The FAAB Market Report

1Shipley looked like a risky add. The market paid the going rate, and the little history we have says that was fair.

Saquon Barkley and Tank Bigsby both got hurt in Week 4, Bigsby at the very end of the game. That left Will Shipley, third among Eagles backs in touches this season. He was the most contested player of the week: he drew at least one bid in 296 of our leagues, and the median winning bid was 17% of budget.

On paper, he was a risky add. He was a third-stringer. Eagles running backs had been scoring 11.5 half-PPR points a game, lower than all but about 4% of the backfields in our history. And the offense was below average. You might expect the market to pay less for a spot like that. It did not. So we went back through the history to see whether it should have.

How we looked at it:

• Every time since 2012 that a team's lead back went down and a new back took over. That is 138 cases. In 40, both top backs were out and the third-stringer took over, like Shipley. In 98, the usual backup stepped in.
• We scored each new back over his next three games, in half-PPR.
• For prices, we used the 61 cases from the 2019 to 2025 seasons that our member leagues bid on.
• We split those by how hard the market chased the new back: the share of leagues that bid on him, out of the leagues where he was still available.
• A weak backfield is one scoring below the median in our history, 18.7 points a game.

Most replacement backs go cheap, because few leagues can or do bid on them. Across all 61 cases, the median winning bid was 5.3% of budget. Backs bid on in under 20% of our leagues had often been rostered already: in a median 51% of leagues, against 17% for the rest.

When the market chases a replacement back, it pays about 18%. In 25 cases, at least half the leagues that could bid on the new back did. The median winning bid in those was 18.0%. Shipley drew bids in 76% of the leagues where he was available, and went for 17%. That puts him 14th of 26, right in the middle.

The market does not discount for a bad spot. Among those chased backs, third-stringers went for a median 21.5%, against 16.7% for backups. Backs from weak backfields went for 16.7%, against 20.0% from strong ones.

So far, that looks fair. The chased backs scored a median 10.4 points a game. The four chased third-stringers with three games of results scored a median 11.7, and none scored under 5. Backs from weak backfields scored 10.1, against 10.7.

The flops were backs few leagues chased. Since 2012, 30% of third-stringers who took over scored under 5 points a game, against 17% of backups. We have prices for five of those flops, and all five drew bids in under 30% of the leagues where they were available and went for 5% or less: Jacques Patrick in 2021, Tony Jones in 2021, Keaontay Ingram in 2023, Audric Estimé in 2024 and Emari Demercado in 2025. Low interest is not a sure sign, though. Seven priced third-stringers drew that little interest, and two of them did fine.

One more point in Shipley's favor. He has played more than his touches suggest: 51% of the snaps in Week 2, and 48% in Week 4, the same as Bigsby. The market may see him as a co-backup, not a third-stringer.

Our read: the warning signs you might expect, a third-stringer in a weak backfield, have not predicted a flop in the few cases where the market paid attention. Low interest has been the better warning. We will report back after three games.

These groups are small: 25 chased cases in all, and only 5 of them third-stringers. Read them as leans, not rules.

2The five most contested players

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.

3Did our number work

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.

What we bid, against what it took

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 10% and 21% of budget across these rows. What players actually took to win ran from 3% to 28%. 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 34% 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 7.0% 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.

Did we predict which claims would be contested?

Every card leads with one number: the minimum bid when we expect nobody else to bid, or P60 when we expect other managers to bid. This is how often that call was right. It is not part of the grade yet.

All three of our bids

P90 was shown on far fewer players than P60, so it has fewer claims to score. Grey cells are too thin to count toward the grade.

4New method against old

Every card now leads with a player-specific bid. It adjusts your league's price for how widely a player is rostered across the country, how often he is being added, and player sentiment. The previous method, the same price for every player at a position, is still shown beneath it. Both are graded here on the same contested claims, with the same rules.

5We bid too high on the week's top player

Our grade this week is a B.

We changed how we grade, to match what the tool is for: a bid that wins the players you want most, without wasting budget. Winning a little more often than we promise now counts as on target, because losing the player is worse than paying a bit extra. Graded the old way, this week would have been a C.

Will Shipley was the player most leagues fought over. In 216 leagues, two or more managers bid on him. The winner usually paid 17% of budget. Our P60 said 27%. That won him 71% of the time, more than the 60% it promises, but it cost more than it needed to.

More players drew a bidding war than in a normal week: 1 in 3, against 1 in 5. Running backs most of all.

6What we are still working on

Our P60 swings too far. When it said a player would go cheap, under 8% of budget, it won only 46% of the time. When it said a player would go for 22% or more, it won 81%. We bid too low on players we expect to be cheap, and too high on the ones we expect to be expensive.

We also suggest P60 too often when nobody else is bidding. In those cases the minimum bid would have won.

Last week's report now includes the private leagues that came in late. Its grade stays a B.

We still owe you a Gordon versus Wright follow-up. It comes with the Week 7 report.

7Who got added, and what they cost

Measured across 444 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. This page was re-scored the following Wednesday to include the ones that arrived late. 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.

8How this week compares to a typical week

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.

9Quarterback prices by league type

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.

The week's most-claimed quarterbacks

10What we learned

More claims were contested than usual. 34% of claims had two or more bidders, against 21% in a typical week like this one (+62%).

RB drew more competition than usual: 40% of RB claims had two or more bidders, against 23% in a typical week (+76%). The winning RB bid was a median 15.0% of budget, against 10.3%.

TE drew more competition than usual: 26% of TE claims had two or more bidders, against 19% in a typical week (+35%). The winning TE bid was a median 4.2% of budget, against 6.0%.

Our P60 bid swung more than prices did. When it said under 8% of budget it won 34% of contested claims, and those players took a median 8.0%. When it said 22% or more it won 80%, and those took a median 19.0%. Too low at one end, too high at the other.

Our card led with the contested price on 873 claims that ended up drawing a single bidder. The minimum bid would have won every one, so following our number there cost a median 15.0% of budget for nothing.