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.
It’s time to lock in, people.
We are careening toward the Yahoo default trade deadline on Saturday, so there’s 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 let’s 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.
1️⃣ If your offer doesn’t address the other team’s needs, it’s going nowhere
Every league has that one manager who approaches trades by thinking only of the players they’d 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 doesn’t include anything that can obviously improve the other manager’s squad, then it’s simply a time-waster, not a conversation starter.
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2️⃣ It’s a great time to package two players for one, or three for two
A decent guiding principle in fantasy trades is that if you land the best individual player in the deal, you did well. We’ve 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 — it’s 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.
3️⃣ In order to win the league, sometimes you need to lose a trade
Some of you are simply not wired to follow this advice, which is too bad. At some point down the road, it’s 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 team’s starting roster, it’s 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 it’s probably a winner.
5 buy-low fantasy trade targets
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:
Tee Higgins, WR, Cincinnati Bengals
He’s apparently dealing with one of the worst quadriceps injuries in the history of quads, because it’s already cost him three games. While he’s making progress, he’s no lock to face the Chargers on Sunday. Let’s just please remember that when healthy this year, he’s been his usual self, averaging 9.0 targets and 68.2 receiving yards per game. If he’s good-to-go in December, he’s an obvious potential difference-maker.
Josh Jacobs, RB, Green Bay Packers
Few players are as chronically disrespected as Jacobs. He’s pretty much always available via trade, despite being one of the NFL’s 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). He’s tied to an upper-tier offense, yet he’s only reached the end zone four times this season. Jacobs is the RB17 on the season at the moment, but he’s a clear candidate to enjoy a post-bye surge.
Isiah Pacheco, RB, Kansas City Chiefs
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 hasn’t 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 he’s averaging just 2.36 yards after contact per attempt.
Patrick Mahomes, QB, Kansas City Chiefs
Earth’s best quarterback is still outside the position’s top-12 in terms of year-to-date fantasy scoring, plus he’s headed into a dicey matchup at Buffalo. It’s an excellent time to buy. He’s thrown six touchdown passes over his last three games while averaging 273 passing YPG, so it’s already apparent that his weekly upside has returned with DeAndre Hopkins now in the mix.
Diontae Johnson, WR, Baltimore Ravens
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. He’s a proven multi-year producer and one of the best separators in the game, so we don’t have to worry about his ability to leapfrog guys like Nelson Agholor in this team’s receiving hierarchy.