Can you believe we are already at Week 9 of the NFL season? This year has gone by crazy fast! Make sure to check league settings for your trade deadline. I have some Sleeper leagues that end this week. Most seem to be Week 11 (Yahoo and CBS) or Week 13 (ESPN). Don’t miss out on your last chance to make some trades. I will be back in Week 10 and Week 11 for the final push!
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Note 1: The trends in the chart are versus the Week 7 values. So, they will be a little bigger than the typical week-to-week movement.
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 atThe Athleticto make an exclusive bi-weekly edition.
I started the process to model fantasy football trade values in 2017 based on some negative complaints on Reddit (shocking, I know). Linear positional ranks seemed to be solid, but the relationships between positions had some bias, particularly at the top and the bottom of 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 withyour 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 atThe Athletic, and using their exclusive ranks as the seed data for my model. 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 the embedded images that are for specific formats. Second is an exclusive CSV file I created that allThe Athleticusers can download and play with.
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The leftmost 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 receiver). 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
That chasm between tier 4 and tier 5 feels even bigger now than it did in Week 7. It seems like the Packers figured out how to move forward with Aaron Jones, which saved his crashing value. Now it is the time of year when I really look to consolidate and move up a tier or two. Back fill with flyers like Kyren Williams, Rachaad White, or Isiah Pacheco. I am looking for dart-throw running backs with the chance to spike into your lineup.
Wide Receiver
It is good to see DeAndre Hopkins back out on the field and crushing it like usual. He flew up the trade value chart! The top two tiers of wide receivers feel a lot safer than tier 3+, but there is still a lot of upside in tiers 4-6. DJ Moore and Terry McLaurin are turning it on at the right time of year. Which means we might have missed their buy-low window. I would be looking to combine any tier 7+ wide receiver with a player to upgrade that player. The position feels really flat after tier 6.
Tight End
Only Travis Kelce and Mark Andrews are in the top 3 tiers. We have to scroll all the way down to tier 5 (Kittle) to find another tight end on the trade chart. The guys in tier 7 might have a chance to elevate above the streaming conversation but have not proven it yet. The tier 9-11 guys are all a coin flip. Move them if you can get value.
Week 9 Charts
Excel File
- The Athletic — Week 9 Trade Value Chart
If you have any trade questions, drop them in the comments and we will try to answer them!
(Top photo: Jeffrey Becker-USA TODAY Sports)
