The Ultimate Guide to Waiver Wire & FAAB Strategy in 2024

There is nothing more important in fantasy football than winning the waiver wire. While drafting a strong team is obviously the first ingredient in the fantasy recipe for success, staying active and adding the best players available each week is equally valuable — as much as we’d like to be 100% accurate in our predictions before the season, there are several different things that could go wrong, and the waiver wire helps you fill those potential gaps. It is no surprise that last year, 23% of fantasy teams with Kyren Williams and 21% of teams with Puka Nacua made their fantasy championship. In this article, I’ll be taking a look at how to master different fantasy football waiver formats to help you find as many league winners as possible.

Waiver Wire Formats

Here’s a quick breakdown of the two main types of waiver wire systems in fantasy football:

• Free Agent Acquisition Budget (FAAB): I will die on the hill that all leagues should have a FAAB waiver wire. In FAAB, each manager has a budget (usually $100) to spend on free agents throughout the season. When you want to add a player, you place a blind bid, and the highest bid wins the player. FAAB adds a dynamic component of strategy to your league and is a very fair waiver system. “Continuous FAAB” means that bids can be placed and processed every day or on specified days of the week, while “Non-continuous FAAB” typically processes bids once a week.

• Waiver Priority: Waiver priority is the old-school waiver wire method where each team is assigned a priority, and once they make a waiver claim they are moved to the end of the priority queue. Priority is typically determined by the inverse order of the standings each week. Waiver priority is a solid option as it gives the worst teams the first opportunity to add new players, but it also has its flaws — early-season waiver acquisitions are often the most impactful, and a team who simply has a bad Week 1 might get the first priority in a Waiver Priority and add the top player on waivers based on a very small sample size of their team’s performance. There are also “continuous” waiver priority systems where you move to the bottom of the priority queue as soon as you make a claim.

Strategies and Guidelines

Don’t Be Afraid to Spend Money Early

Spending a large amount of your budget early on in the season might feel a little restricting, but it’s important to remember that FAAB money doesn’t score you any fantasy points. You should look to spend a significant chunk of your budget within the first few weeks of the season so that you can maximize the amount of time you get a high-value player. If there is a breakout Week 1 performer in the mold of Puka Nacua or Kyren Williams last year, don’t hesitate to spend 75-80% of your budget to get him. The value add of a legitimate top-10 player will be far more impactful than the several smaller transactions you could make by saving money. This idea is more relevant in FAAB but also can be applied to standard waiver priority. A poor Week 1 performance could even be a blessing in disguise if it helps you land a waiver wire gem.

Stream Defenses and Kickers

You should not be taking your defense or kicker until the last two rounds of your draft. Historically, these two positions are the least consistent with pre-draft rankings and are much more dependent on weekly matchups. For example, the Ravens D/ST is one of the highest-ranked defenses this year, and someone in your league will probably take them in the 12th or 13th round. But, the Ravens play the Patrick Mahomes-led Chiefs in Week 1, so do you really want them to be your starting defense? Instead, wait until the last round or so and take a defense like the Vikings or Bengals, who play the Giants and Patriots in Week 1, respectively. Then, you can continue to cycle through the defenses that play the worst offenses in the NFL each week. Several teams in your league are probably going to just roll with one defense for most of the season, so you shouldn’t have to bid more than a dollar or two to get the defenses you need.

Kickers are a little less matchup-dependent, but it is still certainly not worth taking someone like Justin Tucker or Harrison Butker earlier in your draft instead of a running back or wide receiver lottery ticket. I would generally still try to swap out kickers every few weeks to optimize for lighter schedules.

As an aside, I would also not bother drafting backup quarterbacks or tight ends, especially in smaller leagues. There’s no point stashing someone like Jared Goff or Kirk Cousins on your bench, as they will pretty much only be useful during your starting QB’s bye week. Use that extra bench spot for a high-upside skill position player, and just pick up a streaming-level backup during the season to start during a bye week.

Be Creative

Make sure you know your league rules, as you could potentially use that to your advantage on the waiver wire. For instance, in Yahoo leagues, you are allowed to drop a player on your bench once they have finished their game. So, if you have a backup who you plan on dropping anyway later in the week, you could hypothetically drop him on Sunday evening for a handcuff running back playing in the Monday Night game, giving you a free shot at rostering a player who would become expensive with an injury to the starter. Similarly, you should also be aware of if your league has IR spots, as that gives you another way to add players with little cost.

Finally, you must consider your league members when making waiver moves. Let’s say there is a highly sought-after running back on the waiver wire, and you expect that one league member will be particularly interested in him because they recently lost their RB2 to an injury. If you also want to add that player and have more FAAB money than your league mate, you could bid just $1 more than the competitor’s remaining budget to guarantee you get him. Generally, I like to put in bids like $11, $16, $21, etc. because people tend to default to rounder numbers.

The Bottom Line

Hopefully, you learned a thing or two about how to navigate your waiver wire successfully in fantasy football this year. As crucial as your draft might be, you also need to add impact players to your team through the waiver wire to put your team over the top. Whether your team is in last place or first, remember to stay alert on the waiver wire to turn your bad team into a good one or your good team into a great one.