Should You Trade For/Away Christian McCaffrey and Ja'Marr Chase?
Two fantasy stars with circumstances causing them to not live up to their billing among the top skill players.
Fantasy football is mostly about luck. We put in hours, upon hours, upon days, upon weeks preparing for the start of the season, then all your hard work goes up in flames because three starters get hurt by the end of Week 1. Have you checked on your friend who drafted Christian McCaffrey, Tee Higgins and Jordan Love?
As the season goes on, though, the best owners adapt and make moves to continue building their team; it’s not about having the best projections at the beginning of the year.
The goal in most leagues is to win as many weeks as possible. Scoring the most points is cool, but the owner who wins the most head-to-head matchups gets the best position heading into the fantasy playoffs. Again, luck means more than anything else.
A lot of roster churn happens with the players at the bottom, but it’s harder to acquire a superstar during the season, as every owner wants those valuable pieces and is hesitant to give up on a possible goldmine. Those moves involve two people needing to see common value and find common ground to make a trade; it doesn’t happen a lot in every fantasy league.
FantasySP aims to help create fair trades with our Trade Analyzer. You can plug in players to compare current and future value to determine if the sides are even; it’s perfect for those who are new to fantasy football or aren’t experienced making trades.
Two big-name players have stood out among trade searches recently: McCaffrey and Ja'Marr Chase. The former is out with a surprise injury, and the latter sat out all of preseason in a contract dispute before returning for two middling games to start the season.
Let’s look at the situation in which each guy currently finds himself, the implications of trading for either star and the value they currently hold given the circumstances.
Christian McCaffrey Fantasy Outlook
McCaffrey is set to miss at least the next three games after being placed on IR. What a kick in the nuts for fantasy owners who took him at the top of many drafts, expecting he’d be ready to go from the start. We didn’t know he was going to be out of Week 1 until the day of the game, and even then, it seemed like a short-term issue.
There is no defined return date, though a report said he may need up to six weeks to fully heal. That means fantasy owners would be looking at a return some time between Week 6 at the Seahawks and Week 8 against the Cowboys. That’s about half of the fantasy football season.
There’s no doubt about his talent, but is it worth waiting through 50% of the season for any value out of your top pick? A lot of that depends on your fantasy team's situation.
Those who have a solid roster and enough pieces to fill in at RB would do well to hang onto McCaffrey with the expectation that you will get a huge boost in a month or so. You will be adding the top preseason fantasy player who will be fresh and seemingly healthy. It will be bigger than any waiver addition anyone makes throughout the entire season.
That won’t matter much if your team is out of the playoff race by the time he returns, though. A team that was built with McCaffrey as a clear centerpiece and not much high-level talent otherwise could do well to acquire several weekly starters for a player who isn’t scoring any points.
Trade Value
If a fellow owner is willing to give you two or more mid- to high-level starters for McCaffrey, that’s a trade someone with a shallow roster must consider. As an example, let’s say you get offered Kenneth Walker III and Nico Collins in exchange for McCaffrey: I’d have a really hard time turning that down unless I had a lot of depth at both running back and wide receiver.
While McCaffrey will presumably do better than both when healthy, he’s not going to provide that value for much of the season. The opportunity to get starter-level work for almost the entire season from two players could be better than the unknown of McCaffrey’s return and workload once he comes back.
If the level of player offered goes down, it’s harder to accept a trade, even if you get more total value. The combination of Kirk Cousins, Drake London, Kyle Pitts, the Atlanta defense and Younghoe Koo will score more points than McCaffrey, but I wouldn’t trade the star back for that collection of Falcons talent. This is true in all trades, but don’t confuse quantity for quality when you have a limited number of roster spots, even if you badly need depth.
A package of Dak Prescott, George Kittle and Devin Singletary is intriguing: An owner who lost Jordan Love and is streaming at tight end could solidify two positions while also getting a streaming option at the toughest position to fill in fantasy. Again, none of those three will ever outplay McCaffrey, but getting their production over the full season could matter more than McCaffrey’s ceiling when he returns.
