The Current State of the Fantasy Union: A Girl-to-Girl Guide (Fantasy Football)
According to ESPN, the odds that Miami will possess that first pick are a whopping 46% as of Saturday heading into Week 3.For the girls who have seen The Clique, read the books, or have absolutely no idea what the title of this article means, stay with me. I promise this is just a beginner’s guide to fantasy football, with a special orientation toward the ladies who opened their lineup after Week 1, saw that half their roster was suddenly marked “questionable,” and thought:
Okay… so what am I supposed to do with this?
I will get to the advice soon, but first, I need to explain the title of this article and why it is actually relevant to Fantasy Football. One of the main characters in The Clique routinely invented her own dialect, one that my friends and I LOVED to imitate. She published her own IN/OUT lists, always titled “The Current State of the Union.”
So, in honor of a book series I absolutely loved, I am calling this series my Current State of the Fantasy Union.
Each week, it will be: which players are IN? Which players are OUT?
However, managing a fantasy team is not just about knowing which players balled out one week. Once Sunday Night Football starts winding down, that is when the real work begins.
Who is sitting on waivers? Who are your league mates adding and dropping? Which positions do you desperately need to fill? Which positions do they desperately need to fill? And which random guy currently collecting dust on your bench is suddenly the starter you should have been putting in your lineup since week 1?
If you read my first Girl-to-Girl Guide, we spent a lot of time talking about how to draft a team, what all the numbers on your screen mean, and why you should probably have at least some semblance of a strategy before going into your draft. Well, we are in the trenches now, and, like it or not, the training wheels are officially off. Luckily, you already know how to build a roster. Now, we need to teach you how to manage one.
In this article, we are talking about the waiver wire. FAAB. Trades. Injuries. Roster management. And, perhaps most importantly, learning to pay attention to every team in your league.
So, before we start naming the weekly winners and losers, we need to establish WHAT is IN and what is OUT when it comes to actually managing a fantasy football team.
Football is fun
— Jeff Bell (@4WhomJBellTolls) September 18, 2026
Knowing Your Waiver Wire
First things first: So, what is a waiver wire?
The waiver wire is a pool of NFL players who are not currently on anyone’s roster in your league. Each week, you can submit a claim, or bid, for a player you want to add. When waivers process, you will find out whether or not he is actually now a part of your team. In some leagues, once waivers have been processed, you can pick up any remaining players without actually having to place a bid. That being said, if you have your eye on a player and think another manager might want him too, I would not risk waiting for waivers to clear before making your move.
In a way, think of the waiver wire kind of like the fantasy football clearance rack. You might have to dig a little, but every once in a while, you could find something great that everyone else somehow overlooked. In fantasy, that overlooked player could end up becoming your next weekly starter.
Look for players who were overlooked in the draft, backups who suddenly got bigger roles, rookies who broke out, or players whose opportunities change because their starter got hurt. For example, Jalen Coker was Week 2’s diamond of the waiver wire. In Week 1, he caught eight of his nine targets for 138 yards and two TDs, which gave him 33.8 full PPR fantasy points.
So, that is, in fact, an absurdly high number. And depending on the size of your league, there is a pretty good chance he was sitting on the waiver wire before that first game. For reference on just how good those stats are, Ja’Marr Chase, whom many of us, including myself, drafted in the first round, gave us two catches for 12 yards and 3.2 PPR points in Week 1. Trust me, I hated that too, but that did not mean Jalen Coker was suddenly better than Ja’Marr Chase.
However, it DID mean that we needed to take a second to figure out who Jalen Coker was, why this performance happened, and, most importantly, whether any part of it could be replicated. To figure that out, the number in Coker’s stats that you should be paying attention to is not just the 33.8 fantasy points. It is the nine targets.
Those nine targets are a perfect example of the first rule making our IN list:
IN: Paying Attention to Opportunity
In Week 1, QB Bryce Young attempted 37 passes and nine of them went Coker’s way. In other words, nearly one out of every four pass attempts was intended for him.
