With both fantasy football and its professional counterpart kicking off this September, a great deal of attention will be on drafted players. In the real NFL, fans will finally get their chance to see whether the players their team selected this past April turn into star-caliber performers or plain old lumps of coal. Fantasy football players will be knocking their drafts out, hoping to assemble a roster capable of winning money and pride.

Some Players Offer Excellent ROI, Others May Not

In both situations, the goal is to find the best players, while also getting the best bang for your buck. The Seattle Seahawks are the perfect team to emulate in that regard. Their starting quarterback, Russell Wilson, was drafted in the third round and was the sixth passer off the board. Wilson has developed into one of the best quarterbacks in the game today and the Seahawks picked him up for a relative pittance compared to where players of his caliber are usually selected. They’ve also nabbed other players late, such as cornerback Richard Sherman (4th round) and safety Kam Chancellor (5th round), both of whom are now among the very best as their respective positions.

Contrast that with the Dallas Cowboys, who have made some solid picks in recent history without getting the same value. There’s no question that the Cowboys’ starting center, Travis Frederick, is among the three best centers in the game, if not the best. However, Dallas selected him late in the first round on the 2012 draft, almost a full round ahead of where he was expected to go.

The FOMO Is Real

While the pick certainly worked out, they may have missed out on a chance to get another high-caliber player at that spot, while still picking up Frederick later in the draft. It was a great choice, but a poor use of available resources, and draft picks are among the most precious resources an NFL team is given. The Cowboys’ selection this past April of Ezekiel Elliott with the fourth-overall pick may fall into the same trap. Elliott looks like a fine player, but he’s a running back, a position that can filled cheaply in the modern NFL. For the Cowboys to get proper return on that selection, Elliott will have to have a hall-of-fame career.

Fantasy football follows the same principles. Managers need to find the best players at the best prices. Getting the best quarterback in the league might not be the best plan if there will be a second-tier option available for a fifth-tier price later in the draft. Indeed, managers can also fall into the trap of reaching for one of those “sleeper” picks, which essentially makes the pick no longer a sleeper.

When Buying Promos, Weigh Price Vs. Quality

These are all basic principles of the business world as well. Every company’s goal is to make or obtain the best possible product or service at the best possible price point. A great idea can turn into a negative pretty quickly if there’s no basis of value behind it. That’s not to say that the ideal goal is to be a cheap as possible. There’s a tightrope to walk between having a good product at a bad price and having a bad product at a good price.

An NFL team that doesn’t find the balance between production and value won’t make the playoffs; a fantasy team without that balance will be the laughingstock of its league; and a business without that balance could very well lead to an empty bank account.