The fantasy football waiver wire. The lifeblood of fantasy football.
It’s where titles are won, budgets are blown, and managers let their gut feelings and FOMO dictate their bids.
The truth? Most of us are flying blind. We overpay because we’re scared to miss out on the player we want. It is easy to splash early and chase hype, but what should we spend and when?
I analyzed more than 600,000 player adds from 2024 across both dynasty and redraft leagues. Each row of data represents one player being picked up in one waiver run and includes the number of leagues where it occurred, which I will refer to as “league adds.”
In Week 1 alone, that equated to 24,706 dynasty league adds and 12,227 redraft league adds. And while that was just the beginning, redraft volume swelled midseason, the single biggest run in Week 6 hit 18,092 adds.
This article will be rich with real fantasy football waiver wire numbers and real examples, including:
- The reality of waivers in redraft.
- The reality of waivers in dynasty.
- Compare & contrast: Same players, different formats, wildly different FAAB outcomes.
- Week 1 waivers: Why they’re different, and how to approach them.
- 10 FAAB tips to take into 2025.
For both redraft and dynasty, I am using a $1,000 FAAB budget, but you can adjust this for your specific league or convert to a percentage — i.e., $46 FAAB is 4.6% of your leagues’ FAAB budget.
As is customary, now’s the moment to grab a proper brew or whatever keeps your mind sharp.
No hype. No mandates. Just insights so that YOU can make decisions for YOUR teams.
Let’s get into it.
Fantasy Football Waiver Wire Pickups Win Championships
Redraft Reality: Waivers Are a Weekly Sprint
Redraft waivers are a different animal. You get one shot and fantasy football managers know it. The data from 2024 shows how much sharper, riskier, and more aggressive the market is compared to dynasty.
- Scale: Week 1 alone saw 12,227 league adds
- Median winning bids: $11 in Week 1 (slightly cheaper than the $14 full-season average), but with bid-winning splashes soaring as high as $766 for conviction players.
- Style: Managers spread their bids wide across multiple positions, churning weekly for depth and upside.
Positional Pricing Bands
The data breaks the winning redraft waiver bids into clear ranges with specific winning median bids by position:
QB: $21
RB: $21
WR: $29
TE: $20
PK: $3
DST: $10
- Don’t be fooled into thinking those low prices were for bench fillers.
- Every single one of them scored enough to be an every-week fantasy starter. That’s proof you don’t always need a $200+ splash bid to find production.
It’s not luck either. Before the first waiver run last season, each of those players was named or predicted as a starter on their teams.
The $100-$190 FAAB Dead Zone
One of the clearest signals in the redraft data is what I refer to as the FAAB dead zone.
Across thousands of transactions, players consistently bid $100-$190 FAAB. Yet these midrange splashes rarely returned winning production.
These were the top five most added players who went in the $100-$199 dead zone last year. Don’t let your FOMO push you into this dangerous territory.
- Too expensive for churn.
- Too cheap to lock in a true every-week starter.
- Managers burned a fifth of their budget on players who didn’t move the needle.
Instead, the data shows value bids of $25 or less (2024, it was players such as Bo Nix, Rico Dowdle, Jameson Williams, and Cameron Dicker) and the occasional $300-600 splash when a clear difference maker emerged.
Action: If you’re bidding in the $100-190 range, you should probably stop. Either churn cheap and take your shots for $25 or less, or commit properly when the market demands a splash. The middle ground is where FAAB goes to die.
Dynasty Waivers: Patience, Churn, and $1 Dominance
Dynasty waivers are not about fireworks; they’re about accumulation. Quiet, consistent roster churn where small bids beat splashy ones.
The dataset makes that crystal clear:
- Scale: More than 340,000 dynasty league adds in 2024. Managers are constantly churning.
- Weighted median winning bid: Falls in the $6-25 band.
- Distribution: ~71% of all dynasty league adds were won for $25 or less. Splashes were rare; less than 5% of league adds were at $100+.
Let’s look at the structure of dynasty bidding:
- Bench churn: Most activity sits at $1-25, cycling through WR5s, RB4s, and practice-squad call-ups.
- Conviction plays: Bigger spending is rare, typically occurring one or two times per team per year when a starting job opens.
- times per team per year when a starting job opens.
Action for dynasty managers: If you’re bidding $25-50 on speculative players, you’re often paying above the market. Most of these players clear for $1-25. Save the higher bids for situation changed openings; the rest of the year, embrace the churn.
