Waiver Wire 101: Navigating The Waters of Fantasy Football
There’s an adage in the world of fantasy football that says you don’t win your league on draft day. For as much as cliché is frowned upon, that sentiment could not be more reflective of the truth. The team you start the season with will look very different than your roster in December.
The reality of playing fantasy football is that you have to keep up week in and week out. Players get hurt, teams underperform, and managers must do whatever they can to improve their team. The best and easiest way to do that is by utilizing something called the ‘waiver wire’ (or ‘waivers’), a cornerstone feature of fantasy that is the primary focus of this article.
Read on as we explain what the waiver wire is, why it’s essential to use, and give insightful tips for how to become a master of player management in no time.
Explaining The ‘Waiver Wire’ In Fantasy Football
What Is The ‘Waiver Wire’?
In a broad sense, the waiver wire is a catch-all term for the systematic process through which players are added or dropped from rosters. This includes free agents and the players who must be ”claimed” to be acquired.
For our purposes, we’ll be focusing strictly on that claims process. Here are the core basics:
Any player not chosen in a league’s draft is entered into a pool of free agency, much like in real-life sports. Managers sometimes have the opportunity to add/drop players freely after the draft, depending on league settings. However, these players are typically “locked” and are now subject to waivers.
Think of waivers as a silent auction. Each manager must place a bid to roster that player, known as a waiver claim. Anyone with a full roster will be prompted to drop a player to accommodate space, like with a normal add/drop. There’s generally a nominal waiting period for these claims to go through — usually only a day or two.
If you are the only manager to claim a particular player once that time has passed, you win the “auction” and are awarded said player. There are numerous tiebreakers in place for situations where multiple managers claim the same player, but we’ll delve into those details later. Probably better to have the basics down first anyway, right?
Not too much to handle. Fairly straightforward process we’re talking about here. If waivers feel confusing at first, don’t fret; it quickly becomes second nature.
Why Does The Waiver Wire Matter?
Simply, it’s the primary avenue to make your team better. Yes, you can also make trades, but the waiver wire is a simpler option and requires no interaction. It also gives you something to do with underperformers or injured guys. Not satisfied with someone on the roster? Go ahead, drop them and claim someone else. Easy!
Waivers also enable managers to employ a strategy known as ‘streaming.’ Because the fantasy output from positions like kicker or D/ST depends heavily upon their real-life opponent in a given week, streaming is an approach in which managers pick up and drop players at those positions in a rotating cycle, opting for the most advantageous matchup. It’s similar to the use of a “give a penny, take a penny” dish at a gas station. It’s pretty clever! And for all you math enthusiasts out there, most league hosts display helpful data, such as the percentage of leagues a player is rostered in across the platform, as well as recent trends in that roster share. It’s the closest thing to a real-time stock market as you can get within the world of fantasy. How confident is the public in X player? That feedback is all readily available.
How Does The Waiver Wire Work?
Going back to our silent auction analogy, a major bidding war occurs weekly among all league managers. The most common “waiver wire day” is the Tuesday following the conclusion of an NFL week. Managers take the day to research, decide who they want, and make their claims.
The league platform usually sorts through the results and assigns players to their new rosters overnight on Wednesdays. Managers wake up to surprises from Fantasy Santa and rejoice/melt down accordingly. It’s honestly one of the most enjoyable parts of the fantasy game.
Now, this is where our subject gets a little thorny. There are two distinctly different tiebreaker systems a league can use for when multiple managers claim the same player — the more “traditional” waiver wire and free agent acquisition budget (FAAB) style waivers. Whichever one your league uses will dramatically impact your approach:
“Traditional” Waiver Wire
In this system, a table of waiver priority is typically determined based on inverse league standings. Worst team gets the first claim, second-worst gets the second, etc. Some variations base the order on the results of the prior week (lowest score first, second-lowest…), but the inverse standings are considerably more common.
If multiple managers claim the same player, the person with the highest priority in the waiver order will ultimately be awarded that player. This system operates in the name of parity and “talent distribution” throughout the league.
Free Agent Acquisition Budget (FAAB)
Every manager is awarded a specific free agent acquisition budget of “waiver money” for the season. This can be based on investing real money into the league, but it’s often a pretend currency, like with the popular ‘Monopoly’ board game.
Rather than making a regular claim, managers will place bid amounts on the available players on waivers. The traditional claims hierarchy will take effect if there’s a tying bid situation, but the “high dollar wins” practice gives all managers a chance to acquire every player.
