Week 2 waivers, 2026. The run after Week 1's games. What players cost off waivers across the member leagues whose results we have, and how close our recommended bids came. Updated every Wednesday after waivers process.
Every week we have published · the historical market
Overall: F (25.1 points missed)
Key players: no letter this week.
Each of our three bids makes a promise: P60 should win 60% of the players somebody else also bids on, P75 75%, P90 90%. Winning up to 5 points more than the promise counts as on target, because we would rather overpay than lose the player. Below the promise, every point counts. Above that band, only the extra counts.
Overall checks each promise separately for our low, middle and high bids, across every contested claim our board priced. A claim counts as contested when the winner paid at least $1 and another team also bid at least $1: a $0 bid never competes, because $1 beats it. This week grades our first bid model, the one the board showed in its first week.
Key players are the players our leagues bid on hardest this week: 3 or more managers bidding in at least 15% of our leagues, at a median winning bid of 15% of budget or more (quarterbacks counted only in superflex and two-QB leagues). Each player is graded separately: how often our P60 bid would have won that player, against the same 60% to 65% target. Every player counts the same.
No player drew that kind of interest this week, so there is no key-player letter.
Grading scale, in points missed: A under 5, B under 10, C under 15, D under 25, F at 25 or more. Overall is measured on 457 contested claims (first graded Oct 23, under the rule every week now uses; this page carried no grade when it was published). How we grade, and every change to it.
Ranked by how many leagues saw two or more managers bid on the same player. That is a different list from the most-claimed players: half of week-one bids are for nothing, and a free add is not a contested claim. Team defenses are left out here; they are in the full table below.
Devaughn Vele WR
Wanted in 270 leagues. 191 of those turned into a real auction with two or more managers bidding. The winner paid 10.0% of budget, and had to go 3.0% past the next-best offer. Half the winning bids landed between 5.0% and 16.0%, so the market did not agree. 10% of the leagues that won paid nothing at all.
Bar: how often the bid won. White tick: what it promised.
Caleb Douglas WR
Wanted in 208 leagues. 138 of those turned into a real auction with two or more managers bidding. The winner paid 10.0% of budget, and had to go 5.0% past the next-best offer. Half the winning bids landed between 4.0% and 16.8%, so the market did not agree. 9% of the leagues that won paid nothing at all.
Bar: how often the bid won. White tick: what it promised.
Kaelon Black RB
Wanted in 132 leagues. 81 of those turned into a real auction with two or more managers bidding. The winner paid 11.0% of budget, and had to go 5.0% past the next-best offer. Half the winning bids landed between 4.6% and 19.0%, so the market did not agree. 15% of the leagues that won paid nothing at all.
Bar: how often the bid won. White tick: what it promised.
Devin Singletary RB
Wanted in 167 leagues. 58 of those turned into a real auction with two or more managers bidding. The winner paid 5.0% of budget, and had to go 3.0% past the next-best offer. Half the winning bids landed between 0.6% and 8.0%, so the market did not agree. 18% of the leagues that won paid nothing at all.
Bar: how often the bid won. White tick: what it promised.
Dontayvion Wicks WR
Wanted in 145 leagues. 55 of those turned into a real auction with two or more managers bidding. The winner paid 3.0% of budget, and had to go 3.0% past the next-best offer. Half the winning bids landed between 0.0% and 7.0%, so the market did not agree. 26% of the leagues that won paid nothing at all.
Bar: how often the bid won. White tick: what it promised.
Before you bid, the board gives you a price at each of three rungs. P60 is built to win 60% of the players somebody else is also bidding on; P75 and P90 are the same idea at higher confidence.
Only claims where two or more managers bid. A bid counts as a win when it would have beaten the manager who actually won, by a dollar.
Our P60 bid ran between 3% and 6% of budget across these rows. What players actually took to win ran from 3% to 26%. This table groups players by what they ended up costing, which nobody knows until waivers run. A player lands in the top row because someone bid big, so no bid made in advance wins most of those. It shows where the money went, not whether our number was right. Grouped by what our P60 said instead, it won 8% when it said under 8% of budget and 80% when it said 22% or more, against a 60% promise.
