Week 2 waiver wire: sorting the most added players into roles and one week spikes

The add list is a list of points

Sleeper publishes the players added most across its leagues over any recent window. It is the best free picture of what your league mates are about to do, and on the Monday after Week 1 it mostly shows one thing: who scored.

That is useful, because it tells you where the bidding will be crowded. It is not a ranking. A waiver claim pays off over the weeks after you make it, and what repeats over those weeks is usage, not touchdowns. So this guide takes the top of the 48 hour add list, pulled at 9:43 AM ET on Monday, September 14, and sorts it by the Week 1 work behind each line. The method is the one in our guide to reading Week 1: target share, air yards and snaps first, points last. Points are Sleeper's full PPR totals. Sleeper's trending feed does not report how many leagues already roster a player, so a low add count can simply mean he was already taken.

The list, with the work behind it

Source: Sleeper trending adds and Week 1 stats, pulled Sep 14 2026. Quarterbacks on the list are covered in the quarterback injury guide.

Roles: bid with intent

Jalen Coker. The best Week 1 usage on the list, and eighteenth in adds. He drew 26 percent of Carolina's targets and 102 of its 205 air yards, half the downfield passing game. The two touchdowns will not repeat every week. The role can. Sleeper projects him for 11.62 in Week 2, which already credits some of it.

Caleb Douglas. He reached 14.4 points without a touchdown, which is the profile you want from a waiver receiver. Seven targets, 26 percent of Miami's, and 59 of its 124 air yards, 48 percent. Sleeper's player file lists Jalen Tolbert as Out. Sleeper's Week 2 projection for Douglas, 5.52, has not caught up to that usage, which is exactly the gap a waiver claim is for.

Kalif Raymond. Nine of Chicago's 26 targets, a 35 percent share, the highest of anyone in the table. The caution is the room. Rome Odunze, Luther Burden and Colston Loveland were all projected well above Raymond before the game, and Sleeper still projects him for 3.01 in Week 2. A second game at that volume would change the price. One game earns a real bid, not a big one.

Situational roles: bid for the weeks, not the season

Michael Mayer. Seven targets and a 24 percent share with Brock Bowers listed Out. That is a starting tight end's volume. It is also 13 air yards on 7 targets, short throws only. The bigger issue is duration. Sleeper's Week 2 projections show Bowers at 15.14 and Mayer at 3.61, so the projection assumes Bowers returns. If the team rules Bowers out again, Mayer is a streaming starter at a thin position. If not, he is a bench tight end.

Devaughn Vele. The most added player in the league, on 9 targets in an offense that threw 52 of them, the most of any team that played before Monday. That volume is the case for him: 17 percent of a very large number is still a lot of targets. The case against is that Chris Olave drew 13 and 149 air yards to Vele's 51. He is the second option in a pass heavy game script, and Sleeper projects him for 8.37 in Week 2.

Kaelon Black. Fourteen carries to Christian McCaffrey's 10, and 28 of the 49ers' 65 snaps. But 1 target to McCaffrey's 8. Black is a handcuff with some standalone rushing work, and our handcuffs guide covers how to price that.

Spikes: a dollar or nothing

Mike Gesicki drew 7 targets and 2 in the red zone in a game where Ja'Marr Chase drew 4. If Chase's volume returns to normal, most of Gesicki's goes with it.

Dontayvion Wicks scored 15.3 on 2 catches, one of them for 64 yards. Demarcus Robinson played 63 percent of the snaps and scored on 1 of 3 targets. Devin Singletary scored on a day Cam Skattebo carried 18 times, and Sleeper projects Singletary for 0.75 in Week 2. None of the three has a Week 1 workload that would survive a normal game.

Malachi Fields drew 4 targets for 4.5 points. We could not find a usage reason in the Week 1 data for his add count, and we will not guess at one.

What to pay

These prices use the ladder from our FAAB pricing guide, as a percentage of your original budget. The preseason cap of 2.5 percent no longer applies: it only binds before Week 1, and the snaps are now on record.

Source: Parlae FAAB bid model ladder, applied by the desk to the Week 1 usage above.

On a $100 budget, that means $17 for Coker at most, and nobody else on this list above $14. Take a dollar off any round number, because ties go to waiver priority. Our season spend plan expects you to still hold about $84 at the start of Week 3, which leaves room for one of these bids and not three.

What to do with this

1. Sort your claims by target share, not by points. A receiver who drew a quarter of his team's targets without scoring is a better claim than one who scored on 3.
2. Put your one real bid on a role and a dollar on everything else. On this list, the roles are Coker, Douglas and, at a lower price, Raymond.
3. Check the waiver wire page before your league's claims process, and read the injury designations for Brock Bowers and Jalen Tolbert first. Those two answers change the Mayer and Douglas prices more than anything in the box score.