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C. Taylor
Waiver Wire Strategy
Published at 9/25/2016
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Waiver Wire Strategy:

Fantasy Nation, we are in the midst of week 3 in the National Football league. As a lot of us have already learned, injuries can happen anytime, anywhere and to any team. This past week we saw major injuries take out the 2 leading running backs from 2015 in Adrian Peterson and Doug Martin. We also saw Donte Moncrief go down for 4-6 weeks, Danny Woodhead, Josh Gordon, Corey Coleman and Josh McCown (Sorry Browns fans).

A question I get sometime, is how to use the waiver wire, or who to drop each week when trying to figure all this out. Well I’ll share a strategy that I have been using for a few years now that has helped me out a lot with my team. First off every league is different and in some leagues this might not be possible. In a standard or PPR scoring setup in Yahoo, ESPN and NFL.com fantasy leagues this will work.

Usually what I will do is Monday afternoon/night after getting as much preliminary injury reports as possible, I will drop any player that is no longer worthy of keeping, say Josh Gordon this week, or Josh McCown if you had him. Next I will drop my kicker from my roster. And then will look at my DEF and decide whether I will keep them because they are one of the top 5 DEF or they have a great matchup the next week. (NOTE: sometimes you will have to wait till Tuesday morning to make these drops).

After this I usually have at least 2 open roster spots, maybe a third. I’ll go in and make my waiver claims for all the players that I want. The nice part here is that I don’t have to worry about picking a player that I will drop to get that waiver claim. I just make the claim, since I have open roster spots on my team. A big problem with waivers sometimes is that you have say 2 players that your willing to drop but targeting 4-5 guys on the waiver wire. Say for this past week you put a claim in for 3 different players and had dropping the same guy for all three:

ADD: Philip Dorsett      and DROP: Josh Gordon

ADD: Charles Sims      and DROP: Josh Gordon

ADD: Tyrell Williams    and DROP: Josh Gordon

In this scenario, say you get Dorsett on the waiver wire. You now are unable to get Sims, or Williams because you can’t drop Gordon again. Therefore, you had the chance for 2 of your 3vguys but missed because of the ADD/DROP process. With dropping the kicker and DEF though it could look similar to this:

ADD: Philip Dorsett

ADD: Charles Sims

ADD: Tyrell Williams

As I said before, because you have at least one open roster spot you don’t have to worry about placing the waiver claim with a “Drop” player. Therefore, all you have to do is prioritize which players you want the most, increasing your ability to get multiple players off the waiver wire.

Now you have your team and its Wednesday morning and you have no DEF or Kicker but a couple extra WR and RB’s on the roster. Well most teams on Wednesday and Thursday know what the injury outlook is going to be for the weekend games and from there you determine who you are going to drop to get a kicker and DEF for the week.

The Other option is that now you can take your team and try and trade a couple players for new ones. Trying to execute a 2 for 1 player trade or a 3 for 2. That way you can upgrade a position of need while opening up a roster spot for a kicker or defense. Pending on how long the waiting period is for your league I would make sure you have enough time for the trade to go through and add a kicker or DEF as needed.

Again I would check you league rules, wavier period, trade period and so on, but this is something that you can do and try and get a slight edge in your league and on the waiver game. 



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