When our P60 did win a contested claim, it overpaid a median 5.4% of budget over what it took. Our target is a max of 5%: a small overpay beats losing the player, but it should not be more than that.
| What it took to win | Claims | What our P60 bid | How often P60 would have won |
|---|---|---|---|
| under 5% of budget | 68 | 3% | 50% |
| 5% to 10% of budget | 106 | 4% | 26% |
| 10% to 20% of budget | 160 | 6% | 10% |
| 20% or more of budget | 132 | 6% | 4% |
| Promise | How often it woncontested claims | What we saidshare of budget | What it tookshare of budget | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| P60466 claims | 60%promised | 18%-42% vs the promise | 5.0%what we said | 12.7%7.7% short |
| P75430 claims | 75%promised | 99%+24% vs the promise | 60.0%what we said | 12.4%47.5% high |
| P90414 claims | 90%promised | 99%+9% vs the promise | 79.5%what we said | 12.0%67.5% high |
This is the first waiver run the tool could grade itself on. It saves what it told you before you bid, and when waivers process it checks that against what actually cleared. The first answer is not good, so here it is.
The bid at the top of each player card was built to win about 60% of the time. Across 295 leagues, on the 475 contested claims I could score, it would have won 27%. Contested means at least two managers actually bid.
Three reasons, and the first is most of it. I priced the wrong seat. The number was what it would have taken to beat the runner-up, but you are not the winner looking back at a finished auction. You are a new bidder who has to beat whoever actually won. Those two prices are 1.8 to 4 times apart in every league and every position I measured. Waivers are blind and everyone submits at once, so "a dollar over the runner-up" is a price nobody can bid. It does not exist until the envelopes are open.
Second, the starting price was stuck in a bucket. Each player got an estimate pulled from a fixed range attached to the player's projection tier, and the estimate could not leave that range. That is how two different receivers ended up with the same number.
Third, the target counted the wrong claims. Sixty percent meant sixty percent of all claims, and about half of all claims draw a single bidder and are won at any price. Free players alone satisfied the target.
Here is what I did about it. I built the scorecard before I moved a single number, so I could not mark my own homework afterwards. The test fits on every season but the last and scores the last one, so it never sees the claims the price was built from. Contested claims only, scored on beating the winner.
The old four tiers promised 50, 70, 85 and 95 percent. They really won 19, 19, 33 and 64 percent, across 138 contested claims. The new numbers promise about 60 and about 75 percent. They won 55 and 72 percent, across 69 claims.
I am not publishing a figure for the 90 percent rung yet. Only 12 held-out claims reach it, and one number off twelve claims is not evidence. It is on the board, it is labelled "about", and I will report how it does once there is enough of it to report.
Every rung says "about" on purpose. That is what the test supports, and saying a flat 60 percent would repeat the exact overstatement I am fixing.
What you see now is one price for what a player has gone for in your league, then what it takes to win at two levels of confidence. The cheap number and the confident number sit side by side deliberately. You choose which one you are making.
There is also a new table under each player showing what your league has actually paid, broken out by how many teams bid, with the count beside it. In one league, when two or more teams bid on a running back, the winner paid a median of $27 across 79 claims. When six or more teams bid, nine times, the winner paid a median of $101. One averaged number hides that, and it hides it precisely on the week a league winner hits waivers. It is history, not a suggested bid, and thin rows are shown with their count rather than hidden, because the count is what lets you judge them.
Three bugs turned up while I was checking this, and all three are fixed. A rival bidding $0 was being counted as competition, and a zero bid cannot win. In one league that was 51 percent of the claims I was calling contested. A manager filing two claims on the same player counted as two rivals, including against himself. And the board could print a bid higher than the league's budget.
A limit worth saying out loud. A per-claim number cannot be paid on every claim. Even perfect timing takes roughly 40 percent of real auctions across a season, because the budget runs out. You can go all in a few times a year. The numbers are there to help you pick which times.
The numbers come from your own league's contested claims. Other leagues only fill a position where yours has no contested history at all, and the board tells you when that happens.
Someone in my league dropped Josh Downs on Wednesday to claim Caleb Douglas for $23. I wanted Downs more than the player he got cut for. I had no idea what to bid. $12? $40? I also had no idea how many other people were about to bid on him.
I got him the next night for $17 out of a $200 budget. One other manager bid $12.
That is a bad way to make a decision, so I went and measured it.
The question is simple. When your league drops a player after Week 1, is it worth chasing them, and what should you pay?
We took every player dropped in the Week 1 waiver run, in every league here, on every season that has already been played out. Then we checked what those players did for the rest of that season. That is 2,038 who got picked up by somebody else, against 10,222 nobody touched.
The claim itself is the signal. A dropped player somebody else picked up became a season-long starter 16 percent of the time. A dropped player nobody went after did it 7 percent of the time. Same week, same rule, more than double the rate. If another manager wants them, that is information, and on a Thursday it is the best information you have.