Week 1 Waivers: A League of Their Own
Week 1 is not like the rest of the season. Depth charts shift, injuries hit, and hype peaks. Managers panic, and of course, they spend. The numbers tell the story:
- Redraft Week 1: 12,227 league adds, median bid $11. Managers fired across every position, splashing up to $766 on single players.
- Dynasty Week 1: 24,706 league adds. Weighted median bid sat at $15. The dynasty market still kept its discipline. The bulk of winning bids were $25 or less, with plenty of $1-5 churn mixed in.
What makes Week 1 unique?
- Early-season volume: With 36,933 combined dynasty and redraft league adds, Week 1 is one of the busiest waiver runs of the year.
- Perception shift: Every manager believes they can “win Week 1 waivers” and tilt their season. That belief drives aggression, even when the player pool is still unstable.
- Outcomes: Many Week 1 splashes don’t justify themselves. Plenty of players added in Week 1 were back on waivers by Weeks 3-4. The best Week 1 values consistently came from smaller bids and $1-5 dynasty churn.
Week 1 Actions
- Don’t blow your FAAB: Week 1 splashes rarely pay off as league winners.
- Churn cheap: Dynasty managers, especially, should lean into $1-5 adds; the data shows that these low bids deliver the best long-term ROI.
- Targets: Players still sitting on waivers but ranked inside the top 150 in ADP are the best Week 1 buys. They often went undrafted in early drafts, but later depth chart and injury news pushed them up boards in late August. In already drafted FFPC Big Gorilla leagues, as I write:
- Ollie Gordon (RB, ADP 134) 45.59% available.
- Woody Marks (RB, ADP 149) 12.53% available.
- Jacory Croskey-Merritt (RB, ADP 85) still on 6.5% of waivers
- Jaydon Blue (RB, ADP 114) 2.78% available.
- Jerome Ford (RB, ADP 146) 1.97% available.
- Keenan Allen (WR, ADP 126) 1.86% available.
- Jayden Higgins (WR, ADP 123) 1.16% available.
Circle players in this “top-150 ADP but still available” tier. They consistently offered better value than chasing hype splashes. Instead of wasting $150 in the dead zone, aim your bids here.
Dynasty vs. Redraft: Same Players, Different Worlds
A revealing part of this analysis is what happened when the same player hit waivers in both formats.
Action: If, like me, you play both formats, you need two separate FAAB mindsets. Dynasty is patience and churn. Redraft is aggression, but only when production or a changed situation justifies the splash.
10 Unified Fantasy Football Waiver Wire FAAB Secrets for 2025
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- Redraft managers overspend early. Week 1 splashes rarely justify themselves.
- Dynasty waivers are patient. Weighted median sits around $12, and 7 in 10 league adds are cleared for $25 or less.
- Low bids dominate dynasty. The clear majority of winning bids were $25 or less, with only rare splashes above $100.
- Redraft churn wins. Low FAAB pickups such as Bo Nix ($22), Rico Dowdle ($19), Jameson Williams ($27), and Cameron Dicker ($3) all delivered every-week starter production.
- Splash carefully. If you spend $400 or more, it needs to be on a locked-in starter, not a “name.”
- Week 1 is unique. Dynasty = churn and stash. Redraft = target the hidden top-150 ADP tier, not hype splashes.
- Value perception differs. The same player can be a $55 dynasty stash or a $400 redraft splash. Know your format.
- Consensus forms fast. If the entire market hypes a player, expect bids 2-3 times higher in redraft than in dynasty.
- Beat the market by anticipating roles. Study snap counts, injuries, and depth charts before the consensus catches up.
- Save for late-season pivots. Championships are often swung by Week 12-14 waiver wins — don’t go broke before then.
Conclusion
Waivers win championships. The data is clear: Dynasty managers should be patient and trust the $1 bid, while redraft managers need to spread their bids and only splash out when the production edge is real. Be aggressive because you need to be, not because you have FOMO.
Week 1 waivers are their own beast, but even there, patience pays.
Most importantly, the same player can mean radically different things in dynasty leagues versus redraft leagues. If you blur those lines, you’ll misprice bids and lose your edge.
This is your edge. Play the math, not the hype. Build your dynasty, win your redraft, and make every dollar of FAAB count.
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