When you calculate your week 9 FAAB, you want to sort your waiver wire targets based on which of three monsters they are. Yes, this is a longstanding and peer-reviewed system. No, this is not something I concocted for cheap Halloween hits. I will fight you.
PLEASE NOTE: I use “start of season FAAB %” and “week 9 FAAB %” interchangeably. In all cases, I’m referring to the % of the initial amount of FAAB you had at the start of the season.3
Zombies
Already a common fantasy football parlance, a zombie is someone who used to be good, but then sucked or was inactive for a significant period of time, and now you are FAABing them on speculation that they will rise from the dead.
Vernon Davis
Well, you knew Reed had to start living on the injury report eventually. Davis has high performance potential when Washington is in a decent matchup. If they are looking to get slaughtered by one of the two NFC East juggernauts, though, you’ll want to stream. Worth only about 2% of your start-of-season FAAB.
Danny Woodhead
If you need an RB in three weeks, this is your guy. He will be priced well, as he is not on any “win now” teams’ shortlists. Feel free to bid 5-10% of your PPR-league FAAB (adjust based on how much FAAB other desperate-for-RB owners there are), but don’t be sad if someone else gets him: He’s just a slow-burning lottery ticket.
Frankensteins
Cobbled together from the injured limbs of players above them on the depth chart, Frankensteins have monster potential due primarily to newly-developed opportunity.
Alfred Morris/Darren McFadden/Rod Smith
It’s too bad I didn’t call these guy’s zombies because their weak knocking at the door eerily resembles Night of the Living Dead. If you are thin at RB and have money to burn, feel free to drop 50% of your initial amount on the week 9 FAAB for Morris and/or 35% on McFadden. If for some bizarre reason your league has both in the FA, go ahead and up those % by 5 each, getting both would be larger than the sum of the parts.
If you don’t have much FAAB left, but still want in this “what rando guy is Dallas going to promote” lottery, Rod Smith should be there for a buck or two. Still, he’s a stash, so feel free to bid $0 week 9 FAAB on him.
Jimmy Garoppolo
May not start until week 11. Let someone else burn week 9 FAAB on a dude with 2 career starts playing (or not playing for 2 weeks) on an 0-8 team.
Alex Collins
Collins might fizzle out, or might not be able to produce consistent stats in a timeshare with Buck Allen. But, this late in the season, you’re not going to get a better chance at a top 24 RB. Bid 75% of your week 9 FAAB if you are struggling at RB.
Government-Engineered Superviruses
Okay, just so we can get this out of the way and never talk about it again: Yes, these are known as “government engineered superviruses” because they are breaking out.
Juju Smith-Schuster
If you have found yourself streaming WR2s/flexes with little luck, avail: Schuster seems to be the medium-floor-insane-upside guy you want. He can win you games, but he probably won’t zero out and lose you games. If this fills an important hole in your lineup, bid 100% of your total week 9 FAAB on him. There won’t be another player who develops this 25-point potential for the rest of the year, mark my words.
Paul Richardson
On the one hand, people tend to shy away from WR mid-season upstarts because there is a huge tendency for regression towards the mean. On the other hand, Seattle’s offense just starts getting hot around this time every year, and they brought nobody Doug Baldwin all the way to top 12 WR status. Feel free to bet 25% of your week 9 FAAB on him, but expect him to floor out at around 2 catches and have only 1-2 more breakout games this year. Good for solid teams looking to roll bigger dice in their flex.
For more fun stuff, check out these links:
Flacco-Lantern: The Huge List of Halloween-Themed Team Names
