5 Players to BUY, SELL & HOLD Before Week 8! (Ep. 2294)

0:00 Hello, everybody.

0:01 Welcome into the Fantasy Pros Podcast. I'm Ryan Warmly, joined by Tara Roberts. We are talking five moves to make before week eight, almost at the halfway point of the season here. Tara, how are you feeling after week seven?

0:14 Good week seven.

0:15 Yeah, I survived JSN. I had to reach out to the fantasy gods and pray, but it happened. Like, hey, just a miracle in itself. I don't know how, but yeah, I survived Survivor Pool. So yeah, it was overall great.

0:27 It could have been a lot worse.

0:29 Yeah. A week of surviving.

0:30 Yes.

0:31 We can relate to that one. Reminder for everybody that all of our weekly consensus rankings and tiers can be found at fantasypros.com slash rankings. You can navigate from there to the rest of season consensus rankings. If I give a ranking on the show today, that's what I'm referring to is the updated rest of season rankings. And I've intentionally only selected experts who have updated since this morning.

0:52 So we have the most up-to-date guys who have seen what happened. in week seven and where they are ranking players rest of season. Tara, let's start out with a buy.

1:01 Yes, we are going to buy Quinn Sean Judkins. Yeah, after the big game.

1:05 You know, it doesn't always have to be a buy low because his value is still extremely low. And because running backs are scarce, like one of the most common questions that I get is specifically about trading running backs. And one of the most common names that I get is a guy like Chase Brown. An RB1 who's underperforming, people want to buy low, hope that.

1:25 Things are going to turn around, they're going to figure it out.

1:28 But the problem with a guy like Chase Brown is that because he has that draft capital of where everyone drafted him, he's got the name tag, he's got the Cincinnati offense associated with him, and Joe Burrow, he's got the receiving upside. There's so many positives that his value doesn't actually really dip down to where it's a genuine buy low, which means that you... Even if you're packaging, right, you're often technically, from what I'm seeing, you're overpaying for someone who is significantly underperforming. Instead, you could look at guys that are a little bit lower valued. And there's several options, but one that I think is really interesting is Quenchon Judkins because he's very reasonably priced, low perception

2:10 because of the, you know, his team unfortunately has Deshaun Watson and lack of star power in that end, general skepticism. And that's literally just the only ups issue. And the fact that he also doesn't have that perceived receiving upside of a guy like Chase Brown. So he's more than capable of doing it. And then you add in the double whammy of Dylan Sampson coming back. That just decreases the value even more, despite the fact that he is coming off of a fantastic game. But I feel very good about what I saw from the Browns in general, despite the fact that Deshaun Watson was still Deshaun Watson.

2:44 They remained, you know, aggressive on the ground. successful on the ground. The line held up well, Samson did his thing and adding in value.

2:52 He looked good. He had receptions.

2:54 And despite all of that, we still had Judkins scoring more than 20 fantasy points. So take advantage of the weird skepticism around him and the perception of the Browns offense and.

3:05 Grab what is probably the lowest call.

3:08 One of the lowest costs RB ones that you can get and plug in and feel comfortable. Now that the Browns are kind of on track, as a solid RB2 that gives you upside on a weekly basis.

3:21 How would you rank rest of season these three running backs? Quinshawn Judkins, Josh Jacobs, Ollie Gordon. What's the order in which you prefer to have those guys? Because there's some other names sprinkled in between them in the rest of season rankings, but a lot of those names are guys who are dealing with injuries right now. So amongst the healthy guys in this range, how would you rank those three?

3:39 I do have Jacobs higher. There's the caveat of.

3:43 Just like the the risk that lingers out there, but apples to apples, just because of the offense, I would lean towards Jacobs, even if you're taking on the risk, then I would have a quench on Judkins and then Ollie Gordon, but Ollie Gordon is also one of those guys that I think is a fine offer as well.

4:02 So they're kind of in that same bucket for me.

