Check out our fantasy football week 7 live lineup advice blog.
A lot has happened since Week 5 of the NFL season and I am happy to be back this week with some updated trade value charts! Overall, we are seeing an increasing trend towards some of the league’s young running backs (Breece Hall, Ken Walker, Dameon Pierce, etc.) that is very promising. The top of the running back position has been relatively stable over the past two weeks as well. Things seem to be settling down a little and that means it is time to trade!
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Note 1: the trends in the chart are versus the Week 5 values. So, they will be a little bigger than the typical week-to-week movement.
Note 2: I will be back on Weeks 9, 10, and 11 to help you all make that final push!
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!
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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.
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
It feels like there is a chasm between the top tier 1-4 running backs and the tier 5 and lower ones this year. Aaron Jones is flying down the chart and could easily find himself a tier or 2 lower if the Packers’ offense does not figure some things out. I think managers with a lot of depth might still be able to take some shots at Jonathan Taylor, D’Andre Swift, or even Joe Mixon in reasonable 2-for-1 trades. Between injuries and under-performance, a lot of fantasy managers have been struggling to get good production out of their running back corp.
Wide Receiver
Some of the rookie wide receivers cooled off a little since Week 5 and that has made the position feel a little less stable. On top of that, injuries are starting to pile up as well. It feels like the position gets really flat in tiers 7 through 11 and there is very little difference between those players. I am still a fan of grabbing some of the rookies like Sky Moore, Wan’Dale Robinson, or Alec Pierce and seeing if they take a step. Use them to give you depth and trade up.
Tight End
It is rough out there on the waiver wire. Usually, we have like 3 or 4 tight ends in a tier above the rest, and this year it is just the big two. A second, (much) lower tier is forming with George Kittle, Dallas Goedert, Darren Waller, and Zach Ertz. Then, everyone else just feels like a flyer. I think this is just what the position is going to be this year. But most managers in your leagues are feeling the same pain. I might just hold on to Kelce or Andrews unless someone aggressively overpays and I am desperate to gain depth to compete.
Week 7 Charts
Excel File
If you have any trade questions, drop them in the comments and we will try to answer them!
(Top photo: Daniel Bartel-USA TODAY Sports)
