Fantasy Football Waiver Wire and Rest of Season Rankings- Week 2

Kev Wheeler
Sep 9
4 min read

The key to Week 2 of the fantasy football season is to ignore much of what happened in Week 1. There is a unique element to Week 1 where we should hesitate before making rash decisions, but we also nee to incorporate what we saw. As humans we have an incredible urge to overreact to what we most recently saw. I’ve noticed many people looking to dump players they drafted in the single-digit rounds, there is no reason to do that if you drafted from my cheat sheet.

The Week 2 Waiver Wire is full of players that were drafted in Best Ball drafts this summer, not many surprises here. Dylan Sampson should have been drafted in all leagues if people followed our draft rankings. Harold Fannin was our top sleeper at TE and Quentin Johnson, Marquise Brown, Cedric Tillman, and even Kayshon Boutte, were all players that were highly touted during our live draft streams.

The Philadelphia Eagles have traded for Jacksonville Jaguars running back Tank Bigsby, a source confirmed several media reports to PhillyVoice Monday night. This will devalue Bigsby and Will Shipley, but Travis Etienne and Bhayshul Tuten shoot-up our Rest of Season rankings.

“Quinshon Judkins is coming, but from what I saw, Dylan Sampson is going to have a legit role. He was effective with the rock and his routes were springy. Defenders were going after the ball aggressively, so he needs to keep it locked up tight, but he looked like he belonged.” @petedavidsonny.bsky.social‬

The preseason suggested Kenneth Gainwell would play significant snaps, but he surprisingly led the Steelers' running backs in offensive snaps. Rather than a traditional two-man rotation with one player playing the clear majority of the early-down snaps and the other playing in passing situations, the backfield resembled Pittsburgh from last season. Jaylen Warren took on the Najee Harris role, and Gainwell took Warren’s role.

https://bsky.app/profile/pffnatejahnke.bsky.social/post/3lydrmiriuk2w

New England had four different receivers who all played significant snaps. Kayshon Boutte, Stefon Diggs and DeMario Douglas were the primary receivers in three-receiver sets, while Boutte and Mack Hollins were the primary receivers in two-receiver sets. This left Boutte as the Patriots' lead receiver, catching six passes for 103 yards. Boutte’s 2.64 yards per true route were the fourth-best among all wide receivers this week.

Kayshon Boutte has been a Top-18 fantasy WR in three of his last four games with Drake Maye.

Harold Fannin Jr. emerges as a tight end option. Fannin led the Cleveland Browns in targets, catching seven passes for 63 yards. Fannin played nearly as many snaps as Njoku in most situations. They shared the field for all two- and three-tight-end sets while splitting the third downs out of 11 personnel. The difference was 11 personnel on early downs, where Njoku played 70% of the snaps to Fannin's 30%. https://bsky.app/profile/pffnatejahnke.bsky.social/post/3lydrmiriuk2w

Fantasy Football Waiver Wire Adds

Calvin Austin III caught four passes for 70 yards and a touchdown, making him Pittsburgh's second wide receiver option.

Most screen targets in Week 1:

1. Jonnu Smith (4)

2. Travis Hunter, Dylan Sampson, James Conner, Zay Flowers, JSN, Gainwell, Badie (3)

Players We Can Drop

When we make waiver claims most of the time we can easily determine who to add, but we struggle with which players to drop. It is very difficult to give-up on a player we thought was worth drafting in the first place. If you are struggling, you should be dropping your questions or concerns in our FREE Discord channel. Don't be afraid of it, I'm over 50 and navigate it fairly well.

Injuries

Brock Bowers suffered a knee injury early in the fourth quarter and didn’t return. Over the last five weeks of last season, Bowers played 92% of Las Vegas' offensive snaps to Michael Mayer's 73%. Mayer is worth a stash in deeper leagues and playable all leagues if Bowers is out. The consensus from the Twitter docs is that Brock Bowers will be out a couple weeks with a PCL sprain (hopefully mild). Of note, do not trust Pete Carroll quotes with injuries ever.

The San Francisco 49ers are placing tight end George Kittle on injured reserve (IR), and he will miss the team's next four games at a minimum. (Adam Schefter on Twtter)

Xavier Worthy is considered week-to-week with a dislocated shoulder.

"I know Xavier is the big question. He's rehabbing and working his shoulder. We'll just see where it goes, day-by-day here. We'll see where we end up." - Coach Reid on Xavier Worthy, per ‪@nflfantasynews.bsky.social‬

Falcons WR Drake London suffered a shoulder sprain and is considered day-to-day.

Jaylen Waddle left the game briefly in the third quarter of the Miami Dolphins’ Week 1 loss on the road to the Indianapolis Colts. He appeared to be in quite a bit of pain, but did return to the game.

Evan Engram suffered a calf injury. He tried to return for one play in the fourth quarter but decided against playing again after that play.

Steichen said Jonathan Taylor "is good" following his exit yesterday. Said he probably could've come back in. @nflfantasynews.bsky.social

Jayden Reed (foot) was a limited participant in Tuesday's walk-through practice. www.packers.com/news/packers

Austin Ekeler (shoulder) was listed as a limited participant on Tuesday's estimated practice report. https://www.commanders.com/news/commanders-vs-packers-week-2-injury-report

Rest of Season Rankings

There aren't many places we can get full rankings that have the rest of the season in mind, let alone rankings as accurate as ours. These Rest of Season Fantasy Football rankings have been among the most accurate over the past five seasons.