Auction Draft Cheatsheet & Dashboard

Base value is a blend of five sources for QB/RB/WR/TE/K, weighted toward the live/real-money ones since those reflect actual dollars changing hands in ongoing 2026 drafts right now, not preseason opinion:

• Yahoo live market data (25% weight) — actual average price paid across live 2026 Yahoo auction drafts happening now.
• ESPN live draft trends (25% weight) — actual average salary from ongoing ESPN salary-cap drafts, refreshed within the last 7 days.
• Draft Sharks Market Value (20% weight) — Draft Sharks' crowdsourced live-auction market price.
• ESPN 2026 PPR Top-300 static kit (15% weight) — the preseason cheat sheet, kept in the mix mostly for the ~150 deeper players the live feeds don't cover yet.
• Draft Sharks Auction Value (15% weight) — Draft Sharks' own projection-driven auction model, as a fifth cross-check.

These five are blended into one raw market score (renormalized per-player when a source doesn't cover that player), then re-derived for your league's actual format:

• QB ordering now reflects the full blend (e.g. Lamar Jackson currently outpricing Jayden Daniels across the live/market sources despite tying on the static sheet), then repriced for Superflex on top: last year's lesson was being too passive on QB, so QB1 lands ≈ $60–65 (competitive with the top RB/WR), staying rich through the top 5–6 before tapering. Note Draft Sharks' own QB dollar figures already run high ($41–46 for QB1, well above the ~$22–31 single-QB Yahoo/ESPN numbers) — likely because Draft Sharks itself leans Superflex-aware. That's fine here: QB dollar magnitude always comes from the rank-based Superflex curve, not raw blended dollars, so folding Draft Sharks in only ever reorders QBs, it never double-stacks inflation. The Bid Assistant widens its comfort band specifically for top-6 QBs, so a bid running up to ~35% over the sheet number still reads "fair" instead of triggering caution.
• RB/WR/TE/K values are the blended scores rescaled so the whole player pool balances against your $2,000 league-wide budget once QB, IDP, and DST dollars are carved out.
• DL/LB/CB have no public auction-dollar market anywhere (confirmed against 6+ IDP ranking sites, and Draft Sharks' board doesn't carry IDP either) — these are built from IDP consensus ranks (SI/OnSI, FantasyPros IDP tiers), given a combined ~15% budget share split by depth/scarcity, and distributed by rank with a decay curve.
• DST uses ESPN's real live average salary directly for the ~18 defenses with live pricing (e.g. Texans/Rams ~$4, Broncos ~$3) — actual data beats a model whenever it's available (Draft Sharks doesn't price team defenses). Deeper defenses without live pricing yet fall back to a $1 floor.

Hover any "Base $" cell (or check the Bid Assistant panel once a player is selected) to see exactly which live/market numbers fed that player's value.

Personal spend caps (My Strategy panel): this league has historically overbid IDP/DST, so DL/LB/CB/DST each default to a hard $3 personal ceiling — the Bid Assistant will flag PASS the moment a bid would cross that number for your team, regardless of what the computed market value says. The underlying base $ values for those positions are left alone (they still reflect a "fair value" read, useful for judging whether the *rest* of the room is overpaying), this is purely a personal bidding-discipline override. Edit or remove the caps any time.

FF Rank column: positional ranks from The Fantasy Footballers' 2026 Draft Rankings (Andy/Jason/Mike/Clips consensus) are shown alongside for QB/RB/WR/TE as an independent cross-check — these ranks don't feed into the $ value math at all, they're purely a second opinion to sanity-check against. When it and our $ model disagree by 8+ spots within a position, you'll see a ▲/▼ badge: an up-arrow (green) means the Fantasy Footballers rank the player notably better than our value model does (possible buy-low), a down-arrow (orange) means the opposite (possible overvalued by our model). ~60 deep bench/waiver players that only appeared in the Fantasy Footballers list (not ESPN's top 300) were added to the pool at a flat $1 floor value.

Live inflation recalculates as picks are logged: multiplier = (money left in the league − $1×slots left) / (base value left in the pool − $1×slots left). If teams are overspending vs. the sheet, the multiplier rises above 1.0 and every remaining player's target price is bumped up accordingly (and vice versa). This is the standard auction-inflation formula used by most auction tools.

Treat base $ values as a reasonable starting anchor, not gospel — real rooms deviate. The live inflation adjustment and your personal caps are what keep recommendations honest as your specific draft unfolds.

Cloud sync: every logged pick, undo, or cap change is automatically saved to a free Firebase database in the background (see the status line under Log Pick / Export). If the page crashes or you reload, it reloads your draft-in-progress automatically instead of starting blank. Export/Import JSON still work exactly as before as a manual backup/portability option.