Who Should Trade for Him?
This is a tough question to answer because everything is so dependent on your roster. Anyone with a solid, deep roster who can afford to trade multiple players could make the biggest upside play possible by grabbing McCaffrey from a floundering team.
Another hypothetical: You have both Patrick Mahomes and Jayden Daniels at quarterback and a deep stable of wide receivers with a superstar (Tyreek Hill, perhaps), multiple high-level options, and a waiver wire addition you’re excited about. Daniels and Deebo Samuel Sr. would be a tough package for your league-mate to turn down if those players both fill holes, and it wouldn’t affect your team’s bottom line much given the other options available.
Anyone who wants to add top-level talent could target McCaffrey. It’s dangerous to do an RB-for-RB swap, like giving up Bijan Robinson, because you’re leaving a huge hole until the San Francisco back returns. By dealing from depth, you mitigate the impact of McCaffrey being out while setting yourself up for the highest ceiling possible in November and December.
Ja'Marr Chase Fantasy Outlook
Chase is in his fourth year, eligible to sign an extension but still under contract through 2025 due to his fifth-year option. The franchise tag would almost certainly be used to keep Chase in Cincinnati through at least 2027, so the best-case scenario for both sides is to sign a big contract to keep the star receiver in town.
Except it’s not that easy. We don’t know what exactly the team and player want that is holding up an agreement, but money is usually the most important thing. Chase said he wants to top Justin Jefferson’s record wide receiver contract, and I totally understand that, but he doesn’t have all the leverage given the control the team has over him for the next few seasons.
The most likely scenario is that they hem and haw over the specifics before finally coming to an extension this offseason. All that is about the future, though: What about 2024? While Chase started the season with modest numbers, circumstances weren’t in his favor.
Like I said earlier, Chase sat out the whole preseason and right up until Week 1 before suiting up. No matter his talent, it surely affected his timing, crispness and whatever other term you want to throw in there. Practice makes perfect, and nothing has been perfect in Cincinnati.
Tee Higgins also missed the first two games dealing with injury and will be back as early as this week. Higgins will take away some targets, but he will also draw defensive attention away from Chase. No one else on the team is close to the level of the top two receivers, so teams can key into stopping one of them if the other is out.
Maybe most importantly, the Bengals started off by facing two really tough pass defenses. New England and Kansas City were both in the top 10 last season in passing yards and yards per attempt allowed and fantasy points allowed to wide receivers.
Joe Burrow also has an odd habit of starting the year poorly before improving significantly. It just seems like so much has gone against Chase so far, and he still managed to rack up 97 yards on 10 catches.
Losing to the Patriots was bad, but Cincinnati just went down to the back-to-back Super Bowl champs by one point on the road on a late field goal. There’s plenty of positives to take away. Each game was only a one-score loss, so two bounces of the football could have changed fortunes and had them at 2-0. Things are fine for the Bengals right now, though they’d surely rather have a win under their belts.
Trade Value
Chase should still be treated like a star receiver. If you drafted him in the first round, don’t panic and sell low on him now. Chase should only be traded for an elite-level running back or receiver if you like that player better in fantasy.
If another fantasy owner is ready to panic and trade him, though? That’s a proposition to jump on. Turning a second-tier player, like Josh Jacobs, into Chase would be a boon if that trade were available. Treat Chase the way you would have before the season and take advantage of others overreacting.
Alternatively, like McCaffrey, Chase could be turned into several starters if your roster is shallow. Two or three good players might do more for you than one star.
Who Should Trade for Him?
Anyone trying to poach a WR1 while his trade value is down. Everyone panics after one week; we do it even more after the second week of games. Acquiring Chase is more likely to work out for you than not as long as you don’t go crazy with your offer: a top skill player or two mid-level starters is as far I’d go.
#trades #2024-fantasy-football
