This past week, FF4W reader (and let’s just say philosopher / surgeon / matador to cover our bases) Steve Nadraus asked whether I could offer some FAAB tips. To those who don’t know, FAAB stands for “Free Agent Acquisition Budget.” I’ve written about snake draft and auction draft strategies. So let’s take a crack at FAAB.
Semi-typical example to those new to FAAB: each manager starts the season with $100 fake dollars. Once a week there’s open bidding on free agents. Bids are (supposed to be) confidential via the league website. A manager who bids the most on a particular player gets that player (and of course, also has to drop someone). The dropped player is then available to everyone in the league the following bidding cycle (although some leagues allow free-for-all pickups and drops during the days between each week’s bidding).
I generally compete in at least one FAAB league every year. There’s nothing inherently wrong with straight-up waiver / free agent systems. But FAAB arguably is a fairer way for fantasy managers to improve their teams. It’s a free-market system: you get the players you’re willing to pay for, as long as you can afford them.
My FAAB philosophy is best summed up by some research I did last year. When Week 3 of the 2015 season ended, I documented who were the top 10 fantasy scoring QBs/TEs/Ks/DSTs and the top 20 fantasy scoring RBs/WRs. And then when Week 11 ended—when every NFL team had played exactly 10 games—I examined which of those top 10/20 players were still in the top 10/20:
http://www.fantasyfootballforwinners.com/2015/11/early-season-prowess-doesnt-correlate.html
The results were fascinating, though not surprising: heading into Week 12, nearly half of the top 10/20 players were new to the list since the conclusion of Week 3, while nearly three-quarters were new since the conclusion of Week 1. So for example, those who immediately traded for Week 1 RB leader Carlos Hyde got burned, as Hyde’s injury-plagued season transformed him from elite RB to waiver fodder. Likewise, those who invested a lot of FAAB dollars to grab overperforming middling players like Marcus Mariota, Bishop Sankey, and Percy Harvin off waivers earned a very poor return on their investment.
The fact is, every season some under-the-radar guys explode onto the scene in Week 1. Some of these players will remain relevant all year. Good research can help us determine who those players might be. However, for every surprising performer, there’s at least one Week 1 breakout player who can’t sustain anywhere near that production level.
So my general FAAB strategy is to play it conservatively in the first few weeks. In general, if a #3 WR goes for 80 yards and a score in Week 1, I’ll let someone else bid $10 for him. If a 32-year-old journeyman TE2 has a career day in Week 2, I won’t take the bait.
Of course, a lot of variables go into these decisions. Maybe the #3 WR went off because the #1 WR tore his ACL in the first quarter and is out for the year; that suggests this might be no fluke performance. If we can demonstrate with some certainty that a player’s one-week output is a sign of things to come, great, I might bid on him. But if the chances for repeated success are low, I’m not.
By midseason I want to have more FAAB cash than most other owners. And as injuries and depth chart shifts continue to pile up (they always do), I’ll have more buying power to grab the best available guys for the playoff run.
To be clear, I’m not hoarding dollars for the sake of hoarding. If an early-season star with huge potential emerges, I’m fine making an appropriately high bid. But more often than not, I’m picking my moments—ideally once most owners can no longer comfortably afford to bid more than $5-$10 at a time, increasing the likelihood that my well-researched, targeted bids will go through.
Semi-typical example to those new to FAAB: each manager starts the season with $100 fake dollars. Once a week there’s open bidding on free agents. Bids are (supposed to be) confidential via the league website. A manager who bids the most on a particular player gets that player (and of course, also has to drop someone). The dropped player is then available to everyone in the league the following bidding cycle (although some leagues allow free-for-all pickups and drops during the days between each week’s bidding).
I generally compete in at least one FAAB league every year. There’s nothing inherently wrong with straight-up waiver / free agent systems. But FAAB arguably is a fairer way for fantasy managers to improve their teams. It’s a free-market system: you get the players you’re willing to pay for, as long as you can afford them.
My FAAB philosophy is best summed up by some research I did last year. When Week 3 of the 2015 season ended, I documented who were the top 10 fantasy scoring QBs/TEs/Ks/DSTs and the top 20 fantasy scoring RBs/WRs. And then when Week 11 ended—when every NFL team had played exactly 10 games—I examined which of those top 10/20 players were still in the top 10/20:
http://www.fantasyfootballforwinners.com/2015/11/early-season-prowess-doesnt-correlate.html
The results were fascinating, though not surprising: heading into Week 12, nearly half of the top 10/20 players were new to the list since the conclusion of Week 3, while nearly three-quarters were new since the conclusion of Week 1. So for example, those who immediately traded for Week 1 RB leader Carlos Hyde got burned, as Hyde’s injury-plagued season transformed him from elite RB to waiver fodder. Likewise, those who invested a lot of FAAB dollars to grab overperforming middling players like Marcus Mariota, Bishop Sankey, and Percy Harvin off waivers earned a very poor return on their investment.
The fact is, every season some under-the-radar guys explode onto the scene in Week 1. Some of these players will remain relevant all year. Good research can help us determine who those players might be. However, for every surprising performer, there’s at least one Week 1 breakout player who can’t sustain anywhere near that production level.
So my general FAAB strategy is to play it conservatively in the first few weeks. In general, if a #3 WR goes for 80 yards and a score in Week 1, I’ll let someone else bid $10 for him. If a 32-year-old journeyman TE2 has a career day in Week 2, I won’t take the bait.
Of course, a lot of variables go into these decisions. Maybe the #3 WR went off because the #1 WR tore his ACL in the first quarter and is out for the year; that suggests this might be no fluke performance. If we can demonstrate with some certainty that a player’s one-week output is a sign of things to come, great, I might bid on him. But if the chances for repeated success are low, I’m not.
By midseason I want to have more FAAB cash than most other owners. And as injuries and depth chart shifts continue to pile up (they always do), I’ll have more buying power to grab the best available guys for the playoff run.
To be clear, I’m not hoarding dollars for the sake of hoarding. If an early-season star with huge potential emerges, I’m fine making an appropriately high bid. But more often than not, I’m picking my moments—ideally once most owners can no longer comfortably afford to bid more than $5-$10 at a time, increasing the likelihood that my well-researched, targeted bids will go through.