Welcome to the Thursday edition of the Week 8 Fantasy Football Trade Analyzer! By now, we have a decent idea of what’s in store from an injury perspective, making it a good time to make some trades heading into the weekend to get your team in the best shape possible.
Who should you look to acquire? Who should you trade away? You have questions, and I have answers. Let’s get started!
Week 8 Trade Analyzer: Three players to trade for this week
Let’s start by looking at who to trade for as you prepare your roster for the playoff push.
Damien Harris, RB, New England Patriots
#Belitricks might, possibly, be coming to an end. Damien Harris looks like he has finally taken the mantle of starting running back and offers us an RB from Foxborough that we can trust. Harris has gone over 100 rushing yards in the last two games while converting 3 TDs.
Sometimes it’s okay to buy high. I feel confident paying up for a running back seeing a heavy workload that has proven he’s capable of producing. With the injuries around the league at RB, Harris is a great fill-in if you lost a star.
Tony Pollard, RB, Dallas Cowboys
Tony Pollard is highly explosive and currently the most efficient running back in the league, averaging 6.0 yards per carry. He’s the RB26 in half-PPR formats as a “backup” with only 1 TD this season.
Still, he’s seen double-digit carries in all but one game, topped 60 rushing yards in four straight weeks, and is used in the passing game as well. Pollard is a flex play in his own right, with elite RB upside if something ever happened to Ezekiel Elliott.
Kadarius Toney, WR, New York Giants
Kadarius Toney has looked positively electric in recent weeks, but he might be undervalued in your league due to the one week he missed with injuries. From Weeks 4-5, Toney caught 16 of 22 targets for 267 yards. That’s a lot of work.
Toney is being peppered and has shown that he is a dangerous, crisp, and slippery route runner. Coming back from injury, possibly as early as this week, Toney has league-winning potential down the stretch.
Week 8 Trade Analyzer: Three players to trade away this week
Knowing who to trade for is great, but who should you trade away?
Terry McLaurin, WR, Washington Football Team
With the Washington Football Team and their instability, Terry McLaurin is a risky bet to maintain his value down the stretch. He has a few monster weeks under his belt, including four games with double-digit targets and three with over 100 receiving yards. In each of those three contests, he found the end zone.
In the other four games, he hasn’t scored or topped 62 receiving yards. The volatility is concerning to me, and it isn’t something that I want much to do with. I’d be happy to sell him for someone that I think is more stable.
Kalif Raymond, WR, Detroit Lions
Quite frankly, there aren’t any Detroit Lions players that I want other than D’Andre Swift and T.J. Hockenson. Kalif Raymond is coming off a game against the Los Angeles Rams, where he posted 115 receiving yards. Prior to that, he had one game with 68 yards and nothing else over 50.
He’s an easy sell high. Find the manager in your league that thinks this was a breakout game, and sell him for anything. If Raymond is on your roster, he was a waiver wire pickup anyway. Profit on his good game.
J.J. Taylor, RB, New England Patriots
On the surface, J.J. Taylor had 15.1 fantasy points in half-PPR and 2 touchdowns in Week 7. Yay! Underneath what looks like a big stat line, he had 9 carries for 21 yards (2.3 yards per carry) and only had 1 target in the passing game. That’s not yay.
This backfield belongs to Damien Harris moving forward. Taylor might have some sprinkled-in involvement, but his 2 TDs came against the New York Jets — the worst defense against the run in the NFL. The matchup inflated his numbers, and if I can trade him for a sandwich, I will.
