NUVI Alumni 2026
Team Whitehead · $88 FAAB remaining · roster full at 14/14
Generated Wednesday, September 9, 2026 · before any Week 1 game has been played · league data pulled live from the ESPN API
Starting requirements are QB 1 · RB 2 · WR 2 · TE 1 · FLEX 2, with six bench spots and — importantly — no IR slot (the league is configured with zero IR spots). An injured player occupies a live bench seat like anyone else.
| Pos | Count | Who |
|---|---|---|
| QB | 1 | Josh Allen |
| RB | 4 | Jonathan Taylor, Saquon Barkley, J.K. Dobbins, Kaleb Johnson |
| WR | 8 | Brian Thomas Jr., Terry McLaurin, Zay Flowers, Jameson Williams, Rome Odunze (Q), Jayden Reed, KC Concepcion, Tank Dell (IR) |
| TE | 1 | George Kittle (Q) |
Eight receivers for two WR slots and two flexes. One tight end for a mandatory tight end slot. That imbalance is the whole report.
| Week | Out | Consequence |
|---|---|---|
| 6 | Jameson Williams | Fine — covered |
| 7 | Josh Allen, Brian Thomas Jr., Terry McLaurin | No quarterback at all |
| 8 | George Kittle, Tank Dell | No tight end at all |
| 10 | Saquon Barkley, J.K. Dobbins, Rome Odunze | Thin at RB, survivable |
| 11 | Jayden Reed, KC Concepcion, Kaleb Johnson | Fine — WR surplus absorbs it |
| 13 | Jonathan Taylor, Zay Flowers | Fine |
Weeks 7 and 8 are back-to-back zeroes in mandatory slots — not downgrades, zeroes. Those are the two dates this season is actually pointing at, and both are cheap to solve now.
Every FAAB dollar ever spent in NUVI Alumni, in full:
| Date | Team | Player | Bid | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sep 1 | Team Whitehead | Kaleb Johnson (RB) | $11 | Won — sole bidder |
| Sep 1 | Team Whitehead | DJ Giddens (RB) | $1 | Won |
| Sep 1 | Breaking Burrow | Jalen McMillan (WR) | $1 | Won |
That is the entire history. Eight of ten teams have spent $0 and have never placed a waiver claim. Over the same stretch there have been eight free-agent adds at $0 — Bijan Mustard alone has made four, and Team Stowell two in the last 48 hours.
| Team | FAAB left | Waiver claims ever |
|---|---|---|
| Team Whitehead | $88 | 2 |
| Breaking Burrow | $99 | 1 |
| Carvalho · Jensen · Cee Deez Nuts · His Airdness · Stowell · Lackey · Carnahan · Bijan Mustard | $100 | 0 |
Last week's lesson repeated itself in the data: the $11 on Kaleb Johnson was unopposed. National rostered-percentage momentum keeps predicting competition that this league never produces.
The reframe that matters this week: when 346 of 350 available players are $0 free agents, competition isn't an auction you win with money. It's a race you win by clicking first. Budget is not the scarce resource here — roster spots and timing are.
ADD Brenton Strange (TE, JAX) · DROP Tank Dell (WR, HOU) · Do it before Thursday 5:35pm PT
George Kittle is questionable for a Thursday opener in Melbourne, eight months removed from an Achilles tear suffered in January's Wild Card game. The signals are genuinely positive — he practiced in Australia, the coaching staff says he'll play in some capacity, and San Francisco cutting backup tight end Brayden Willis reads as confidence. But "plays in some capacity" on a surgically repaired Achilles is not a tight end you leave uncovered, and Justin currently has no other tight end. If Kittle is scratched or snap-limited, the TE slot is a zero, and the games kick off before waivers could bail him out.
Strange is the right target rather than the obvious one. T.J. Hockenson is the name at the top of the list by national ownership (61%), and he's a trap: TE22 by ADP, roughly 7.7 projected points per game, and third in line for targets behind Justin Jefferson and Jordan Addison. Strange has the more secure role — five targets per game after returning from injury in 2025, four top-ten weekly finishes in those seven games, and seventh among tight ends in EPA per target, attached to an ascending quarterback. Season projections have the two within half a point per week of each other, so the tiebreaker is the upside tail, and that's Strange's.
The drop is the easy half. Tank Dell is on IR-designated-to-return and cannot play until Week 5 at the earliest, coming back from a dislocated knee with torn ACL, MCL and LCL plus meniscus damage that cost him all of 2025; Houston's GM said this month that he is "not quite there." With no IR slot in this league he burns a live bench seat for at least a month, on a roster that already has seven other receivers and a hole at tight end. He was added yesterday, which makes this awkward rather than wrong — the stash is defensible in the abstract, it just isn't affordable at 14/14 with Weeks 7 and 8 looking the way they do.
