If you’re reading this article, you obviously love playing fantasy football. One of the most enjoyable things that fantasy football players get to do is construct their team through their draft. Whether you’re taking part in a snake or auction draft there’s nothing like putting on your general manager’s cap and building your team from the ground up. However, unless you play in a best ball league, there’s a lot more work that you need to do once your draft is over, in order to perfect your creation.

After the smoke clears and your draft is done, you’ll probably evaluate your team and identify some flaws that need fixing. As the season gets underway, you’ll be faced with inevitable injuries and poor performances from some of your players who’ll you’ll eventually drop. There will be players that you’ve never heard of who’ll become fantasy relevant and just about everyone in your league will be clamoring to add them to their team through free agency. It’s important to know the rules in your league. How do you go about adding players off the waiver wire? Is it first come first serve? Does the waiver wire acquisition process start at 2 A.M. on Tuesday morning? If so set your alarm. Many fantasy players have done it. Most leagues use Free Agent Acquisition Budget or FAAB in order to differentiate waiver wire bids in fantasy sports leagues. Knowing how to manage your FAAB can make or break your fantasy team.

FAAB is an imaginary budget (typically $100 or $1000) that league mates invest when they are seeking to claim a player off of a fantasy league’s waiver wire. For instance, let’s say that one of the best running backs (RBs) in football suffers a season ending injury. All of a sudden his backup, who no one currently owns, becomes very valuable. Five different league mates put in a bid for him as their number one waiver wire pick. In leagues that don’t use FAAB, depending on league rules, the team with the worst record might be awarded the player. However, in FAAB fueled leagues, the league mate who put in the highest monetary bid would be awarded the player. 

Working the waiver wire and using your FAAB properly can help you find that diamond in the rough. Sometimes you find a fantasy viable player off the waiver wire within the first few weeks of the season when you have plenty of FAAB to invest. Broncos RB Phillip Lindsay is a good example of a player who seemingly came out of nowhere and became a mainstay in fantasy football lineups after Week 1. There are other times when players like Chiefs RB Damien Williams and Rams RB C.J. Anderson emerge in the latter part of the season and end up helping mediocre playoff fantasy football teams win championships. You need to use your FAAB wisely throughout the season so that you have a few dollars to invest in these type of late blooming players.

Fantasy players will often ask, “how much FAAB should I invest on player X”? It’s very difficult for someone who isn’t part of your league to answer that question. Each fantasy league is its own unique living, breathing organism made up of anywhere from eight to 20 individuals all with a common goal of winning a fantasy championship. Some league members might be aggressive, others might want to play conservatively early on so that they have plenty of FAAB left for aggressive bids at the tail end of the season.

It’s your job to learn all that you can about the guys and gals in your league. If you’re a newcomer to a league that was active last season, ask your commissioner if there is an active link that will allow you to get a glimpse into last season’s activity. If so, familiarize yourself with what type of investmentstypically won player bids. Who were the aggressive bidders last season?

If you’re part of a new league, the waiver wire runs leading up to the first game of the regular season and the one after Week 1 should be used as feeling out periods. The type of bids that you should be placing during this time depends on your need. If your number one pick went down with a season ending injury just before the start of the season and you absolutely need to pick up his handcuff, then you need to be aggressive. You may need to put in a bid for 25 percent or more of your overall budget. However, if you’re just looking to add some depth to your team and the player you’re adding is going to ride your bench, you can put in a modest bid. Throw out a bid of a dollar or two, or if you really want to win the bid invest five percent. Most importantly, you’ll want to familiarize yourself with the investment patterns of the individuals in your league. It might take a few weeks to truly get a feel for their FAAB strategies but it will be worth it in the long run.

Some fantasy managers have asked if it’s a good strategy to make an aggressive bid in order to pick up a player off the waiver wire for the sole purpose of blocking another team from rostering that player. Used correctly it can actually be a winning strategy. Evaluating the roster of other team’s in your league in order to anticipate their waiver wire needs and moves is smart. However, this leads us to a discussion about the dos and don’ts of working the waiver wire and using your FAAB.

You don’t want to waste too much of your FAAB budget too early in the season. You want to hold on to some FAAB dollars just in case a player who can add true fantasy value to your team emerges later in the season. Old timers used to refer to this strategy as saving for a rainy day. Winning a waiver claim could come back and hurt you later in the season if you’ve left yourself without any “in case of emergency” FAAB dollars.

Before you make a move to add a player off the waiver wire make sure that you’re not dropping a player who can add value to another team that you’re competing against. There’s nothing worse than losing a weekly matchup to a team who used one of your castaways to tip the scales in their favor. You also don’t want to be in a position where you have to fight off the rest or your league and bid aggressively for a player that used to be on your roster. In some cases, the best waiver move that you can make in a given week is to do nothing.

Overall, how you manage your FAAB depends on your perception of the bidding strategies that your league mates will use in a given week. Your goal is to outsmart your competition. How you use your FAAB will also depend on how badly you need the player that you’re bidding on, and your opinion on how badly the rest of your league needs the player you want as well.

Another thing to consider when deciding on how much FAAB you should bid on a given player is position scarcity. Running backs are extremely valuable in fantasy football. With more and more teams using the running back by committee approach (RBBC) to managing their backfields, if there’s a hint that a RB currently on the waiver wire will inherit a starting job, there’s going to be a lot of FAAB dollars invested on that back. One way to avoid getting involved in an eventual bidding war for a backup RB who’s suddenly anointed as the “starter” is to draft as many backs who have a potential direct line to a starting job as possible.

One last thing to note about FAAB is that while it’s a good idea to try to hold on to some FAAB in case you need to do some late season spending on free agents, there may come a time in your season when you should put in an aggressive bid for a player who can help you now. There aren’t many leagues, if any, that will allow you to cash in your leftover FAAB dollars for real bucks. There aren’t any fantasy football prudency championship trophies awarded at the end of the season. If you can add a player who’ll be the difference between you making the fantasy football playoffs or having to congratulate another one of your league mates for winning your league championship, get aggressive and make sure to put in a realistic and winnable bid.