Best Fantasy Football Trades Week 6: Buy Low On Tony Pollard
There's nothing more fun in fantasy football than making trades. However, it can often be hard to know which players to target, and which of your own you can get good value for. That's where FantasySP's tools come in: We can use the FantasySP Fantasy Assistant to find players that have the most Expected Trade Interest (ETI), and then cross-reference them with the Trade Value Chart to see how much those players are worth. Let's take a look at three players with high ETIs that I think are either overvalued or undervalued by the current market.
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Best Fantasy Football Trades To Make Week 6
Buy Low On Tony Pollard
Normally I try to start this piece by focusing on one of the top few players in Expected Trade Interest, but I'm sliding down the ranks slightly this week to Tony Pollard. Pollard technically ranks 14th in ETI, but his 20% is still a very solid number, and none of the players above him hold anywhere near the same level of value. Guys like K.J. Osborn (first among all players with a 22% ETI) and Jimmy Garoppolo (fifth with 21% ETI) are important, but except in deep leagues they are unlikely ever to be the centerpiece of a trade. That's not the case with Pollard, who was a second-round pick in most drafts this offseason and is still one of the most sought-after RBs in the league.
However, Pollard's value has likely fallen slightly over the first five weeks of the season. He started strong with two TDs and 21 fantasy points against the Giants, but has been trending in the wrong direction ever since. Pollard hit a new low with just 6.4 Half-PPR points on eight carries in Week 5, as the Cowboys were shut down on prime-time television by the 49ers. Our Trade Value Chart hasn't overreacted, keeping him among the very top options at the position where he belongs ... but your leaguemates may have.
Pollard has been the victim of a very odd start to the season for the Cowboys. In four of their five games, either the Cowboys (three times) or their opponents (the 49ers on Sunday night) have reached a 90% win probability in the first half. Especially because a lot of the Cowboys' scoring in the three games they dominated came from their defense, Pollard hasn't even been able to rack up many points before watching Rico Dowdle and/or Deuce Vaughn take the lead in garbage time. In the one Cowboys game that wasn't a blowout (Week 3 against the Cardinals), Pollard played 70 of 81 snaps (86%) and racked up 23 carries, plus three targets.
Pollard is also tied with Christian McCaffrey for the league lead in red zone carries with 27 but has just two TDs to show for it (CMC has seven). With positive regression in that department as well as some more normal game scripts for the Cowboys, some more huge games are in Pollard's future. If you can get him for "just" normal RB1 prices, you could be handsomely rewarded with top-three performance for the rest of the season, and that's the kind of move that can truly win a fantasy football league.
Sell High On Kendre Miller
Let's head back towards the top of the ETI charts with Saints rookie RB Kendre Miller, who ranks sixth overall with a 21% ETI. As I said above, Miller may not be the kind of player who can be the centerpiece of a blockbusting trade on his own, but extracting the maximum value out of fringe pieces like him is often the key to winning a fantasy football championship. With that in mind, I think Miller is an ideal sell-high candidate, especially given that our Fantasy Assistant indicates there is a high level of interest in trading for him.
Miller had the biggest game of his young career in Week 5, touching the ball 16 times for 90 yards as the Saints blew out the Patriots. And the third-rounder looked great, breaking off some big gains and showing his skills both as a runner and a receiver.
?s=46&t=Ip42AyCa7MFiRlEwnIdjeASo why am I suggesting you sell high on a talented rookie who seems to be on the way up? Multiple reasons. First of all, of Miller's 16 touches, only two came before the Saints were already up by 21 points. He is clearly still behind Alvin Kamara in the pecking order, and this Saints' offense is nowhere near good enough to support two fantasy-relevant running backs. Second, and the main reason I'm out on Miller at this point, I'm not convinced he's even the handcuff to Kamara. Jamaal Williams, who is currently on IR with a hamstring injury, will come back eventually. When he does, I expect him to slot in ahead of Miller on the Saints' depth chart. After all, while Kamara was suspended and Miller was hurt, Williams was given the backfield essentially all to himself; when Williams and Miller swapped places, the Saints made the rookie split work with Tony Jones, who they have since waived.
The only way Miller will have a fantasy-relevant role this season is if Kamara misses more time, and even if that happens, Williams (not to mention Taysom Hill) will be there to spoil the party. If you can find someone who likes his talent and thinks of him as a top-tier handcuff, he is absolutely worth flipping for that value. I like Kendre as a player and think he's a good target in Dynasty leagues, but his path to fantasy relevance for 2023 is too thin to gamble on.
Buy High On Adam Thielen
I'm calling this a "buy high" because Thielen's value is very much on the way up since the start of the season. While he may even have gone undrafted in some leagues, Thielen is now the WR10 in Half-PPR scoring, having seen a whopping 35 targets over his last three games. However, at 33 years old and coming off a thoroughly mediocre season, Thielen is likely finding it hard to shake off the "washed" label. Our Trade Value Chart has him at WR30, and FantasyPros' Rest of Season rankings have him all the way down at WR38.
However, I think Thielen can maintain WR2 levels of production. The key to his career renaissance has been a change in role: In Carolina, Thielen is running 72% of his routes out of the slot, easily his career high and more than double his rate in each of the past four years. This move has allowed him to make up for decreased athleticism with route-running ability, and he has become a favorite target of rookie QB Bryce Young (and fellow old man Andy Dalton in his Week 3 start).
This change in role, and the decreased ADOT that comes with it, means Thielen isn't quite as valuable in Standard leagues. But in PPR or even Half-PPR, his target numbers are absolutely impossible to ignore. With Carolina likely to be playing from behind every single week, he should be able to continue putting up solid fantasy output. If you can find someone who thinks they're selling high by moving on from Thielen after his 100-yard game in Week 5, it's certainly worth sending an offer to see if you can add a rock-solid flex or even WR2 to your roster for cheap.