That should get our attention, ladies.
Coker’s two TDs were great, but they are also just part of a Week 1 performance that you can not necessarily count on a player replicating every week. TDs can be unpredictable, especially for a player who seemingly came out of nowhere, but remember, targets are what we care about. The targets tell us how many times Young threw the ball in Coker’s direction, and 9 of them meant he was getting plenty of good looks. The more often a player gets thrown the ball, the more chances he has to score fantasy points.
And this is not just a rule for WRs. For RBs, we are looking at carries for that same reason. In Week 1, Kenneth Walker III had 23 carries for 173 rushing yards and two TDs. He will not score twice every week, but 23 carries tells us something arguably more important: his offense consistently trusts him to carry the ball.
You might see a player on the waiver wire who scored 14 fantasy points and had more than 100 receiving yards with a TD. That is great, and we love that for him, but if you see that he only had two targets the whole game, then maybe we should not be dropping Ja’Marr Chase for him yet.
Me waiting to know my waiver wire fate pic.twitter.com/v2JHFxK69E
— The Fantasy Install (@fantasyinstall) September 16, 2026
IN: Checking Who Your League Mates Are Dropping
The waiver wire is not limited to the players who are available when you first open the Sleeper app. You also need to pay attention to who is getting dropped. Someone else in your league might need to make room for their shiny new waiver pickup, but who did they sacrifice to make it happen?
Was it actually a smart move? Did they panic after one bad week? Were they dealing with an injury and forced to clear bench space? Did they drop somebody you were considering drafting two weeks ago because he had one ugly Sunday?
People make bad drops. People panic. People run out of bench space, but their roster problem can very quickly become your roster solution.
Too many people panic after one week in football and drop players they shouldn’t for a random waiver wire guy. Make your pickup make sense for more than one week
— Joe Pepe (@jpep20) September 15, 2026
OUT: Chasing Last Week’s Points
The goal is to find a balance between overreacting to everything that happens in a singular week and ignoring it altogether. You do not need to pick up every player who suddenly becomes the internet’s favorite waiver wire target, but you also do not want to get so attached to the team you originally drafted that you miss an opportunity to make it better (especially when a few of those players have already picked up a QUES tag).
One game gives us information, but it does not give us the entire answer. Ja’Marr Chase having one terrible Sunday did not suddenly make him a bad fantasy player, just like Jalen Coker having one incredible Sunday did not automatically make him a must-start for the rest of the season. What matters is whether the things that led to those performances continue. In Week 2, Ja’Marr Chase was able to raise his stats to 23 fantasy points, nine targets, two TDs, and 75 yards.
That is really what managing your team comes down to: just always pay attention without making a rash decision or overreacting.
Sometimes you have to make tough decisions as a fantasy manager… https://t.co/0dPJxyuss9
— Sleeper (@SleeperHQ) September 17, 2026
Understanding FAAB & Trading
Depending on your league, waiver claims are usually decided by waiver priority or FAAB, which stands for Free Agent Acquisition Budget. If your league uses FAAB, every manager will get a set amount of “fake money” to spend on potential waiver players throughout the season.
So, let’s say you started with $100. If you bid $12 on a player and I bid $17, I will win that player for my roster, assuming no one else decides he is worth $18. I now have $83 left to spend for the rest of the season. So, yes, it is basically just a silent auction, except instead of bidding on art or antiques, we are fighting over a Panthers WR we may not have known existed three days ago. The concept is easy. Figuring out how much players are actually worth is where things get interesting.
Let’s go back to Week 1 Jalen Coker for another example. His 33.8 PPR points were obviously going to get people’s attention, but the Fantasy Footballers currently project him for 165.8 fantasy points over the rest of the season. So, in other words, Week 1 was exciting, but it does not mean we need to bid $50 on him. Think about the questions I have laid out so far before you start bidding on anyone.
