The key to understanding how your guillotine season is going to unfold is understanding the accelerating value of FAAB dollars through the guillotine season.

At the start of an 18-team guillotine season, each team starts with $1000, so there’s a whopping $18,000 in the league’s waiver pool. That means the value of each dollar is very low.

By December, when there are, say, five teams left, and they’ve spent most of their FAAB, there may only be $400 in the league’s waiver pool.  So the value of every dollar in December is very high.

What does that mean for you? Save your money. Every week you don’t spend money, the value of your remaining FAAB goes up the following week.

I’ve pulled some 2023 data on Travis Kelce to use as an example:

Month | Travis Kelce’s Average Winning Bid

  • September: $486
  • October: $310
  • November: $222
  • December: $53

I hope this illustrates the value of saving your FAAB for later in the season.

September

I’m a big Call Of Duty fan. I buy it annually each November at its release. For veteran COD players like me, there’s no day better than Christmas Day. We like to call it, “The Miracle of the Christmas Newbs.”  In addition to the celebrating the birth of a certain highly notable figure, we get to celebrate the arrival of millions of brand-new Xbox and PlayStation owners, mostly kids, who are playing Call Of Duty for the very first time.  Old guys like me need every advantage we can get, and feasting on a bunch of pre-teen newbies who can barely hold the controller is a sure way to pump up our kill-death ratio.

September is much the same in guillotine leagues. Newbs are going to lose their minds when elite players hit the waiver wire. They’ll drastically overpay for marquee players because of the novelty of the opportunity.

I say this from experience: In some leagues, Christian McCaffrey is going to get chopped in Week 1.  And some people are going to spend their entire $1000 season-long FAAB budget to get him. Insert rolling eye emoji here.

This is your version of “The Miracle of the Christmas Newbs.” Those foolish players will give themselves a temporary boost, and they’ll probably survive until October. But long-term, those cash-strapped teams are doomed without the financial resources needed to continually improve their roster.

For much of September, you’re going to hate your roster because it’s such a big league, and you’re going to be fretting about starting some guys who don’t feel reliable. Embrace the hate! Don’t panic! Everyone’s roster has problems. Remember, you have a 93%+ chance of survival each week of September.

Your one priority in September is to save FAAB.  I want you to leave September with at least $900 of your starting $1000.  The only way you should be spending more than $100 is if you have a catastrophic event on your roster, so severe that if you don’t acquire significant help, you’re likely to be chopped.

But even in a dire scenario, you shouldn’t be spending more than roughly $300 in September.  Every $1 you spend in September is worth $10 in December.

Lastly, late September is the perfect time to start planning for the October bye weeks.

October

October is a month of reflection. By now you’ve got enough of a sample size that you can reasonably ascertain how good your roster actually is. And more importantly, how it stacks up against the rest of the league. In October, your roster doesn’t need to be great, it just needs to be good enough to survive four weeks of NFL football.

In guillotine, the analogy we like is: When the herd of antelopes is being chased by a cheetah, you don’t have the be the fastest antelope, you just need to be the second-slowest.

Like September, we’re prioritizing saving FAAB. Every dollar you save in October is worth $5 in December. Ideally, you’ll leave October with $750 of your FAAB remaining. That gives you enough buying power to improve your bench and add a key starter or two.

But unlike September, in October, if the evaluation of your team is troubling, you’ll need to spend some cash. But don’t go crazy. It’s very hard to win if you leave October with $200 of FAAB remaining.

The NFL’s bye weeks start in October, and in this format, early bye weeks are incredibly dangerous. Remember that antelope analogy from a few paragraphs ago? Early bye weeks are the equivalent of your antelope running from the cheetah, but tripping, falling, and separating from the pack.

As one example, we’re all optimistic about Sam LaPorta’s chances of having another very strong year. But the Lions have a Week 5 bye. And because there are still 14 teams left at that point, the free-agent tight end pool is very thin. If your replacement is some waiver scrub, say, Juwan Johnson, that’s a recipe for a three-point game and a potential chopping.

November

In golf, they call Saturday “moving day.” In your guillotine league, November is “moving month.”

In November you’ll start to see very powerful rosters get cut. Every week, the waiver pool is going to be littered with legitimate fantasy starters. THIS is when we make our move.

You’ve been diligently saving your FAAB and it’s finally time to spend a chunk of it. By November, the cost to acquire players will have fallen by about half.  You’re going to get great players for fifty cents on the dollar.

And you’ll probably need to spend now. Because you’ve been saving FAAB, your roster isn’t as strong as many other teams. You may have had some near-death experiences.

The stars you acquire in November will probably be starters for the rest of your season, hopefully to the championship. But even cheaper bench players will be helpful as you navigate your remaining bye weeks. Unlike in October, your roster should now be deep enough that you’re replacing bye-week players with someone upon whom you can rely.

Ideally, you’ll still have about $250 left by the end of November.

December

Congratulations on surviving until December!  At this point, you’ve probably endured a couple of Monday night scares, but you’re still standing.

The fun part of December is that you’ve assembled a jaw-dropping roster of superstars, like nothing you’ve ever experienced. Last year in one of my leagues, I dropped Davante Adams because he wasn’t good enough to make my December roster.

December is when your roster composition strategy makes a change. For three months you’ve been rostering safe, dependable players. But in the homestretch, we need upside.

In September, you could survive with an 85-point (PPR) week. Now, you’ll need 120 points. And sometimes that’s not enough.

To get into that 120-point level, we need players who can produce big numbers, even at the risk of downside. You’ll already have a very good roster at this point, but in this format, you can keep tuning your roster for upside potential.

Like the playoff run in a traditional fantasy league, you’ll want to build the optimal starting lineup. Your bench can have handcuffs and emergency fill-ins. You can look at the schedule and find players with easy paths.

In December, you’re going to be dumbstruck when players like Tyreek Hill hit the waiver wire and the winning bids are something like $43 because everyone’s practically broke (except you, hopefully).

At GuillotineLeagues.com, we treat Weeks 15-17 as the “playoffs”. During this time, players who are chopped are not available to be picked up again—kinda like freezing playoff rosters in a traditional league. Other free agents can still be added.

Hopefully, you’ll be the last team standing. And if that happens, it’ll be the most rewarding fantasy championship you’ve ever experienced.

The Guide to Guillotine Leagues Fantasy Football