Fantasy Football Trade Analyzer: Make a deal before the deadline
By Matt Savoca, 4for4
Special to Yahoo Sports
Welcome to the Week 11 edition of Trader’s Alley for the 2021 fantasy football season — which comes just days before the default Yahoo Fantasy trade deadline on Nov. 20. These next couple of days should mark your last, best push to make a blockbuster trade.
Below are my deal recommendations heading into Week 11. In addition to this article, don’t forget to use the 4for4 Trade Evaluator to try and mine even more value out of your moves. And remember, these recommendations are just the beginning of your fantasy trade considerations. Every league and every team is different. These are just some of the players who I’m interested in this week.
Trade for Lamar Jackson
Jackson did not look good against the much-improved Miami Dolphins defense in Week 10, throwing for just 238 passing yards on a season-low 5.5 yards per attempt, and adding 39 rushing yards, his second-lowest total on the ground all season. That makes Week 11 the first time arguably all season that the 2019 NFL MVP has fallen into the “buy low” category after his surprising QB10 finish last week. While Jackson continues to hover around 250 yards passing in most contests, he continues to improve in his per-pass efficiency and ranks fourth among all quarterbacks in fantasy points per dropback.
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Jackson continues to chuck it deep often, ranking second in the NFL in passes of 20 air yards or more, and he’s been successful on those attempts, ranking fourth in the NFL in completed air yards this season. Moreover, the 4for4 Hot Spots App shows Baltimore as having the fourth-easiest remaining schedule for opposing quarterbacks, making this week the ideal time to strike a mega-deal that brings Jackson to your fantasy roster.
You’ll need to trade away a substantial piece for the Ravens’ quarterback, but when you combine Jackson’s game-changing rushing upside with his newfound love for the deep ball, that’s a recipe for the top scorer in all of fantasy football down the stretch.
Trade Kyle Pitts
Pitts has been spectacular this season, considering his age-adjusted production and the typical learning curve of the tight end position. A glorified wide receiver, Pitts has performed quite admirably as the de facto number-one option in the Falcons’ passing attack with Calvin Ridley sidelined, earning at least seven targets in five of his last six games. But Pitts has also been subject to a plethora of double-teams, and as such, has become subject to the same massive volatility we see from the rest of the tight end position. His 9.2 and 10.0 fantasy points over the last two weeks haven’t destroyed you, but for such a premium-tier player at his position, those scores aren’t helping you enough to warrant holding onto him for the rest of the season and hoping he has another ceiling game, as he did in Weeks 5 and 7 of this year.
Pitts’ 13.2 expected fantasy points per game he’s averaged over his last four games is quite good for a tight end, but it’s only so-so for other skill position players, as that average ranks similar to players like Darnell Mooney, Hunter Renfrow and Antonio Gibson. Pitts’ perceived value is significantly higher than those players, which indicates it might be time to make a move, swapping Pitts for a comparably ranked running back or wide receiver. While it’s always nice to know that your tight end has a 25 fantasy-point ceiling in any contest, consistency is vitally important during the final weeks of the fantasy season, and Pitts simply doesn’t offer that in this version of the Atlanta Falcons offense.
DO NOT TRADE STEFON DIGGS
(unless ...)
Diggs broke out all over the place against the Jets’ last-ranked defense, finally producing the ceiling game everyone knew he had in him and finishing with a whopping 30.2 fantasy points in Week 10, second-best among all FLEX players. Diggs has now seen 28 targets over his last three games and has scored 15 or more fantasy points in five of his last six, and seven of his last nine starts. He’s third in the NFL with 17 red-zone targets, and despite just four total touchdowns, his 17.2 fantasy points per game now rank 12th among all wide receivers.
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While Diggs hasn’t quite had a season similar to last week's output, he still ranks sixth in total targets and fifth in completed air yards, meaning he has weekly WR1 overall upside every time he steps onto the field.
With that in mind, it would take a king’s ransom for me to consider moving Diggs in any deals, and it would likely involve me receiving a top-five overall running back for added stability in preparation for the fantasy playoffs.
This article originally appeared in its full form on 4for4.com
A middling athlete who was offered his first sports analytics position in middle school, Matt has been working on NFL and fantasy football data science since 2017. With a particular passion for data visualization and dashboard building, he loves to make data accessible by using graphs and charts to communicate ideas that are difficult to explain with words alone.
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