This monstrous 16-team league auction took place nine days ago. It's standard scoring, non-PPR and has three IDPs (1 DL, 1 LB, 1 DB). It's only a $20 buy-in, so more important than winning the league is not losing the sidebet - buying steaks for the teams that finish ahead of you in total points. I'm proud to say in 13 years of doing this league, I've had the indignity of buying my own steak once, and the sorry fate of being a "double" buyer once. The other 11 years, I ate and drank for free, mercilessly running up the tab on whatever poor saps happened to lose out in total points.

So the strategy here is to play it conservatively, especially given how deep the league is, how few bench spots we have (six is not a lot when you have three extra IDP slots to worry about) and how the downside (spending $300-plus on dinner and seeing people purposely run up the bill on you) is greater than the upside. Moreover, the league is split into two divisions each of which has its own steak bet, and the LA division, of which I'm a part, has only five teams in on the bet. Essentially you have a 1 in 5 chance of being a double-buyer and 2 in 5 chance of being a single-buyer (pays for himself and one other) or worse. When winning pays about $280 on a 15:1 long shot, but losing costs $300 at 4:1 and at least $200 at 3:2, you play not to lose.

That means you direct most of your $200 budget toward receivers and largely look for values. For that most part that's what I did. Here's the squad:

Josh Gordon was probably not a great buy in this format - hard to stash, replacement value is low and as I said, it's more important not to lose than it is to win, but I couldn't help myself. While there's a lot of talk about Shawn Siegele Zero RB Strategy, I think you can get most of its benefits, but less of its downside by essentially employing a one-RB strategy, i.e., draft one early-round back and then mix, match and wait for injuries in the second slot. That's what I did here with C.J. Spiller, whom I trust perhaps more than most do - and then a stable of part timers/back-ups.

The issue with zero RB is while your team will likely get better as injuries happen, and you have a lot of the backups, you're out of luck if most of the carnage happens midseason, rather than early on. Moreover, in a short-bench/deep format, it's particularly ill-suited. But so is trying to be strong at every position in a 16-team league, so I chose to be especially strong at WR, went 1-RB and got unquestioned, reasonably productive starters at TE/QB. I also spent more than most on IDPs, but in truth the $4 Weddle bid was an accident - I meant to go $3 (arguably ill-advised anyway), but when I hit "+1" someone had just upped to three a split second before me.

In any event, I like my chances to eat for free again, knock on wood. When my time comes - and at some point it surely will - it will get sadistic (I'm the one who orders the full shrimp scampi entree as an appetizer, in addition to other regular appetizers).

Here's a table with the full results: