Welcome to the Fantasy Football Trade Desk. As a former English teacher and a current sportswriter, I have no finance background whatsoever, but I do watch Industry every week on HBO Max and have talked to a few of my friends in finance so I’m now basically an expert at stock trades. If you’re on my desk each week, we’re gonna have some fun and trade with the fervor of Rishi betting on the future of England’s currency (while addressing one another just a touch more civilly).
Each week in this column I’ll guide you through some of my recommendations on which players we should be looking to target in fantasy football trades, which players we should be testing the waters on, and which players we should be holding onto. We’ll try to go beyond just the box score and evaluate role, usage, and matchups in a way that can help us identify the perfect time to move on from a well-performing player or take a risk on an underperforming one.
As a quick overall citation, all of my data for routes, target share, and other advanced metrics comes from Dwain McFarland’s Utilization Report over at Fantasy Life, so make sure you go check that out.
At the end of the day, we have one goal: to maximize the value of our players and get the best weekly returns on our fantasy lineup. Some of the calls may be risky. Some may be easy, but I’ll try to give you a wide range and a sense of value to help you navigate trade scenarios in your league. This leads to the final reminder that this is a trade column, so I won’t be discussing guys who are predominantly on waiver wires, but you can check out our awesome waiver wire articles for all of those potential names.
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Buy The Dip
As many of us know, “Buying the Dip” is when an investor buys an asset after its price has fallen in a way they believe to be temporary. That allows us to profit when the price rebounds, so all players listed here are players who I believe suffered a value dip in Week 1 that I feel confident will rebound in the coming weeks.
Dalton Kincaid - TE, Buffalo Bills
I should note that I’m a lifelong Bills fan, so my opinions may be a little biased here, but this was also my assigned game for Rotoworld blurbs in Week 1, so I watched every single snap. My takeaway from that is I encourage you not to panic. For starters, the gamescript was SUPER weird for Buffalo here. The Cardinals were so focused on draining the clock and keeping Josh Allen off the field that the Bills’ quarterback was 2-for-2 for 37 yards AT THE TWO-MINUTE WARNING OF THE FIRST HALF. That is clearly not something that will be duplicated each week.
Allen also wound up completing 18 passes to 10 different receivers, so the Bills are going to spread the ball around and take what the defense gives them. That could admittedly lead to some inconsistencies for the Buffalo pass-catchers, but as defenses start to respect Keon Coleman and Khalil Shakir a bit more, and Curtis Samuel shakes off his preseason foot injury, I think you’ll see coverage patterns change because the Cardinals quite literally triple and quadruple-teamed Dalton Kincaid at times. Offensive coordinator Joe Brady said after the game that the Bills “would love to get him going a little earlier” but the offense adjusted to what the Cardinals were doing defensively.
The role for Kincaid is still great since he had an 83% route participation with just a 5% target share. However, he was also the primary read on a couple of plays where Josh Allen was slow to pull the trigger or where the offensive line got pushed back into the pocket and Allen had to scramble. The Bills have an “everybody eats” mentality on offense, so there will be some games where Kincaid is not featured, but he should still be a TE1 by the end of the season.
On the Yahoo trade tracker, we’ve already seen Kincaid traded straight up for Keenan Allen this week and also Kincaid traded for Pat Freiermuth and Brian Robinson Jr., among other combinations. If you can trade a TE2 and an RB3 to get Kincaid, you should be doing that.
Mark Andrews, TE - Baltimore Ravens
We’ll continue on our tight end theme because people are freaking out about Mark Andrews’ Week 1 performance. Well, more accurately, they’re freaking out about how much better Isaiah Likely was, totaling 111 yards and a touchdown on 12 targets while Andrews was held to 14 yards on just two targets. However, I think this is a similar situation to what we saw with Kincaid.
As Nate Jahnke pointed out on Twitter, “Mark Andrews was double covered on a higher percentage of his routes in this game than any of his other games from 2021-2023.” The Chiefs were daring somebody else to beat them and, frankly, they’ve been doing that to Baltimore for years. In 5 games versus the Chiefs in his career, Mark Andrews averages 2.6 catches on 4.8 targets for 21.6 yards per game. He has only topped 22 yards receiving ONCE against the Chiefs. We don’t want to overreact to a bad game against the Chiefs.
We do want to react to an offense that will likely feature two tight ends a lot. The Ravens utilized 12 personnel, which is a two-tight end set, on 53% of snaps in Week 1, which was the most in the NFL. Likely ran a route on 69% of the dropbacks, but Andrews ran one on 75% of the dropbacks. Nate Jahnke also called out that Likely and Andrews were on the field together for 39 plays in the opener, after a season-high last year of just 16. That means both of these guys are going to be on the field a lot. Yes, Andrews may come down from his potential ceiling as TE1 or TE2 overall because he’s coming off surgery and is now in more of a two-tight-end offense, but he should still be a locked-in TE1 on the season.