They are also cheap. The whole Week 1 waiver run cost a median of 5 percent of budget. These players cost 2 percent when they went through waivers, and nothing at all when they cleared into free agency. A third of the ones who turned into season-long starters cost nobody a dollar.
So bid on them, and do not bid much.
One honest note. This held in 2022, 2023 and 2024. In 2025 it did not, and it fell on both platforms at once, so that is real and not a quirk of one site. Three of the four seasons big enough to read show it and the most recent one does not. Treat it as a good prior, not a law. We will report it again with another season behind it.
What that means today. Across the leagues here, 2,154 players were dropped in Wednesday's run, and 1,393 of them were drafted back in August. As of Thursday morning 2,128 were still sitting there. Your league almost certainly has a few.
We grade ourselves in public every week, so here is what is half built.
The big one is contest intensity. Right now a player is priced on whether we think anyone else will bid. That is a yes or no, and it is too blunt. A player two teams want and a player six teams want are not the same auction. In this data the one six teams want costs about three times as much. We are testing whether we can predict how many teams will bid, not just whether one will, and price off that.
We can already see the ingredients. We know what share of leagues in the country roster a player, we know who is being added most this week, and we know how often each position draws a fight in your specific league. Those feed a demand reading on every row, and that reading already decides which slice of your league history prices the player.
What we have not done is let it move the ceiling. The bar we set for ourselves is thirty scored claims at a confidence level before that level is allowed to price anything. We start collecting against that bar with the Week 3 run. So the work is measured, it is logged every Wednesday, and it has changed nobody's bid yet. We will say so on this page the week it does.
Two smaller things in flight. We are checking how often we show the contested price on a player who then draws a single bidder, because that is budget spent for nothing, and it is on this page above. And we are testing whether a league that has never had a contested claim at a position should borrow from leagues like it or just say it does not know.
One rule we are keeping through all of it. Your league's own history prices your board. Other leagues only fill a hole where yours has nothing to say, and the board tells you when that happens.
Measured across 475 FAABFAX member leagues whose waiver results we have for this run. Private leagues reach us only when a member refreshes from their own browser, usually about a week later. We re-score this page the following Wednesday to include them. Aggregates only. No league, team or manager is named anywhere on this page, and a player appears only when at least 5 leagues bid on them.
Prices are shares of budget, not dollars. Leagues run different budgets. A $50 bid in a $100 league and a $500 bid in a $1,000 league are the same bid, and both show here as 50%. That is the only way to put every league in one table.
Two different prices, and the gap between them matters. "A typical bid" is the middle of every offer made on that player, winners and losers together. "The winning bid" is what the manager who won actually paid, so it sits at the top of that range by definition. When the two are far apart, a few managers wanted that player badly and the rest did not.
"Won by" is the winning bid minus the next-highest bid. It needs the losing bids to exist at all, and it tells you something the winning bid alone cannot: whether the winner had to stretch. A small gap means everyone agreed on the price. A big gap means the winner could have paid less and still won.
| Player | Leaguesthat bid | A typical bidshare of budget | The winning bidshare of budget | Won byover the next-best bid | Two or more bidders |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Devaughn VeleWR | 270737 bids | 6.0%middle of all bids | 10.0%5.0% to 16.0% | 3.0%in 179 auctions with a clear winner | 71%of those leagues |