The critical thing to remember is that this budget is finite. Some leagues will allow managers to trade the currency as part of exchanges, but not all leagues do. Being strategic with spending is a crucial skill that every FAAB manager will need to develop.
4 Expert Tips To Become A Waiver Wire Guru
With all of the basics covered, it’s time to go out there and put this waiver wire knowledge to good use! You’re now equipped with all of the crucial info needed to get the ball rolling. Managers who dominate the waiver wire are often the ones who win their league(s).
But we won’t leave you with just the bare minimum — Fantasy Points is here to ensure that you are the one dominating. So, before we get out of here, here are four top-tier tips that can make your waiver wire pickups as sharp as can be:
Tip #1: Be Careful When Using A High-Priority Claim
To be honest, there will occasionally be weeks throughout the season when the waiver wire doesn’t have a lot to offer. It can be challenging to find plug-and-play options sometimes. If you’re the manager with the top claim in one of these weeks, sorry about your luck.
That said, while not a standard rule, there are several leagues out there that include a stipulation that allows managers to keep their spot in the waiver priority list if they don’t submit a claim. If you’re in a league where a top priority carries over until it's used, keep that sucker locked and loaded. Wait until a high-impact player emerges on the wire.
For example, an injury to a starting running back could occur the following week. Backup running backs thrust into meaningful roles are worth their weight in gold, and securing them onto rosters almost always requires a high claim priority. There’s no harm in waiting to see what happens before using a claim.
Tip #2: Don’t Get Caught Up In Camp Hype
Our next tip is for season-long leagues with FAAB budgets that draft earlier in the summer, as well as our dynasty heads out there. While it’s essential to follow the news and keep an eye on stories, training camp buzz and hype trains can get out of hand fairly quickly. Don’t be that manager who lights their FAAB budget on fire to claim the player who’s the “hot name” of the summer. Save that cash for the rainy fall days when you’ll need it.
With the vast combined experience of the entire Fantasy Points staff, we can tell you with absolute certainty that these buzzy players will disappoint more often than not. Do you remember back in 2019 when Dare Ogunbowale had that dominant season with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers? Oh, that’s right; it didn’t happen! Lots of people got tricked unfortunately, though.
[NOTE: I think the move here is to do a sort of “get better at deciphering the news by listening to…” ending bit here and plug that best fantasy podcasts article.]
Tip #3: Find Breakouts Before They Happen
It’s one thing to make the right waiver wire pickups as they pop up and present themselves. However, the sharpest managers are those who anticipate future breakouts before they emerge. After all, there’s nothing more satisfying than consistently beating everyone to the punch.
We won’t lie and say there’s some secret formula to follow to become good at this. Still, tracking underlying performance data is a great first step. A player’s snap share or route participation are two fairly heavy “usage” metrics that show how much a team trusts a guy to be on the field. Gotta be out there to get the ball, right? Find players who are earning playing time and seeing their touches increase; they’re the ones most likely to break out at some point!
We have all of that data, and plenty more, housed in the Fantasy Points Data Suite. Our in-house team of charting experts tracks every play from all NFL games to give you the most comprehensive collection of football statistics and metrics on the internet. Sure, other sites like PFF or TruMeda offer similar information, but those subscriptions can cost nearly 100x what the Fantasy Points Data Suite does. If you’re someone who’s been looking for easily sortable data within an intuitive, easy-to-use platform, look no further.
Tip #4: Become A Fantasy Points Subscriber
Simply put, Fantasy Points offers the best NFL data on the market. When you have the best data, you have the best projections, and when you have the best projections, you give fantasy managers the best information they need to win their leagues. We’re so confident in our offerings that our final tip is the simplest one of all: sign up for a Fantasy Points subscription!
The Fantasy Points track record of success is about as strong as can be. We’ve ranked as the top overall pre-draft fantasy ranker in the industry multiple times by FantasyPros.com, including as the No. 1 cumulative ranker from 2014 to 2018. The proof is in the pudding, and that’s why we stopped giving our projections away for free in 2019.
In addition to our vast data and award-winning projections, our weekly waiver wire column gives you a leg up and helps identify the top waiver wire pickups you should be targeting. Although our tips today will undoubtedly help you do that independently, why not leave some of the work to us? It’s literally our job to do that here at Fantasy Points.