QB2 for the Week 7 bye — wait until Week 6.
Sitting unrostered in this league right now: Bo Nix (89.6% rostered nationally), Jared Goff (71.2%), Baker Mayfield (60.1%), Sam Darnold, C.J. Stroud, Malik Willis. All free agents at $0. In a ten-team league with one quarterback slot, the position is effectively inexhaustible, and burning a bench seat in Week 1 to solve a Week 7 problem is the expensive way to do it.
Revisit in Week 5 or 6 and take whoever is playing best. The name to watch is Malik Willis — he projects for 671 rushing yards, second among all quarterbacks behind only Jayden Daniels, and rushing volume is exactly the trait you want in a one-week Josh Allen replacement because it holds up regardless of matchup. If he keeps that role through September he's the pickup; if not, Nix or Goff will almost certainly still be there.
OPTIONAL — ADD Kaelon Black (RB, SF) · DROP KC Concepcion (WR, CLE)
This one is genuinely close, and holding is a fine answer. Black is San Francisco's RB2 on the Week 1 depth chart, a third-round rookie who has the backup job locked with Jordan James dealing with a rib fracture. He is the handcuff to a 30-year-old Christian McCaffrey coming off an NFL-high 413 touches, who has played seven games or fewer in three of his nine seasons. If McCaffrey misses time, Black is an immediate RB1 in a Shanahan offense — the highest-equity lottery ticket on the board.
The cost is real, though. Concepcion projects around 10 points per week — higher than any available tight end — and his 27.2% career target share led the rookie class. What holds him back is everything around him: Cleveland finished bottom-three in every major passing category in 2025, Deshaun Watson is the early favorite to start while working back from a twice-torn Achilles, and targets are split with Jerry Jeudy, Denzel Boston and Harold Fannin Jr. He is a stash, not a starter, and he is the eighth receiver on a roster that starts at most four.
The competitive note: McCaffrey belongs to Team Stowell, who has made two free-agent adds in the last 48 hours and is the most active manager in the league right now. If anyone takes Black, it's them — and they'd take him for $0 too. There's no bid to win, just a clock.
Josh Downs (WR, IND) — the only player on waivers worth anything. Bid $2 if you want him, or let him clear.
Downs is the best player available by a wide margin: a 24% target share in 2025 that led all Colts pass catchers, with Michael Pittman Jr. traded away, and 14.2 fantasy points per game in contests where he sees eight or more targets. He's on waivers rather than free agency because he was dropped in the last day or so, and he'll clear to $0 free agency within about 24 hours if nobody claims him.
The case against is roster fit, not talent. Justin already has eight receivers and one tight end. Downs would slot in around WR6 and never crack the lineup, while the bench seat he'd consume is the same one the tight end problem needs. Best-player-available is the wrong frame when the roster is full and the hole is somewhere else. If the pull is too strong, $2 almost certainly wins given three bids in league history — but the recommendation is to let him go and keep the spot.
The other three on waivers — Jordyn Tyson (IR), Jake Tonges (1.3% rostered), DJ Giddens (0.4%, just dropped from this roster) — are all skips.
This is the default in this league, and this week it applies to essentially the entire board. Everyone listed below is a $0 free agent right now — not on waivers, no claim required, no reason to spend a dollar:
| Player | Pos | Rostered | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bo Nix | QB | 89.6% | Nearly universally rostered nationally, free here |
| Jakobi Meyers | WR | 81.6% | Questionable; drafted and dropped from this roster |
| Khalil Shakir | WR | 71.2% | — |
| Jared Goff | QB | 71.2% | Backup plan for the Week 7 bye |
| T.J. Hockenson | TE | 61.0% | The name-brand trap — see move 1 |
| Baker Mayfield | QB | 60.1% | — |
| Hunter Henry | TE | 56.5% | Highest-projected available TE; the floor alternative to Strange |
| Chris Rodriguez Jr. | RB | 33.2% | — |
| Jonah Coleman | RB | 31.9% | Steepest riser in the pool (+2.3) |
| Dalton Schultz | TE | 19.5% | Best pure Week 1 TE streamer — Higgins' ACL lifts him |
| Malik Willis | QB | 22.0% | The Week 7 target |
| Kayshon Boutte | WR | 16.1% | Steps into Houston's WR2 role |
| Kaelon Black | RB | 15.9% | See move 3 |
| Chris Brooks | RB | 9.5% | Third man in the Green Bay committee |
If the choice is between spending FAAB and waiting a day, wait. This league has given no evidence it will take a player off the board.
