Fantasy Football Trades for Week 5: Michael Pittman, Jordan Mason and A.J. Brown

Four weeks in and with byes already beginning, the fantasy football is in full swing, so let's get right into the top fantasy football trades to make for Week 5.

As always, I will use the Fantasy Assistant to identify top tradable players. The Assistant uses predictive analytics to generate an Expected Trade Interest (ETI) for each player, with a higher ETI meaning that a player is more likely to be traded. Here are the leaders heading into Week 5:

As usual, the top players are those who are either underperforming or overperforming their expectations. Michael Pittman Jr. has been on fire to start the season in the Colts' surprisingly efficient offense, and he leads the way with a solid 27% mark.

He is followed by Jordan Mason, who has taken over as the Vikings' bell cow with Aaron Jones Sr. sidelined. In third, we have A.J. Brown, who has been utterly useless outside of Week 3 so far this season.

Without further ado, here are my recommendations for how to approach these three hot players on the trade market.

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Buy High on Michael Pittman

I was high on Pittman coming into the season. With 140 targets per 17 games between 2021 and 2024, he has always been an excellent target-earner, by far the most important skill for a fantasy football WR. Overall perception of him was down due to the fact that he spent 2024 dealing with a literal broken back and Anthony Richardson Sr.'s accuracy issues … I'm not sure which is worse. 

With all that in mind, Pittman made perfect sense as a bounceback WR3 or low-end WR2 candidate heading into the season. However, with Daniel Jones operating Shane Steichen's offense at a shockingly high level, he has exceeded even those expectations. Pittman is currently the WR14 in half-PPR scoring, with at least 12.6 points in three of his four outings. 

What's key here is that this production isn't even necessarily unsustainable. The Colts' offense is rolling, and Pittman is their clear top WR, with a 24% target share and a 28% air yards share.

According to both PFF and Fantasy Points Data's expected scoring models, he is only outperforming his expected production by around one or two points per game. That isn't negligible, but it would still leave him as a solid WR2. If you can get Pittman for WR3 prices from someone who drafted him late and still thinks he is just off to a hot start, do it.

Sell High on Jordan Mason

I don't hate Mason. With Jones out, he is the Vikings' clear lead back, and he should be a solid weekly RB2 at worst. However, there are a few key factors working against his long-term value that make him a sell high for me. 

The most obvious issue is that, although he is currently on IR, Jones' season is by no means over. He will be eligible to return as early as Week 8. He does have a long history of hamstring issues, so there is no guarantee that he will return as soon as possible or stay healthy when he does return. But the default assumption should be that Mason will be back in a timeshare by the most important part of the fantasy season.

The other problem is that Mason is kind of already in a timeshare, even with Jones out. When one of a team's top two backs goes down, we often see the remaining back completely consolidate work with elite usage. This hasn't happened for Mason, who has seen just a 62% snap share and a 68% RB rush share over the last two weeks. Those are solid numbers, but not elite. 

To be fair to Mason, those numbers would be better if we eliminated some garbage time at the end of the Vikings' Week 3 domination of the Bengals. However, his receiving numbers have been bad regardless of game script. Minnesota is using Zavier Scott, a 2023 UDFA, as a receiving back instead. Scott has run only three fewer routes and seen five more targets (eight to three) than Mason over the last two weeks. That massively caps Mason's ceiling in any sort of PPR format.

The combination of short-term usage issues with the long-term threat of Jones returning is why Mason is a player to sell. Especially if you don't need his production right now, moving him for a more long-term RB or help at a different position is a no-brainer. You could even try offering him directly for the aforementioned Pittman, whose value is lower in most trade rankings.

Hold A.J. Brown

I victory lapped Pittman earlier, so I should admit that I was also very high on Brown coming into this season. His per-route metrics were absolutely excellent last year, and I thought that he could provide legit WR1 numbers if the Eagles' offense regressed toward the league median in passing volume. 

So far, I couldn't have been more wrong. Not only do the Eagles once again rank dead last with a 45.6% pass rate (and the second-lowest pass rate vs. expectation), but AJB is no longer providing efficiency of any kind, let alone elite efficiency. He ranks as the WR50 with just 7 half-PPR points per game. If we take away Week 3, that number falls to 2.7. 

On the bright side, Brown's usage is actually totally fine. He easily leads the Eagles with a 27% target share and a 45% air yards share, both elite numbers. These numbers are why he is still a hold, not someone to sell low on. If I still had hope in my soul, I could even argue that he is a buy-low candidate.

But at this point, I don't have that level of optimism. Unless someone is willing to move him for absolute peanuts, trading for Brown at this point is just asking for trouble. The Eagles' offense as a whole is struggling, and he personally doesn't seem to be generating much separation, either.

According to ESPN's Receiver Tracking Metrics, his “Open Score” has fallen from 91, tied for the league lead in 2024, to 46, a bottom-10 number in 2025. Brown is an elite talent and could still bounce back, but there's real issues here. Put it all together, and I recommend simply holding him if you have him… and letting someone else deal with the headache if he's not already on your roster.  

Ted Chmyz is a fantasy football contributor for FantasySP. Find him on Twitter @Tchmyz for more fantasy content or to ask questions.