4:04 Yeah.

4:05 Gordon to me feels like somebody that could have been a name you discussed here as somebody to go out and buy it because All he keeps doing is producing, and I don't think the name value and just the dolphins of it all, I think that's going to weigh down his value here. At least it still is right now.

4:20 So yeah, I think he's another one there. Any receivers come to mind as a receiver you would trade to get Junkins?

4:28 Yes, the big one for me is DJ Moore.

4:31 Obviously, we don't have a, you know, the lingering injury things are kind of an issue with him. But at the end of the day, he is still the wide receiver one of that offense. So he still has pretty decent value. That's a realistic one that you could trade because you've been getting by without him. And maybe you need a running back and you drafted well at wide receiver and you're okay.

4:52 Maybe you picked up guys off waivers. That's an interesting one.

4:55 And then maybe a Rasheed Rice as well, kind of taking advantage of these guys that are, you know, solid wide receiver twos in value, but are dealing with a wide variety of injuries and issues that are kind of holding them back. So you can make that swap because Judkins has a lower value.

5:11 Hit me with a wide receiver that you're looking to buy.

5:15 I am looking to buy Justin Jefferson. I know this one comes with some skepticism, right? But I think it's the perfect time to put in A low ball offer on him. Uh, I don't trust Kyler Murray in any way, shape or form. This is not an endorsement of him. So we can put that off to the side. Um, it's very funny. Just, it's completely irrelevant of, you know, the Vikings are thriving. It has nothing to do with Kyler Murray. Right. has not surpassed 250 yards. High was 247 against Miami. I mean, he's had a whole bunch of layup matchups as well with the exception of Tampa Bay.

5:50 But now that we got all the negatives out there and why this is not an endorsement of Kyler Murray, this is purely about the schedule. Moving forward, Detroit, Buffalo, Green Bay, San Francisco, Atlanta, Carolina, New England, right? And then Detroit for the start of the fantasy playoffs, Washington, and then the New York Jets. There are couple of hiccups in there, but the hiccups are teams that will at the very least force aggressive pass volume, more aggressive than what it has been. Because the problem is, is they've been in these weird kind of layup matchups to where with the exception of week one against Green Bay, which Kyler Murray wasn't there for that one. They've been in these scenarios where they're not playing teams that can

6:31 necessarily consistently push aggressive volume against them. So It makes it so that they can lean on the run, rely on their defense. They don't have to really force the issue with Kyler Murray. When you get into matchups with teams like Detroit, New England, they're going to force the issue. San Francisco, hopefully by then they've got Mike Evans back, but they'll force the issue on that end. And so we can look for higher pass volume. So overall, positive schedule.

6:57 We feel good about it. A guy that faces beatable defenses. and can push these games from being in the 20 to 40 point total range.

7:08 That's the issue.

7:09 These games that they've been playing are in the 20 to 40 point total range. These games coming up in the schedule, it's going to push far above that so we can finally get into these high volume matchups.

7:19 Do you feel like, we had a very short conversation on this with Debro on the tailgate this morning. Do you feel like Justin Jefferson has taken a step back personally, or do you think that his lack of production is entirely driven by the frustrating quarterback and offensive environment that he's been in right now? Because I mean, like you go going back to the Vikings at a week six by 2025, going back to that by week last year, he has one game with over 100 receiving yards, and it was 101. He barely got there. And it was week 18 of last year. So it didn't even help in the fantasy. So like, it is a really long stretch of like not reaching this mark that like we think of him as being very capable of hitting in

8:01 any given game. Do you feel like he is taking any sort of step back or is this all about the quarterback?

8:06 No, I think it's all about the quarterback.

8:07 And it's unfortunate because, you know, you know that some of these quarterbacks have capabilities like take J.J.

8:12 McCarthy.

