Auction aggravation

A surprisingly intense RB feeding frenzy threw our intrepid bidder for a loop

By MICHAEL LEV, Senior editor
As published in print Sept. 8

Terrell Davis

At one point, I just threw my hands up in disgust. The auction was winning, and I was losing.

In the days leading up to it, I was rather excited. I was coming off a playoff berth in 1997 —my first postseason appearance in the Toolbox League of Kankakee, Ill. — and I was planning to use the same strategy that had worked so well for me the previous year: Buy one top-of-the-heap, superstar running back and build a team around him.

Last season I rode Bronco RB Terrell Davis into the playoffs. This year I focused in on four backs I considered superstars, according to the Toolbox League scoring system (10 points for 100-yard rushing or receiving games and 300-yard passing games; six points for TD’s scored; three points for TD passes). Those four were Davis, Barry Sanders, Jerome Bettis and Corey Dillon.

After spending $110 of my $260 budget on Davis last season (we’re talking Monopoly money here, by the way), and taking inflation into account, I determined the following maximum bids: $115 for Davis or Sanders; $100 for Bettis; and $95 for Dillon.

Then it all blew up in my face.

Perhaps taking Pro Football Weekly’s pro-RB mantra to heart, my fellow league members spent wildly for running backs. It was a bigger feeding frenzy than your average Gilbert Brown trip to the Burger King drive-thru.

I had the monetary maximums just about pegged, but the "just about" part just about killed me.

My bid went as high as $115 for Sanders — and someone else bid $116. Ditto for Davis. Bettis went for $106. Dillon went for $95 — $1 more than my bid of $94.

But wait. It gets worse.

Curtis Martin went for the same amount as Bettis, and Eddie George went for the same amount as Dillon. Dorsey Levens went for $90. And get this: QB’s Brett Favre and Kordell Stewart — universally considered half of this season’s Fab Four, along with Davis and Sanders — went for half as much as the top two backs. Half as much.

In past years, I had been able to offer quarterbacks up for bid and giddily watch my peers spend anywhere from $60 to $80 on the top five or six guys. The more money they spent on quarterbacks, the better my chances to acquire a top-flight running back.

It didn’t work out that way this year, in part because each team starts just one quarterback. In my mind, there were 11 high-quality QB’s available. This is an 11-team league. You do the math.

Feel free to call me scared, or even stupid, but I decided, in mid-auction, that the premier running backs weren’t worth the prices people were paying for them. I had set my limits, and I was stubbornly sticking to them.

It isn’t uncommon to change one’s strategy during a round-by-round draft, and it’s practically a necessity to do so in an auction (at least based on my experiences). Once I threw my hands up in concession and accepted my fate, I was prepared to move on.

Knowing I’d have more cash available than anticipated, I could at least put together a starting lineup without any holes. And I feel as though I emerged with a pretty good squad. My starting lineup, with accompanying prices, is as follows: QB Jeff George ($25), RB’s Napoleon Kaufman ($77) and Jamal Anderson ($33), WR’s Jimmy Smith ($41) and Michael Irvin ($20), TE Mark Chmura ($20), PK John Carney ($1) and the Kansas City defense/special teams ($2).

Now, if I had known John Elway would go for $13 and Warren Moon for $8, I never would have spent $25 on a quarterback. But I like George a lot, and I had to spend my money on something.

The same logic applied to my purchases of Smith for $41 and Chmura for $20. Yeah, I may have spent too much, but I consider both players top-10 guys (Chmura is top-six) at their respective positions, according to the Toolbox scoring system. And, again, I had money to burn.

Am I disappointed that I didn’t land a top-four running back? Sure. If I had to do it all over again, would I have spent a couple of more dollars to secure one? Probably.

But hindsight is 20-20. As the RB prices were soaring toward the heavens, everything was a blur.

Click here to return to our main site ProFootballWeekly.com

© 1998-2001 by Pro Football Weekly, a Primedia publication. All rights reserved. Reproduction without permission is prohibited.