He was traded straight up for George Kittle in one Yahoo league, and I’d rather have Andrews, but he was also traded for Jerry Jeudy in one deal, J.K. Dobbins in another, and a combination of Zamir White and Keon Coleman in a third, so there are quite a few fantasy managers who are panicking about Andrews. You should see if the one in your league is too.
Buy High, Sell Higher
At the beginning of this article, I talked about how our goal is to maximize the value we get out of the players on our team. Sometimes that means buying low, as we discussed above, and sometimes it means buying at a perceived high point on a player with questionable long-term value. If we believe there is some validity to the spike in value, we can acquire a player in a deal, try to reap the rewards of his good performances, and then still sell before the risk comes through but just sell at a higher price. This is different than just “buying high” because these players will have some risk and likely be ones you want to try and trade away later, so it’s a delicate balancing act.
Jameson Williams - WR, Detroit Lions
Williams was the cover image for my post-hype sleepers column, so I encourage you to check that out to see why I was so high on him coming into the year. He made good on that in Week 1, hauling in five passes for 121 yards and a touchdown. He was the clear deep threat in a pass-friendly offense and had an elite 94% route participation, which made him the clear WR2. That role in that offense will give him value all year long. He’s going to have some huge weeks, and they could come quickly against a Bucs defense that had one healthy cornerback last week, a Cardinals secondary that Josh Allen just dissected, and a Seahawks group that has been underperforming for a few years.
You could love the production you get there, but Williams also has some major risks because the 30% target share he saw in Week 1 is not going to continue. Amon-Ra St. Brown and Sam LaPorta are going to be the driving forces behind this offense, and we know both running backs will get involved, so I’d love to bank the stats from a hot start by Williams and then look to sell when he seems like more of a “sure thing.”
Run a Process
If you’re going to Run a Process on a player, then we’re going to explore a potential sale while not being locked into selling. This is essentially for players who we think will still perform at a solid clip this season but not at the rate that they currently are or not at the same rate that their current value suggests they will.
JK Dobbins - RB, Los Angeles Chargers
Yes, I’m recommending you look into selling the darling of Week 1. It’s not because I don’t like Dobbins or that I’m not rooting for him to recover from his second major season-ending injury. It’s more that I think everybody is, and I think those injuries have taken a toll on him.
If we want to start with the positive, Dobbins was clearly the lead back for the Chargers in Week 1. He played on 59% of the snaps and handled 40% of the rushes to Gus Edwards’ 44%. The split being that close is great news for Dobbins because he ran routes on 59% of dropbacks compared to 17% for Edwards. The rushing split is near even and Dobbins is the clear passing down back. He also showed good vision at the line of scrimmage and simply looked better than Edwards. He ripped off a few big chunk runs, and with the Chargers being a run-heavy offense, Dobbins is going to have clear fantasy value.
Why I think you’re exploring a trade for him is that it’s also apparent he is not the same runner he used to be. He was tracked down from behind by a safety who ran a 4.6 40 on a play that Dobbins used to take to the house, and it was clear from the video that there was a major hitch in his giddyup. If Dobbins no longer has long speed and is still not operating at 100% then doing what he did on the field should be celebrated, but it also makes him risky for fantasy for a full season.
In some Yahoo leagues, he has been traded straight up for Cooper Kupp, Tank Dell, Marvin Harrison Jr., Drake London, and Malik Nabers (twice). You may not WANT to trade away Dobbins, but if that’s the value that some people are placing on him then you’d be doing yourself a disservice to not at least see what you could get.
Derrick Henry - RB, Baltimore Ravens
In the same vein, I think it’s smart to explore trading Derrick Henry. This one is a bit harder because he was likely the first running back you drafted, and so you’re probably not flush with other running backs to take his spot. Henry could also finish as a low-end RB1 in fantasy, but I’m putting him here because, for the second season in a row, his role makes me a little concerned that he can claim RB1 status.
All offseason, the Ravens have been saying that Justice Hill was going to play, and they backed that up in Week 1 when Derrick Henry had 49% of the snaps and ran routes on 27% of dropbacks, compared to Hill, who played 51% of snaps, thanks to a 55% route participation share. Now, we know that this usage was because the Ravens were playing catchup to the Chiefs, and they won’t play the Chiefs each week, but Henry had just 8% of the long down-and-distance snaps, compared to 92% for Hill, and Hill got 100% of the snaps in the two-minute drill. Yes, Henry will be the goal line back, and the Ravens will play in more leading scripts this season, but if Henry is going to essentially get no passing work and be removed from the game in passing downs or two-minute drills, it will make him entirely touchdown dependent in fantasy.