8:12 We see him now delivering plenty of, you know, volume to Malik neighbors. And you wonder, OK, why did that not happen with Justin Jefferson? But Going back to memory and looking at that, I mean, it wasn't as if there were, it was very strange. Like he legitimately could not hit Justin Jefferson. It wasn't as if Jefferson was dropping anything or frustrated. So I don't think it kind of teeters towards the George Pickens ends of, you know, frustration and you start to slack off a little bit and there's issues that are really more so on your end.

8:40 No offense to George Pickens, but we know that does happen from time to time. I think it's just a weird coincidence of the quarterback situation, game situations, and then again, having such a good defense. that they don't have to necessarily pass aggressively.

8:55 You've got another big name receiver on the list here.

8:57 Yeah, we're kind of hitting that kind of mid-range guys that are theoretically still holding decent value.

9:03 But once you.

9:04 Start to put out offers, you'll notice that it's not as high as it is on paper.

9:09 Chris Olave is one of those guys. The Saints are on a buy.

9:12 Olave has had three disappointing games by his standards after the extremely hot start. Now's the perfect time to swoop in and just snag him at low cost because we've.

9:23 Got that fear of what everyone is saying.

9:25 And, you know, hey, I'm saying it too, right? Jordan Tyson, he's coming. He'll be back soon. Hopefully he'll be able to stay on the field and hamstring issue free. But that only adds to depressing the value of people that are getting concerned and want to get out of this with Tyson's looming return. wondering like, oh my gosh, is Chris Olave going to disappear? Is Tyler Shuck going to hold up, right? But when you look at the schedule and the hot start versus how he's cooled off, it does.

9:52 Make sense, right?

9:53 He had between 10 to 13 targets in each of the first four games. Those games were Detroit, Baltimore with Lamar Jackson, that's key, Vegas and Atlanta. All of those matchups had Tyler Chuck throwing between 34 to 56 attempts, right? The first poor performance that Chris Olave had was against Minnesota.

10:12 Completely understandable. We write that off.

10:14 The Giants game wasn't a poor performance. It was just a floor game of 14 fantasy points in PPR and And then he had 10 targets against Pittsburgh. So not a particularly efficient day. None of these games to me scream panic mode. I know on the surface after the way that we started and we're thinking, good God, this is the league winning stack, Tyler Shuck and Chris Olave.

10:32 It can make you want to flip out and jump out and bail out immediately. But looking at the Saints schedule, they don't have an extremely difficult rest of season schedule. Olave is still the wide receiver one, and he's probably one of the cheapest true wide receiver ones that you can snag at value.

10:49 Rest of season, he is ranked as wide receiver seven in the consensus rankings. But I'm kind of with you in that I don't know that he's necessarily held in that level by his fantasy managers. I mean, in half PPR scoring, he has not been a wide receiver one since week two. Now, he's been wide receiver 13 in one of these games. He's been 19, 20, 20, 45 against the Vikings. So, like, it's not like he's been killing you. There's been a real floor there of top 20.

11:19 But that ceiling has not been present since weeks one and two, which I think is noticed by his managers and does make him maybe a little more attainable. He's an interesting one. When you think about buying Chris Olave, he's somebody that you are like, I want to make an aggressive offer and make sure I go out and get him. and you can throw out some names as examples if you want, or I see somebody where you're like, I want to see, I want to take the temperature of the Chris Alave manager in my league and see if he is maybe attainable at a little bit under value.

11:50 Or are you like, listen, like even if the manager is ranking him as wide receiver seven, I still want to go get him. Where's your head at with that?

11:57 No, I think you take the temperature and you put in a low ball offer because again, that's the wide receiver seven is the respect that we're giving him. That is not reflective of the panic level that people are having in terms of his production, right? Especially because of the hype around what Jordan Tyson could be and how that kind of affected his ADP. Once we, you know, felt comfortable with thinking that Tyson was going to be healthy before the injury came preseason. So yeah, I don't think that you have to shoot that high, make an aggressive offer to make sure that you get him. I think that you can, come in there with a low ball offer to try and get him. Um, you know, it's funny if you were looking at maybe swapping positions wise,

12:38 you know, a low ball offer to me. And I think this is actually one that kind of would be on par in terms of value would actually be offering a chase Brown. He's also got that decreased, um, perception, but he also still has that high value. So if you wanted to maybe get out of that situation, if you've got solid options at running back and buy in on Chris Olave, I think that's the direction you could go.