The lineup has Brian Thomas Jr. on the bench. The current starters list Zay Flowers and Terry McLaurin at receiver with Jameson Williams and Rome Odunze in the flexes — which leaves the best receiver on the roster inactive, while Odunze missed Monday's practice with a right leg injury and is a real scratch risk. Flowers, for what it's worth, is fully cleared. This is almost certainly a stale auto-lineup rather than a decision; Thursday's run will go through it properly, but it's worth fixing now.
Kaleb Johnson is a hold, not a mistake. Josh Jacobs is on the commissioner's exempt list following two misdemeanor charges — barred from practicing or playing, with the Packers only expressing hope he plays "sometime this season." Green Bay traded a sixth-rounder for Johnson because of it. The catch is that it's a three-way committee with MarShawn Lloyd and Chris Brooks, so the $11 bought a share, not a job. Week 1 touch distribution settles it; if Johnson clears ten touches he's worth every dollar, and if Lloyd runs away with it the drop decision gets easy next week. The season projection on file for him (0.3 points per week) is stale — it predates the trade and still has him buried in Pittsburgh.
Less than usual, and for a specific reason: no Week 1 game has been played yet. Everything above is built on camp reports, depth charts, injury designations and preseason usage — there are no snap counts, no target shares, and no injury-vacated roles to react to. That makes this the least informative waiver report of the season by a wide margin, which is itself an argument for the cheap, structural moves recommended here rather than aggressive spending.
The specific things that could age badly: Kittle could look completely healthy Thursday and make the Strange add redundant (it still isn't wasted — the Week 8 bye is coming either way). Strange's role depends on a target share he has held for seven career games, not seventeen. Kaelon Black is worth nothing at all unless McCaffrey gets hurt. And the read that this league won't bid is based on three data points; one aggressive new habit from any manager invalidates it, so it's worth re-checking the transaction log every week rather than assuming.
Confidence is highest on the thing that costs nothing: Justin has one tight end and one quarterback, byes in Weeks 7 and 8, and a bench seat occupied by someone who cannot play until Week 5. That's true regardless of what happens Thursday.
Ran late — Monday, September 14, 2026, 7:52am MT. The scheduled job was supposed to fire before the 11:00am MT Sunday kickoffs and did not. Every Sunday game was already final when it ran, so nothing below was actionable. Posted as a record, not as advice.
No. Checked after the fact: all eight starters were active and played. There was one live risk going into Sunday — Zay Flowers carried a QUESTIONABLE tag into the 11:00am BAL @ IND game — and he not only played, he led the team's receivers with 26.0. An on-time check would have found a clean lineup and told Justin to do nothing.
| Slot | Player | Actual | Projected |
|---|---|---|---|
| QB | Josh Allen | 35.7 | 19.3 |
| RB | Jonathan Taylor | 25.1 | 17.7 |
| RB | Saquon Barkley | 9.0 | 17.7 |
| WR | Zay Flowers | 26.0 | 14.2 |
| WR | Terry McLaurin | 3.4 | 12.2 |
| TE | George Kittle | 3.2 | 8.4 |
| FLEX | Jameson Williams | 8.5 | 12.1 |
| FLEX | Rome Odunze | 7.2 | 12.4 |
| Total | 118.06 | 114.0 | |
Allen, Taylor and Flowers carried the week; McLaurin, Kittle and both FLEX spots all missed their projections. The bench would not have rescued any of it — the best bench score among players who have already played was KC Concepcion at 7.8, which beats only Odunze and Kittle by a couple of points.
Team Whitehead 118.06 — Team Jensen 98.06. A 20-point lead with Justin's roster fully finished. Jensen has exactly one player left: Kenneth Walker III (KC RB) in tonight's DEN @ KC game, 6:15pm MT. Walker is reported healthy and is expected to make his first start for Kansas City.
So the week comes down to one number: Walker needs 20.01 points to win it for Jensen. That is a demanding but entirely reachable line for a starting back in a primetime game — roughly 100+ scrimmage yards plus two touchdowns. Nothing Justin can do either way; his lineup is locked and complete.
The Tuesday report's highest-conviction recommendation — drop Tank Dell, add Brenton Strange as tight end insurance — was not executed. Dell is still on the roster occupying a bench spot while on injured reserve, and Kittle started and returned 3.2. It cost about nothing this week, but the underlying problem is unchanged: one tight end, and he is eight months off an Achilles tear. Worth revisiting in Tuesday's waiver pass.