Trades You Need To Make In Fantasy Football Before Week 8
Trade Targets For Fantasy Football Week 8
If you’re going to win a fantasy football championship, you have to be trying to find ways to make your team better week in and week out. One of the best ways to do that is to shop the trade market. Be active with making trade offers, updating your trade block, and engaging in conversation with your league mates. It’s also important that you make quality trades. The best way to make sure you don’t get taken advantage of by your league mates and that you are offering fair deals is to utilize our fully customizable redraft fantasy football trade calculator. Now here are a few buys and sells to consider building your trades around in Week 8.
More: Fantasy Notebook: All The Usage Data From Week 7
Buy Tyrone Tracy
I talked up Tyrone Tracy as a sleeper all summer (you’re welcome). He delivered in a big way in relief of Devin Singletary in Weeks 5 and 6. But with Singletary returning in Week 7 it was fair to question how the opportunities in that backfield would be distributed moving forward. Clearly, Tracy is the more explosive and more talented player. But Singletary is still the trusted veteran that has a connection with Brian Daboll going back years. However, Daboll did the noble thing and continued to let Tracy operate as the RB1. He led Giants running backs in snaps with a 67.1% share while Singletary was on the field for 20.7% and Eric Gray worked in for 10.3%.
Tracy dominated the passing game work with 27 routes (67.5%) to Singletary’s 6 (15%). That in itself is valuable given the Giants often find themselves in pass-friendly game scripts. The rush attempts were underwhelming considering the team was in comeback mode for much of the game, but Tracy still had 50% of the running back rush attempts.
This was the first time in the last three weeks that Tracy didn’t absolutely smash for fantasy purposes. But the usage was extremely encouraging and we’ve already seen a two game sample of what he can do when he gets rolling. There’s certainly risk that part of this was just an effort to ease Singletary back in coming off the groin injury so we can’t be all the way in yet. However, it’s very evident that Tracy is going to maintain a large role in this offense. One that could, and likely will, expand as we get into the latter portion of the season. Trade for him now while his value has dipped, and let him be that league winner for you down the stretch.
Buy Malik Nabers
Malik Nabers was the talk of the town during the first four weeks of the season. He was breaking out all over the place and was on his way to being the next superstar wide receiver and a fantasy football league winner. But the temperature has cooled given he missed two games and returned to an underwhelming 8.1 fantasy points. He was still targeted eight times with a very healthy 27.5% target share. And after the Giants play the Steelers on Monday night in Week 8, the schedule becomes very favorable for the Giants passing game with matchups against the Commanders, Panthers, Bucs, Cowboys, Ravens, Falcons, and Colts left on the slate. I’m not saying Nabers will be cheap to acquire but the shine has worn off a bit. A month ago he would have been impossible to trade for. Now there might be a chance. I’m feeling out the Nabers manager in my league to see if I can get my hands on this stud rookie.
Buy Amari Cooper
It was a very encouraging debut for Amari Cooper in his first game with the Bills. He caught four of his five targets for 66 yards and a touchdown. That’s about what we’d get from him in his best outings in Cleveland. However, what’s so encouraging is that Cooper played a very limited role. He always ran 100% of the routes or something close to it with the Browns. On Sunday, though, he was predictably limited to just a 34.3% route participation. That wasn’t surprising at all considering he had only been with the team for five days, had no familiarity with the quarterback, the offense, or the playbook. In fact, if you watch his touchdown you can see Cooper asking Keon Coleman before the play what route he is supposed to run. Coleman demonstrates the route with his hand just seconds before the snap. It was quite incredible.
It just goes to show how much potential Cooper has in this offense. He has the best quarterback of his life and is the clear No. 1 target in the offense. We’re going to see his routes and snaps go up more and more over the next several weeks as he gets comfortable in the offense, learns the playbook, and builds some chemistry and trust with Josh Allen. We could see numbers from Cooper that we’ve never seen before. He’s high on my list of guys I want on my fantasy team as I make a run for a championship.
Buy Devonta Smith
Week 7 was brutal for Devonta Smith. He was targeted just twice, caught one for negative two yards and ended the day with 0.8 fantasy points. But we know exactly what Devonta Smith is. This was an outlier performance. He was still on the field for the same number of routes as AJ Brown. It was just a weird day that saw the Eagles get out to a big lead, lean on Saquon Barkley in a revenge game against his former team, and ask Jalen Hurts to pass just 14 times. Not a big deal. We’re going right back to Smith especially with the schedule opening up. The Eagles next 10 games include two matchups with the Commanders and Cowboys, plus games against the Bengals, Jaguars, Rams, Ravens, and Panthers. All of these teams are favorable matchups for wide receivers.
Sell Tank Bigsby
Good for Tank Bigsby. He took advantage of a perfect situation and turned it into 118 yards and two touchdowns. That’s great. Unfortunately for him, though, the Jaguars don’t get to play the Patriots again this season. With Jacksonville ahead by a lot, they were able to lean on the run game. But the Jaguars aren’t suddenly good, they just ran into possibly the worst team in football. So, they’re not usually going to be in such a positive game script. In fact, they’ll likely be in comeback mode more often than not. Just look at the upcoming schedule. The next five opponents are the Packers, Eagles, Vikings, Lions, and Texans. Not only are the Jaguars likely to be in negative game script against all of those teams, but most of them have pretty stout defenses as well.
Tank Bigsby certainly won’t be a big part of the plan in those games considering he is an absolute zero in the passing game. He has just two targets on the season and one catch. In this game, D’Ernest Johnson led the backfield in routes and had a 20% target share.
And don’t forget, Travis Etienne will be back. Even if you believe Tank Bigsby will continue to lead the team in carries, Etienne isn’t going away. He would remain involved in a way that would severely limit Bigsby’s chances of having a big game. Doug Pederson continues to reiterate that Etienne is still the team’s No. 1 back anyway. It’s very likely this was the best performance we’re going to get from Bigsby. This was his “Isaiah Likely in Week 1” game. It’s only going to go down from here. Get out while you can.
Sell Keon Coleman
Keon Coleman delivered his best performance of his rookie season so far in Week 7. He caught four of seven targets for 125 yards, good for 16.5 fantasy points. While it was an impressive performance, there is quite a large elephant in the room. His name is Amari Cooper. As I noted earlier, Cooper only played 34.3% of the snaps in his Bills debut. That role is only going to ramp up from there. Cooper was always hovering right around 100% route participation during his time in Cleveland, I’d expect that to be similar in Buffalo once he’s fully acclimated to the offense. That’s bad news for Coleman considering every single one of his seven targets came with Cooper on the sideline.
The path for Coleman to hit this year was by being the No. 1 option in a Josh Allen offense that is lacking an alpha wide receiver. Well, the Bills just got an alpha wide receiver. It’s hard to ignore the obvious truth that had the team felt better about what they’ve seen from Coleman so far, they probably wouldn’t have made the move for Cooper. The targets and opportunities are going to be volatile week to week. He’s now, at best, the third option in the passing game behind Cooper and Khalil Shakir, maybe even Dalton Kincaid as well. Coleman can still be a “what-the-heck flex,” but anyone thinking we’re going to see a repeat of Week 7 on a consistent basis is fooling themselves.
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