We've just had around half the teams in our league bid for a single, exceptional player who ended up on the waiver wire, along with several other desirable players.

The team who ended up with the superstar was not the one expected - they had a middling record compared to others who had attempted to sign the same player. This has lead to a CSI investigation of why that player went to the team in question. Here's what we found.

When players are released from a team, either automatically or deliberately cut, and placed on waivers they are ordered in reverse alphabetical order in the database at midweek; the game looks through all the cuts putting players whose surnames begin with Z into the transaction list first, then Y, then X and so on until the top end of the alphabet.

This is why, when you look at cuts only in the transaction log the players appear in alphabetical order - those with surnames beginning with A being listed most recently (assuming all players were cut in the same week).

When teams bid for waiver players those requests are processed in the order that the players appear in that transaction list. Here's the key part: it makes no distinction of player quality. If your team has the worst record in the league and you're bidding on 2 players, you will get first dibs on the player who was added to the transaction log first, regardless of whether they're skilled or not.

We know that once a team makes a selection they drop to the bottom of the picking order.

In our case the player's surname begins with A. So lower ranked teams snapped up one of the alphabetically lower named players, leaving the superstar to be picked up by the 4th or 5th worst rated team.

A curious system and not exactly intuitive, but here's how to work with it.

If you want to sign a player off waivers and suspect there'll be numerous bids, choose that player only off waivers. You might still miss the player, but you definitely won't take a lesser player due to the way the sequence is processed.

Agreed. If I pick up a team to rehab (poor record performance the season before) and an elite player becomes available on the waiver wire....I wouldn't mess with it. Put the 1 bid in and secure the player. Don't get over-ambitious chasing waterfalls. (tacking on every good waiver wire player in sight)

I'm in the league in question. I'd been told if it was player's turn to have a waiver claim resolved, and they'd claimed more than one guy, that guy would be selected at random. Just to be Crystal clear, it's a player's turn for their waiver claim to be resolved. They've put in claims on a bunch of guys:

• Johnny Awesome -- first alphabetically


• Zed Zebra -- last alphabetically


• Fred Furst -- first guy who was cut at the last interval


• Larry Last -- last guy cut at the last interval


• Sammy Superstar -- highest trade-value guy of this bunch


• Benchwarmer Bob -- lowest trade-value guy of this bunch

Someone has put in a claim on all six of these guys. Is their some pecking-order in the code who says who they get first, or is it random? Just so everyone in every league knows for certain going forward. So if it's reverse alphabetical, as the Colonel stated, he would get Zed Zebra. Is that how it works, for certain?

It's all down to when they were added to the transaction list.

For example - the following players are the last 6 listed as cut who made the waiver wire with t:

Game midweek 2 Adams WR 85
Game midweek 2 Jones RB 80
Game midweek 2 Harris LDE 90
Game midweek 2 Smith LDE 75
Game midweek 1 Austin FS 80
Game midweek 1 Williams K 70

Confusingly, they'll be listed on the waiver wire in order of Fut value:
Harris 90
Adams 85
Austin 80
Jones 80
Smith 75
Williams 70

This ordering is misleading when it comes to who'll be selected first.

The order in which waivers are claimed is in reverse - the player who has been on the list longer is given preference over those added later.

The team with the worst record in the league wants Austin, Harris and Jones. They get Austin.
The next worst wants an LDE so add Harris to their list. They later decide that it's too big a risk to miss out on both LDEs so add Smith as well. They get Smith despite Harris still being available.

The longer the player has been on the transaction list for "cut" the earlier they'll be taken. Again, this may not be the most obvious system for ordering players, but it's logical in the sense that you can work with it.

The takeaway is that if you're pretty certain you'll have early dibs on a player, you have the choice to gamble and put that player in on himself (possibly missing out on all players) or bid on all the players you want, knowing that you might miss the best available.

In a thread I was posting in a few weeks ago, can't remember which one, JDB confirmed that the order that players through the waiver wire were processed was random, not based on ratings, alphabetically, or anything else.

Well, that's just splendid.

Thanks for the correction.

Also, if you had the worst record from the previous season, or the worst after Week 8 of the current season, then you are guaranteed to get one player, the one that gets processed through the wire first. So, if you know you are at the top at the waiver list, claim only one player player and you will get him.

That thread = https://badcompany.myfootballnow.com/community/3/5622?page=1#33876

his comment =

Still an enjoyable read :)