13:01 Find out what your players are really worth with the new Fantasy Pros trade market values report. Compare player values from actual trades across thousands of fantasy leagues against Fantasy Pros expert consensus values. Quickly identify players to buy low, sell high, or target in your next deal with values for half PPR, Dynasty, and your synced teams. Make smarter trades using real market data at fantasypros.com slash markets. That's fantasypros.com slash markets. Tara, who's the next player you want to talk about?

13:29 This is a fun one.

13:30 I've been waiting to do a little one that's not a buy or sell. This is a hold, add, and or buy for Brian Thomas Jr. Because he is literally just right under 50% rostered in Yahoo!

13:43 League.

13:44 So depending on the depth of your league, you could have him. He could be on waivers.

13:48 It could be someone that you could potentially trade for. So there's a wide variety of directions that you could go here. But I do want to have him on roster because The writing on the wall is very clear with Brian Thomas Jr. And it's going to go one of two ways, neither of which is particularly risky, in my opinion, given how extremely bottomed out his price is.

14:09 Guys, he barely is holding on to value.

14:12 People were very quick to dropkick him onto waivers in a lot of shallow leagues. So I mean, really and truly, to acquire him, it's not as if you have to do anything special, even in deeper leagues. There are multiple contending teams with top quarterbacks that have clear holds at wide receiver.

14:33 And Brian Thomas Jr. 's value would jump significantly if he landed with any of them. And I know the Jags. It's funny.

14:42 Liam Cohen came out and said that Brian Thomas Jr. is going to help us out this week. A lot of positive things. We're going to get involved. Yeah, it's interesting that they said that after he played to a snap count that was reduced in week six to around 20%, which is that big red flag of, okay, he's pulled from the game because they don't want him to get hurt because of the trade value. It's possible, though, that Liam Coma is saying those things because the price isn't quite right. Because we do have a very clear baseline in pricing with the Marvin Harrison Jr. trade. He had higher draft capital, but Brian Thomas Jr. has far more proven upside. given his rookie season. So the Jags are probably looking to match that at a bare minimum. So

15:25 if they can't get the compensation that's right for them, maybe they're just not interested because they're a contender and they can ultimately.

15:30 Use Brian Thomas Jr.

15:32 I find it hard to believe that if the trade doesn't happen, that rest of season, they're just going to sit him and he's just not going to be involved.

15:38 He'd just be in the mix with Jacoby Myers.

15:40 And what makes it a not so risky situation of if he stays with Jacksonville is that the Jags rest of season schedule is a quite literally a cakewalk. Layup matchup after layup matchup. We knew this was heading into the season. We knew that there was probably no way that Brian Thomas Jr. was going to have any level of upside before the Jags bye week because it was just so aggressively tilted with difficult matchups and difficult cornerback matchups.

16:06 Rest of season, worst case scenario, if he stays with the Jags, it would be a low inflex option with games that are layups or at least the tougher ones would at least have higher, extremely high point totals because they play good offenses. So yeah, put it out there, guys. If he is available, grab him. Just see what happens.

16:24 Trade could happen, could come in a good situation. And if not, what was really the risk? Because you're not trading anything special to get him.

16:32 Wide receiver 64 in rest of season rankings. So completely just buried in the rankings.

16:41 Is there a preferred spot for you to see him go? I would love to see San Francisco.

