Todd Gurley? Ezekiel Elliott? Heck, why not both? I’ve got my first team for the 2018 season, and I ended up with both of the top 2 players on my board.
That’s the beauty of an auction. Everyone has a chance to get whomever they want. The bidding was a little flat early in this one, and I ended up with an unusual one-two punch of running backs, even though neither was a guy I was thinking too much about.
It was a league with a $200 cap. With both guys, I made the bids thinking I was only driving the price higher. But it stalled and the course of my franchise was set.
This is a best-ball league. Standard scoring. No roster moves. Each week you are credited with your highest-scoring Start three wide receivers. Each team picks 22 guys.
RUNNING BACK: $50 Todd Gurley, $48 Ezekiel Elliott, $3 Austin Ekeler, $1 John Kelly, $1 Rod Smith. I have been in many auctions, particularly online, where people aren’t ready to bid. I’ve done it myself. You’re thinking you’ll be holding back and saving your money, yet nobody is spending early. What do you do? For me, if guys aren’t spending then you buy. Or at least bid. I had Gurley listed at $71, so I didn’t think I was getting him when I bid $50. And is was similar with Elliott. He’s really good, and I didn’t want to see him go for $47. Once those guys are in the fold, it changes things. I’m not going to be able to buy some of my personnel favorites at the position. I can’t afford to bid on guys like Alex Collins and Dion Lewis. So I went with just the $1 insurance policies behind the two big stars, figuring they’ll be serviceable (hopefully) if I need to plug them them in for a week. I tried to sign Matt Breida for $2, but that didn’t fly. Ended up with a running back from only one other team – Ekeler.
QUARTERBACK: $9 Alex Smith, $8 Andrew Luck, $5 Andy Dalton. When I bid $8 on Luck, it wasn’t with the expectation of signing him. I thought he was going higher. So that was probably a mistake. He’s fine, but he’s a luxury pick, and I was tight on money because of Gurley-Elliott. And by signing Luck, it kind of forced me (I think) to sign three QBs. I would have preferred just two. Smith and Dalton are fine enough buys. I spent $14 on them, and I think they’re worth a combined $24. But all of the quarterback prices were low. Everybody got good deals. So I didn’t “win” at this position.
WIDE RECEIVER: $23 JuJu Smith-Schuster, $12 Marvin Jones, $7 Nelson Agholor, $5 Tyler Lockett, $5 Jamison Crowder, $5 Ted Ginn, $1 Malcolm Mitchell. You need to start three at this position each week, so this position was the primary concern after signing Gurley-Elliott. It’s not enough to have three or even four good receivers. Guys have byes and get hurt and have off games. You need depth. I think JuJu will be a top-10 receiver, and that was a solid enough buy. The best values were the next three – Jones, Agholor and Lockett. I think all three have a god chance to outperform their contract. But more depth needed, so I also signed Crowder and Ginn, whom I think are worth about $7 each. Hopefully that will do it. Mitchell was my pocket pick at the end. He did some things as a rookie that I really liked. He was hurt last year, but I could see him coming back and being a big part of New England’s offense. I like him more than Jordan Matthews and Phillip Dorsett. On my board, I’ve got him as their No. 3, behind Julian Edelman and Chris Hogan. Edelman is coming off a serious knee injury.
TIGHT END: $7 Jack Doyle, $1 Hayden Hurst, $1 Mark Andrews. With money being tight, I couldn’t afford to bid on any of the top half-dozen tight ends. Some of the prospect-type guys I was hoping for went for a lot more than I expected – like Trey Burton. Eventually ended up buying about the last of the viable tight ends, overpaying by a dollar for Doyle. I figured I’d combo him with Eric Ebron, adding him for $2, but somebody else was a fan of Ebron, blowing that up. So the Hail Mary play at the end was to spend $1 on each of Baltimore’s rookie tight ends. I figure there’s a decent chance one of those guys catches 70 passes, but I’m not sure which one. Unfortunately, that blows another roster spot (I wanted to carry just two tight ends).
KICKER: $4 Stephen Gostkowski, $1 Josh Lambo. I actually bought Gostkowski before Elliott. If I had known I would have $98 tied up in two players, I wouldn’t have spent more than $1 on a kicker.
DEFENSE: $1 Green Bay, $1 Buffalo. Given the direction of the auction, I didn’t feel I could afford to spend more than $1 on a defense. I wasn’t in the market for the handful of better options.
Overall, I felt like it was a below-average auction for me. I have the two big stars, but I felt like I was playing uphill for the entire auction. And it doesn’t feel like a roster that will win a championship. I need to do a better job, I guess, of being willing to let other owners get some good buys, particularly early in the auction.
—Ian Allan