| Caleb DouglasWR | 208521 bids | 6.0%middle of all bids | 10.0%4.0% to 16.8% | 5.0%in 129 auctions with a clear winner | 66%of those leagues |
| Kaelon BlackRB | 132310 bids | 7.0%middle of all bids | 11.0%4.6% to 19.0% | 5.0%in 78 auctions with a clear winner | 61%of those leagues |
| Jalen CokerWR | 47161 bids | 13.0%middle of all bids | 22.0%10.0% to 35.0% | 6.5%in 36 auctions with a clear winner | 81%of those leagues |
| Devin SingletaryRB | 167271 bids | 2.0%middle of all bids | 5.0%0.6% to 8.0% | 3.0%in 56 auctions with a clear winner | 35%of those leagues |
| San Francisco 49ersDEF | 277677 bids | 2.0%middle of all bids | 3.0%1.0% to 5.0% | 1.0%in 184 auctions with a clear winner | 68%of those leagues |
| Antonio WilliamsWR | 147222 bids | 3.0%middle of all bids | 4.0%2.0% to 8.0% | 2.0%in 47 auctions with a clear winner | 33%of those leagues |
| Tampa Bay BuccaneersDEF | 280621 bids | 1.2%middle of all bids | 2.0%1.0% to 4.0% | 1.0%in 182 auctions with a clear winner | 69%of those leagues |
| Carson WentzQB | 90173 bids | 3.0%middle of all bids | 5.5%1.2% to 11.1% | 5.3%in 36 auctions with a clear winner | 43%of those leagues |
| Drew LockQB | 62149 bids | 3.0%middle of all bids | 7.9%2.0% to 15.0% | 3.0%in 32 auctions with a clear winner | 52%of those leagues |
| Emmett JohnsonRB | 88132 bids | 3.0%middle of all bids | 5.0%2.0% to 8.0% | 1.0%in 31 auctions with a clear winner | 40%of those leagues |
| Dontayvion WicksWR | 145227 bids | 2.0%middle of all bids | 3.0%0.0% to 7.0% | 3.0%in 47 auctions with a clear winner | 38%of those leagues |
| Kalif RaymondWR | 98137 bids | 1.2%middle of all bids | 4.0%1.0% to 7.0% | 0.2%in 18 auctions with a clear winner | 22%of those leagues |
| Mike GesickiTE | 91123 bids | 1.6%middle of all bids | 3.8%0.5% to 8.0% | 2.8%in 14 auctions with a clear winner | 21%of those leagues |
| Bryce YoungQB | 91121 bids | 2.5%middle of all bids | 3.0%0.7% to 7.6% | 3.0%in 19 auctions with a clear winner | 21%of those leagues |
| Pat BryantWR | 85112 bids | 2.0%middle of all bids | 3.2%0.1% to 7.4% | 3.0%in 14 auctions with a clear winner | 22%of those leagues |
| Mack HollinsWR | 107160 bids | 1.3%middle of all bids | 2.5%0.6% to 5.0% | 1.0%in 25 auctions with a clear winner | 27%of those leagues |
| Ja'Marr ChaseWR | 563 bids | 25.5%middle of all bids | 50.2%47.6% to 70.1% | 2.5%in 5 auctions with a clear winner | 100%of those leagues |
| Deebo SamuelWR | 3270 bids | 6.0%middle of all bids | 7.0%2.6% to 17.9% | 3.0%in 15 auctions with a clear winner | 50%of those leagues |
| Matthew GoldenWR | 1334 bids | 6.2%middle of all bids | 17.0%8.3% to 27.1% | 10.1%in 9 auctions with a clear winner | 69%of those leagues |
| Isaiah LikelyTE | 1330 bids | 3.4%middle of all bids | 15.0%2.7% to 16.2% | 7.3%in 8 auctions with a clear winner | 69%of those leagues |
| Tyler ShoughQB | 5870 bids | 2.0%middle of all bids | 3.0%1.0% to 6.5% | 1.0%in 10 auctions with a clear winner | 17%of those leagues |
| De'Von AchaneRB | 668 bids | 12.7%middle of all bids | 26.9%23.8% to 35.7% | 6.2%in 6 auctions with a clear winner | 100%of those leagues |
| Brock PurdyQB | 3151 bids | 2.0%middle of all bids | 5.0%2.0% to 6.5% | 3.8%in 15 auctions with a clear winner | 48%of those leagues |
| Dallas GoedertTE | 2451 bids | 4.8%middle of all bids | 6.0%0.2% to 12.8% | 4.9%in 10 auctions with a clear winner | 42%of those leagues |
| Dalton KincaidTE | 1845 bids | 5.0%middle of all bids | 8.0%6.0% to 17.0% | 4.0%in 13 auctions with a clear winner | 72%of those leagues |
| Rashod BatemanWR | 7194 bids | 0.7%middle of all bids | 2.0%0.0% to 6.8% | 0.0%in 15 auctions with a clear winner | 25%of those leagues |
| Kendrick BourneWR | 78103 bids | 0.2%middle of all bids | 1.7%0.0% to 5.0% | 0.0%in 9 auctions with a clear winner | 22%of those leagues |
| Kendre MillerRB | 65101 bids | 0.9%middle of all bids | 2.0%0.9% to 5.3% | 0.2%in 21 auctions with a clear winner | 34%of those leagues |
| Joe BurrowQB | 525 bids | 2.1%middle of all bids | 25.0%2.2% to 27.5% | 24.0%in 5 auctions with a clear winner | 100%of those leagues |
