Week 9 was a strange week in the NFL and for fantasy football. Week 10 is here and the playoffs are just around the corner, which means it is time for those last-minute trades to shore up your fantasy lineup. This is the part of the year where I really push to consolidate bench depth into stronger starting rosters. My goal is always to win it all, and positional advantages are the key to that first-place trophy. Today I will go over what makes this trade value chart unique, how to use it, and I will highlight my opinions on each position.
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Reddit Adjusted Trade Value Charts with a twist
Under the moniker PeakedInHighSkool, I have been producing trade value charts over on Reddit and my Patreon for several years now, and I am excited to be collaborating with the awesome team here at The Athletic to make an exclusive weekly edition.
I started the process to model fantasy football trade values in 2017 based on a lot of negative complaints on Reddit (shocking, I know). Linear positional ranks seemed to be solid, but the ranks between positions had some bias, particularly at the top and the bottom of those traditional charts. So I went into the arduous task of trying to correct these observed issues using crowd-sourced data from Reddit. In case you aren’t familiar with Reddit, there is a weekly trade thread where users can post individual players, and other users will respond with your momma jokes “reasonable” trades they have seen or think might get accepted. There are often hundreds or thousands of responses of varying quality.
What I did (and still do) was to go through and look for cross-over points between positions. Where people do a one-for-one trade of a running back for a wide receiver/tight end/quarterback, and used these deals to adjust linear ranks in terms of each other. I used these inputs to build an empirical model that defines positional value in terms of running back value. I feed in seed data each week (Expert Consensus Ranks) and generate updated weekly Trade Value Charts.
I am super excited to be working with the expert rankers here at The Athletic, and using their exclusive ranks as the seed data for my model — Brandon Funston’s ROS rankings were used as a baseline for this week. You can’t find these anywhere else!
How to use these charts
My goal was to make these as user-friendly as possible. I did this by creating two different formats. First are embedded images that are for specific formats. Second is an exclusive CSV file I created that all The Athletic users can download and play with.
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The left-most column is the player’s trade value. All players in that particular row have the same trade value. This is the best way to look for even one-for-one positional swap trades (i.e. running back for wide reciever). When you are looking at larger trades like a two-for-one, make sure to sum the trade values on each side to look for fairness. Typically, the side selling the most players needs to overpay for the right to consolidate and open up a roster spot. Not all trades need to be perfectly even, but they should be relatively close. The goal is to look for win-win trades and to keep the league happy and healthy!
Running Back
After losing Derrick Henry, the RB position has become very flat at the top. An argument for any of the top 6-8 guys (depending on scoring) could be made for them to be No. 1 overall. It is great to see Christian McCaffery back towards the top. He might regain his first overall spot next week. With how flat the position is at the top, I see very little benefit in trading any of these guys for one another at this time. After that top tier, there is a definite drop-off that makes things more interesting. This tier is likely where there can be more movement in your leagues. Guys like: Leonard Fournette, James Robinson and Melvin Gordon are all a lot easier to try and acquire.
Wide Reciever
We see a similar tier break after the top three guys of Davante Adams, Tyreek Hill, and Cooper Kupp. After the big three, we see some more distinct tiers, but a lot of interchangeable players.
Tight End
The tight end position is a dumpster fire like usual. If you have a warm body who is getting targets on a weekly basis, you are probably set. It was great to see George Kittle healthy once again and Travis Kelce and Darren Waller also had good weeks. Hopefully, some of the guys like Logan Thomas and Dawson Knox can get healthy and will be decent starts the rest of the season.
Quarterback
Week 9 was a weird week in general, and especially for QBs. All the top guys seemed to underperform. I am not sure there is a ton to take away this week at the position. We probably should bring all the top guys closer together in value.
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Week 10 Trade Value Charts
The Athletic Adjusted Trade Values Week 10 — Excel download
If you have any trade questions, drop them in the comments and we will try to answer them! You can also find me over on Reddit or on this Discord that is focused on trading.
Have a great week, and let us know what you think!
Ed Note: Shoutout to our old friendDave Richard, the Godfather of trade charts.
(Photo by Grant Halverson/Getty Images)