Ultimately, that is the difference between making a thoughtful waiver claim and waking up Wednesday morning to discover you spent $38 on a player who barely touched the football again for the rest of the season.
The Week 2 waiver wire is going to be a goldmine
— SleeperNFL (@SleeperNFL) September 14, 2026
IN: Actually Spending Your FAAB
Now, I have just spent several paragraphs warning you not to get too carried away with your FAAB, but I also need to make one thing clear: do not be too hesitant to spend it. Unlike everything else in life, you should actually spend this money. I promise, there is no favorable exchange rate at the end of fantasy season. Your remaining $47 does not become $47 real dollars, and trust me, I say that as someone who personally asked my boyfriend this question multiple times last year.
FAAB exists to make your team better, and there will absolutely be times when spending a decent chunk of it does make sense. Injuries happen, depth charts change, and a backup RB who was completely irrelevant in September can suddenly become one of the most valuable players on the waiver wire in November. Depending on your league settings, you may even be able to include FAAB in trades, so there are plenty of reasons not to treat every dollar like it needs to survive until Week 17.
At the same time, we probably do not need to blow $100 in Week 4 because we convinced ourselves that the next Peyton Manning is on waivers. The goal is not to spend as little FAAB as possible. We want to spend money when the opportunity is worth it.
Live look at my FAAB budget one week into the season pic.twitter.com/2fx0ssOhCy
— RotoWire (@RotoWire) September 16, 2026
OUT: Letting Someone Convince You of a Bad Trade
The waiver wire is not the only place to improve your roster. Sometimes the player you need is already on another team, which means it is time to talk trades.
This is also where knowing your league mates’ teams becomes important. Let’s say you drafted Trey McBride as your starting TE, so you are feeling pretty good there after he put up 20 PPR points, 95 receiving yards, and a TD in Week 1. But you also have Isaiah Likely sitting on your bench, and he balled out in Week 1, putting up nearly 24 PPR points, 78 receiving yards, and two TDs. Meanwhile, your RB situation is really stressing you out, but your lineup is strong enough that you don’t really need Likely in your flex spot.
You could keep Likely on your bench all season because what if I need another TE someday? Or you could open up your heart, look at everyone else’s roster, and figure out who is stacked at RB but desperately needs a TE. Now you have something someone else needs; they probably have something you need, and there may actually be a trade worth making.
But this is also where you need to know what you want out of a trade before someone tells you what you want. I have been in many situations where people have told me that they have a “great” trade offer… newsflash: fantasy managers can be remarkably persuasive when they are trying to convince you that Omarion Hampton is definitely worth the Lions defense and Brandon Aubrey. Before you accept anything, ask yourself the same basic questions we have been asking all along: Will this player actually make my team better? Would I have to get rid of one of the only reliable players that I have?
If the answer is no, then you do not need to be talked into it. A trade is supposed to fix a weakness on your roster, not create a new one just because your leaguemate had a solid argument.
Got hit with the “this makes both of our teams better” fantasy football trade request pic.twitter.com/oUkXbwimrW
— Ian Hartitz (@Ihartitz) September 18, 2026
Conclusion
If there is one thing I want you to take away from this article, it is that drafting your team was only the beginning. Fantasy football is going to give you new information every week, and learning what to do with that information is what actually makes you a better fantasy manager.
The goal is not to predict everything perfectly; it is to pay attention. You are in this league for a reason, so take the time to look beyond the points and pay attention to the opportunities behind them. Check the waiver wire. Check the transaction log. Spend your FAAB when it can actually make your team better. Pay attention to what the other managers in your league need, but, most importantly, know what you need before you make any moves.
The takeaway from our first official Current State of the Fantasy Union is simple: panicking is OUT, and paying attention is IN. You cannot control who gets hurt or what happens on any given Sunday, but now you know how to respond, adjust, and put together a winning team.
I believe in you, ladies!
I just started playing fantasy football this year and now I get it.
— Kenny Stills (@KSTiLLS) September 17, 2026