is needed on your end to secure the player(s) you want without overspending. Knowing that other teams are strapped for cash and still need several players to fill out their roster is an advantage in your favor.

Ryan Weisse

You want as much data as you can handle. As Jason said, the draft room will move quicker than you expect, so there is no need to add to your stress level. If I can have my laptop, I only need three things up: my budget/roster spreadsheet, a set of draft rankings specific to league scoring, and the draft itself, assuming it's an online draft. If for some reason, you cannot have your laptop or phone, you can track your budget by hand. Just make sure you have a list of the players, and you can break them down into tiers.

Jeff Bell

You will never go wrong with the Footballguys Draft Dominator. Beyond that, tiers are a must in a salary situation. Stacking value within tiers is where true strong rosters lie.

Chad Parsons

My preference is to do it old school with an Excel sheet with my preferred budgeting by position and each roster spot in one column and another column for the actual prices of the players I acquire. Having a plan and paying attention to the trends created by every player taken off the board are the keys to success. It sounds simple, but staying focused through 50, 100, and 150+ players bid upon takes far more concerted effort than a traditional drafting format.