After Week 1, John Harbaugh even said, “We didn’t bring Derrick [Henry] to be the guy that gets the ball 30 times a game. He’s done that before. That’s really not the plan.” It may be hard to make a move right now, but if Henry has a multi-touchdown game coming up, it might be the chance to explore trading him for another RB1 who has gotten off to a slower start but has much better usage patterns.
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Hold
This one is self-explanatory. Sometimes you see a player getting recommended in lots of trade articles, but you can actually get consistent value out of that player for the rest of the season and you should just hold them.
Stefon Diggs - WR, Houston Texans
It seems like everybody wants to trade Stefon Diggs because he had just a 1.7-yard average depth of target and the Texans have a crowded WR room with Nico Collins and Tank Dell; however, I think Week 1 was good news for Diggs. For starters, he caught all six targets for 33 yards and two touchdowns and was tops among all receivers in Houston with an 89% route participation. The veteran is operating out of the slot most often, so he’s going to get a lot of targets over the middle of the field, but he also ran vertical routes on plays he wasn’t targeted, so it’s not as if he’s just hanging out around the line of scrimmage. Plus, as Dwain McFarland pointed out in his article this week, “Historically, WRs own their aDOT, so despite Diggs’ rotation inside to the slot, anticipate more air yards in the future.”
I see a former WR1 who is playing in an elite offense and rarely leaving the field. That’s likely going to give me solid production every single week in PPR and half-PPR formats, so I’m going to hold, unless I get blown away by an offer.
Buy a Call
When we buy a call on somebody, we are essentially buying the option on a player we think might hit big in the future. In finance (as I’ve learned from research) this means the buyer isn’t locked into purchasing the stock but has the option to do so at a lower price - a strike price - if they choose to do so in the future. For us, this means players who we want to add to our roster now in a small trade because we believe there’s a chance they are going to hit big for us later. We don’t want to pay a lot, but we want them around for the option to use them if it all breaks right.
Bucky Irving - RB, Tampa Bay Bucs
This was another one of the games I was assigned to blurb for Rotoworld in Week 1 and, to put it simply, Irving just looked far and away like the better running back in Tampa Bay. Rachaad White is a great receiver, but he is indecisive when hitting the hole and on handoffs, and we’ve now seen multiple seasons of inefficient rushing for him. Meanwhile, Irving led the team with 62 yards on nine carries and simply looked to be more explosive out of the backfield. Irving accounted for just 33% of the Buccaneers’ rushing attempts in Week 1, but I expect that to keep climbing as the season goes on, and he could push White into just a passing-down role.
Adonai Mitchell - WR, Indianapolis Colts
Alec Pierce was the story of the week for the Colts because he caught three passes for 125 yards and a touchdown, but it’s Mitchell who I have more confidence in long-term. Pierce ran routes on 83% of dropbacks but had just a 17% target share and 15% targets per route run. Meanwhile, Mitchell ran routes on 75% of dropbacks but had a 28% target share and 28% targets per route run. The rookie also got open on more than a few deep balls that Anthony Richardson just missed on. Things could get a bit more cluttered when Josh Downs is healthy, but I like taking gambles on Mitchell’s upside, and he was recently traded straight up for Alexander Mattison in a Yahoo league, so I’m not sure the market on him is so bullish.
Straight Sell
Another self-explanatory one, but these are players we just want to get off our team. We’re not yet at the point where we’re cutting them, but if we can get anything of value in a trade, we want to move off of these players because we don’t believe in the long-term value at all.
Zamir White - RB, Las Vegas Raiders
Antonio Pierce said at the beginning of the season that Zamir White would be the early down back, and that held true in Week 1 with him getting 68% of the Raiders’ rushing attempts. However, that led to just 44 yards on 13 carries and White was only on the field for 39% of the snaps because the Raiders were trailing most of this game. The Raiders used Alexander Mattison on just 26% of the rush attempts but he posted a 60% route participation rate, compared to 25% for White, and Mattison had a 19% target share to White’s 6%. What’s more, Mattison played on 100% of the long down-and-distance snaps and 90% of the two-minute drill snaps.
That means White is basically an early-down bruiser and goal-line back for an offense that might be one of the worst in the NFL. That’s not ideal. I’d be looking to move on from him as soon as possible, maybe pairing him and a low-end TE1 for Kincaid or Andrews if I could.