FAAB – Free Agent Acquisition Budget

There is nothing more satisfying in life than watching numbskulls pay top dollar for mediocre players in the beginning of the season. Only because I’m sure there are people out there who have no clue what FAAB is, it’s a waiver system where you have $100 dollars to spend throughout the entire season to pick up players. Other methods include the last place team gets top priority each week and another out dated method of retaining your waiver position if you don’t use it. FAAB allows a money game within fantasy that not only creates equality, but also an incredible display of the human psyche.

Here is our week 1 in one league I’m in:

How I like to judge on how big of a bonehead move is based off of how much did the winner bid vs how much the next person bid. Remember you have $100 dollars for 11-12 weeks depending, which means you can allocate about $10 a week, knowing that key pick ups will require more.

  • Spending $15 on Quincey Enuwa is like spending $100 dollars for an ice cream cone. It tastes good for a short period of time, but 1/8 of your budget for a WR2 with Darnold as the QB? He may have been worth $3.
  • I’m a huge proponent of streaming defenses. If you aren’t playing match ups and decide that it’s never worth spending on a defense, you should re-consider your effort level. For instance, any team that is going to be playing Buffalo moving forward should be in streamer consideration. How much are they worth a week? I’d ball park it at $5 tops for a juicy match up. You aren’t planning on having them again for the next week so why overspend? Spending $15 for Chicago vs Seatle, and then Arizona away just doesn’t make sense. They literally gave up an 80 yard pass to lose the game with 3 minutes left. Why pay that much for them?
  • This brings me to the biggest over-reaction of them all. Delaine Walker goes down and this man spends 1/3 of his budget on Jared Cook. I had Greg Olsen go down as well for what that’s worth. Jared Cook isn’t bad by any means. He had 1!!!! good game. Last year he had 688 yards and 2 TD’s. There was a reason he wasn’t even drafted. If this man was my financial advisor I’d rather light the money on fire. A total misunderstanding of the system and it’s not like this is the first year we’ve done this.

Here’s what I read on this:

Jared Cook, OAK (10-20%) — We know Cook can put up big games, but we also know he’s been inconsistent in his career. Don’t overspend on him.

  • Yeldon for $5 is great. Wish I would have done that. If Fournette goes down, you have a #1 for many games in a season which is way more than a $5 value.
  • You can see the Shee and I were going after Brandon Marshall which I’ll give my opinion. There are always guys who are projected to be “good”. Marquise Goodwin comes to mind. Is he actually good? His stats don’t show any consistency. He pops a big game or two but is never reliable. He had 962 yards and 2 TD’s last year with one game having 10 catches but most having 2-3. Brandon Marshall is an over the hill pro-bowler. He’s got talent, but falls more in line with Randall Cobb at this stage of his career. He WAS a game changer and then an injury derailed his 2017 and now he’s in an unknown situation which makes his current position unknown and thus salivating. He’s got a good QB on a team that’s not nearly as good as people think and they are going to pass a ton without a true WR with Baldwin down for the count. If I knew I could have got him for $7…I still would have passed, but could possibly regret it.

FAAB Thoughts

Sam and I were talking a bit about this and he said the most common part of this I hear which is, “I always end up with money at the end of the year so I don’t think that much how I spend it if I want the player.” If you end up with money at the end of the year, then your aren’t aggressive enough. Bottom line. You think players are worth $1 when you should be bidding $4. The defense you want isn’t worth $2, it’s $5. That back up running back, who’ll be in an RBBC, because the main back went down isn’t worth $60 unless he’s the next Alvin Kamara. If you like a guy, go after him, but look ahead of time at what “pros” say you should put your budget projection at. I remember seeing someone say James Conner was 50% and I thought it was idiotic. Who is laughing now? I honestly don’t know, but that’s kind of the point.

The money doesn’t matter in week 1. Fantasy football isn’t won in the first weeks. You win fantasy football by making the playoffs and then having the best team throughout the playoffs. It doesn’t matter if you’re the 6 seed if your team is hot and you’ve acquired the best free agents towards the end. Do you think that Quincey Enuwa is going to be relevant in week 10 when I’m bidding the last of my money to pick up a starting RB that is getting full time work? Think Kenyon Drake last year.

You want to have money at the end, but don’t be a cheap skate. Take my situation of Greg Olsen. I don’t want to drop Greg Olsen because it says he’ll only be gone for 5-6 weeks. However, the roster spot early on in the season is incredibly important especially because I have Edleman already stashed. If someone wants to sit on Olsen, I’m ok with it. Streaming TE’s is nothing new. If you don’t have Gronk, you honestly have players who are supposed to be great dud out on a week to week basis (Graham, Engram, Kelce). Getting lucky playing Ian Thomas or Jonnu Smith is a dice throw that I’m willing to take on a week to week basis trying to snag the next Kenny Stills. I know people in my leagues read my writing so I’m not doing any service by posting my strategy, but I’d like to close this by saying that everyone should develop their own strategy that doesn’t start by spending 30% of your money on mediocre players.