16:47 I do know that San Francisco is not opposed to just pushing through and trying to figure out how to make it work with the little pieces that they have. But I mean, the fact that they were rolling out there and lost, that probably is a kicker in terms of making them maybe make that move versus the traditional like, oh, we're just going to stand pat and maybe we try and make a low end trade or add somebody off a practice squad or something. So maybe that's the one because I'm really skeptical of this Achilles situation with Mike Evans.

17:19 So they need to do something to have a wide receiver one long term because it's extremely risky for them to roll forward, hoping that this is not a issue that is going to plague Mike Evans rest of season.

17:30 You've got a player to sell for us, Tara, coming off of a massive game. I do.

17:35 We're going to do the traditional sell high on Tony Pollard, because if you have him, I would hope that you haven't had to been relying on him as a starter this season. And this is a nice opportunity just to target managers that are dealing with injuries or bye weeks and sell him off after 25 carries, hefty workload, 100 yards, three touchdowns. He does this from time to time. He's not a destitute running back, right? He's just on a destitute team, which is why we have repeatedly hoped that he would trade deadline after trade deadline.

18:06 How many times has he been floated out of?

18:08 It could be Tony Pollard. He could be on the move. And yet Tennessee just kind of holds steady on that. And maybe this is the year, but If you want to hold and see what happens, that's perfectly fine. You don't have to make an aggressive move. But it's worth putting out there because he is a solid back. And under the right circumstances, you can make the argument for why these outlier performances keep happening, right?

18:31 Ironically, it happened against Cleveland last year as well.

18:34 So I wonder if maybe there's something to that, you know.

18:38 That orange and brown that makes him feel good.

18:39 I don't know.

18:40 But I find it hard to believe this level of.

18:42 Performance is going to be repeating on a weekly basis. He just pops off from time to time, often in the back half of the season, right? And this performance was really probably the best that we are going to see out of him. So if there's a sell high opportunity, especially with injuries plaguing the running back room, this is it right here. He has a bye week coming up in week nine. So hey, if you can find someone that can get use out of him in week eight, you can avoid that by a week as well. And by any means, again, this is not a must-sell, must-sell kind of situation because.

19:14 He is a lead back.

19:16 He's had at least 14 carries in every single game this season except for week one. But again, that kind of hammers home the point of why maybe we should sell on this. He has been a lead back the whole time, and we're just now seeing the ceiling game.

19:28 Tennessee is a bad team.

19:30 The upcoming schedule is full of teams that they should not theoretically be competitive with. Cincinnati, Jacksonville, who knows with Dallas, but Jacksonville again and then up and down after that. So seeing, you know, putting your feelers out there, seeing what you can get potentially for him in terms of some people having positive sentiments around him.

19:49 Would you trade him for one of these upside running backs like, you know, Manungai or Corum or Jonah Coleman? Those guys are all ranked behind him in the rest of season rankings. Any of them you'd be interested in?

19:59 I would. I thought about that one as well because, you know, you could aim high and try and get something. But realistically, when it comes to Tony Pollard, the flip is probably going to have to be for one of these high-end handcuffs with Standalone value. Like, and if you think about it, if it, if it troubles you to think about why would I trade a starting running back for a guy that's a backup running back in theory, think about it on a weekly basis over the past several weeks, exclude this week when all the running backs went out and we say, okay, now he's a safe start prior to that. If you're looking at your roster, were you picking Tony Pollard or were you picking Blake Corum? Yeah, you might have been picking Blake Corum on that one

20:34 and the production would have warranted it. So yeah, I could make that flip for one of the higher end guys for sure.

20:41 We'll wrap things up there.

20:42 Thanks everybody for checking out the five moves to make before week eight for Tara.

20:46 I'm Ryan Wormley.

20:47 We'll see you again next time. Thanks for listening to the Fantasy Pros Fantasy Football Podcast. If you love the show, the best free way to support us is by leaving a positive review on Apple Podcasts at fantasypros.com slash review or on Spotify. Follow us on X, Instagram, and TikTok at Fantasy Pros and subscribe to our YouTube channel at youtube.com slash fantasypros.