| Pat FreiermuthTE | 4956 bids | 2.0%middle of all bids | 2.5%0.7% to 4.0% | 0.5%in 4 auctions with a clear winner | 12%of those leagues |
| Kenyon SadiqTE | 6178 bids | 1.5%middle of all bids | 2.0%0.4% to 6.0% | 1.0%in 12 auctions with a clear winner | 23%of those leagues |
| Kansas City ChiefsDEF | 112175 bids | 1.0%middle of all bids | 1.0%0.0% to 3.0% | 0.5%in 34 auctions with a clear winner | 40%of those leagues |
| Brock BowersTE | 541 bids | 10.5%middle of all bids | 20.1%15.0% to 25.2% | 4.8%in 5 auctions with a clear winner | 100%of those leagues |
| Garrett WilsonWR | 546 bids | 7.8%middle of all bids | 20.0%15.0% to 45.1% | 15.0%in 4 auctions with a clear winner | 80%of those leagues |
| Terry McLaurinWR | 737 bids | 5.0%middle of all bids | 13.9%7.6% to 19.4% | 3.1%in 6 auctions with a clear winner | 100%of those leagues |
| Raheim SandersRB | 5791 bids | 1.0%middle of all bids | 1.6%0.1% to 4.2% | 1.4%in 18 auctions with a clear winner | 35%of those leagues |
| Justin JolyTE | 1525 bids | 2.0%middle of all bids | 6.1%0.0% to 14.8% | 3.0%in 8 auctions with a clear winner | 60%of those leagues |
| MarShawn LloydRB | 2973 bids | 3.3%middle of all bids | 3.0%0.4% to 12.3% | 5.0%in 15 auctions with a clear winner | 55%of those leagues |
| Adonai MitchellWR | 4353 bids | 0.3%middle of all bids | 2.0%0.0% to 3.0% | 0.0%in 5 auctions with a clear winner | 16%of those leagues |
Each number is this week against a typical week like it: the same week in 2024 and 2025, from public leagues, weighted to match our mix of superflex and one-QB leagues.
"Two or more bidders" is how often a player drew a real auction instead of being picked up for nothing. When that share rises, people are panicking. "Won by" is how far above the next-best bid the winner landed. A small number means everyone agreed on the price. A big one means the winner could have paid less and still won. "Paid double" is how often the winner bid at least twice the next-highest bid.
| Two or more biddersshare of players | Typical winning bidshare of budget | Won byabove the next-best bid | Paid doubleor more than the next bid | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Every position7,630 players | 30%+44% vs baseline | 5.0%+25% vs baseline | 1.2%+20% vs baseline | 25%+4% vs baseline |
| RB1,739 players | 29%+23% vs baseline | 5.0%+0% vs baseline | 1.0%-33% vs baseline | 22%-5% vs baseline |
| WR2,613 players | 33%+56% vs baseline | 8.0%+100% vs baseline | 2.0%+100% vs baseline | 26%+7% vs baseline |
| QB820 players | 29%+68% vs baseline | 6.0%+20% vs baseline | 1.8%-39% vs baseline | 29%+1% vs baseline |
| TE1,000 players | 22%+12% vs baseline | 3.0%+2% vs baseline | 1.0%+0% vs baseline | 21%-17% vs baseline |
In a superflex league a quarterback can also fill the flex spot, so teams need more of them. We keep those leagues apart from one-QB leagues so a quarterback price is never a blend of the two.
| League type | QB priceshare of budget | Two or more bidders |
|---|---|---|
| Superflex106 leagues, 22% of them | 6.8%typical winning QB bid | 36%of QB claims |
| Two-QB7 leagues, 1% of them | 5.5%typical winning QB bid | 29%of QB claims |
| One-QB362 leagues, 76% of them | 5.0%typical winning QB bid | 23%of QB claims |
| Quarterback | Superflexwinning bid | One-QBwinning bid |
|---|---|---|
| Carson Wentz | 6.0%in 73 leagues | 0.0%in 14 leagues |
| Drew Lock | 10.0%in 53 leagues | 1.1%in 6 leagues |
| Bryce Young | 3.0%in 7 leagues | 3.5%in 82 leagues |
More claims were contested than usual. 30% of claims had two or more bidders, against 21% in a typical week like this one (+44%).
Winning bids ran higher than usual: a median of 5.0% of budget against 4.0%.
QB drew more competition than usual: 29% of QB claims had two or more bidders, against 17% in a typical week (+68%). The winning QB bid was a median 6.0% of budget, against 5.0%.
Our P60 bid swung more than prices did. When it said under 8% of budget it won 8% of contested claims, and those players took a median 12.0%. When it said 22% or more it won 80%, and those took a median 13.5%. Too low at one end, too high at the other.