The following is an excerpt from the latest edition of Yahoo’s fantasy football newsletter, Get to the Points! If you like what you see, you can subscribe for free here.
Look, there are plenty of weeks within the fantasy calendar when you can afford to switch to auto-pilot for a few days and not focus obsessively on your team but this week, right now, isn’t one of them.
Its time to lock in, people.
We are careening toward the Yahoo default trade deadline on Saturday, so theres work to be done. When you wake up on Sunday morning, one of the essential paths to improving your roster will be closed for the season. Everyone enjoys trading, so lets get to it.
Our mission is to give you three key pieces of trade advice and then offer some fantasy buy-low candidates to target.
Every league has that one manager who approaches trades by thinking only of the players theyd like to dump, not the holes other teams may need to fill. A few times each season, that person will spam the league with Kadarius Toney offers (or similar), then complain that no one is ever willing to trade.
The tiniest amount of pre-offer consideration can go such a long way. Take 30 seconds to review the roster of the team you intend to deal with, then propose something to help both parties. If your offer doesnt include anything that can obviously improve the other managers squad, then its simply a time-waster, not a conversation starter.
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A decent guiding principle in fantasy trades is that if you land the best individual player in the deal, you did well. Weve reached the point in the fantasy season when contending teams need to focus on constructing the best possible starting rosters, sacrificing depth in the process. We should be looking to maximize weekly scoring potential.
Roster depth is a funny thing its incredibly valuable in September and not at all in December. Each week, it becomes less important. By the time we hit the money weeks of the playoffs, your starting lineup should be so loaded that it basically sets itself, while your bench should be full of lottery tickets.
Some of you are simply not wired to follow this advice, which is too bad. At some point down the road, its gonna cost you a fantasy title.
We should never get so paralyzed by the fear of losing a deal that we forget the real priority, which is to hold the league trophy at the end of the season. If a trade can improve your teams starting roster, its probably worth making. The whole idea is to deal from areas of surplus to address weaknesses. If both sides feel moderately uncomfortable with the deal, then its probably a winner.
Here are five early-season underperformers who are A) strong candidates for positive regression, B) endlessly frustrating to the manager who drafted them, and C) obtainable via trade at a discount relative to their draft prices:
Hes apparently dealing with one of the worst quadriceps injuries in the history of quads, because its already cost him three games. While hes making progress, he’s no lock to face the Chargers on Sunday. Lets just please remember that when healthy this year, hes been his usual self, averaging 9.0 targets and 68.2 receiving yards per game. If hes good-to-go in December, hes an obvious potential difference-maker.
Few players are as chronically disrespected as Jacobs. Hes pretty much always available via trade, despite being one of the NFLs most elusive runners. According to PFF, Jacobs currently ranks among the leaders in missed tackles forced (33) and yards after contact (3.73 per carry). Hes tied to an upper-tier offense, yet hes only reached the end zone four times this season. Jacobs is the RB17 on the season at the moment, but hes a clear candidate to enjoy a post-bye surge.
We are nearing the end of the original recovery timeline from the fractured leg Pacheco suffered back in September. He should not have much difficulty reclaiming the primary rushing role for KC. Kareem Hunt has been a terrific waiver find this season, but he hasnt exactly delivered a convincing impersonation of a healthy Pacheco. Hunt is averaging just 3.6 YPC and the underlying numbers are somehow less impressive. Only five of his 125 carries have gained 10 or more yards and hes averaging just 2.36 yards after contact per attempt.
Earths best quarterback is still outside the positions top-12 in terms of year-to-date fantasy scoring, plus hes headed into a dicey matchup at Buffalo. Its an excellent time to buy. Hes thrown six touchdown passes over his last three games while averaging 273 passing YPG, so its already apparent that his weekly upside has returned with DeAndre Hopkins now in the mix.
Pretty gross, right? Yeah, we know. But again, the idea here is to flag good players who can actually be acquired via trade.
Johnson is actually gonna hit a few waiver wires this week after back-to-back dud performances for Baltimore. He was never a great bet to put up numbers in his first game for the Ravens following a mid-season trade, however and then his second game was a Thursday nighter, which left little time for his role to expand. Hes a proven multi-year producer and one of the best separators in the game, so we dont have to worry about his ability to leapfrog guys like Nelson Agholor in this teams receiving hierarchy.