Week 8 Fantasy Football Trades: Ja'Marr Chase, Woody Marks and Stefon Diggs

Fantasy football trading is easy in theory, but very hard in practice. Plans to “Buy Low” or “Sell High” only work if there is someone on the other hand willing to do the buying high and selling low.

Thankfully, this is where the Fantasy Assistant comes in. The Assistant uses predictive analytics to generate an Expected Trade Interest (ETI) for each player. The ETI leaders in a given week are the players whom you are most likely to be able to trade for or away. Here are those players for this week:

After a few weeks of mostly seeing the same names, we have some interesting new faces at the top this week! Consensus first-overall pick Ja'Marr Chase leads the way now that Joe Flacco has revitalized the Bengals' offense, but Texans rookie RB Woody Marks is just behind. Finally, we have Stefon Diggs, who has had a rollercoaster start to his first season in New England. Let's break down what to do with this three hot trade assets. 

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Buy Ja'Marr Chase

Really, the time to buy Chase was three weeks ago, when it looked as though Jake Browning was going to tank the fantasy value of one of the league's best players. Now, Chase is back on top of the world. He leads all receivers with 25.4 half-PPR points per game over the last three weeks, two of which he played with Flacco.  

So why is Chase a buy when his value has skyrocketed back up? Simple. If you get a chance to buy a truly elite player, it is almost always the right move. Outside of very deep leagues, the production that top-tier options provide is essentially invaluable.

While Chase briefly appeared to no longer be a truly elite player, he is clearly back on that short list of names now. If you can take advantage of his still slightly sketchy quarterback situation to get him on your roster, do it.  

Hold Woody Marks

Marks has undeniably taken over the Texans' backfield. Since Week 4, he leads Nick Chubb in essentially every relevant stat: snap share (52% to 34%), carries (34 to 29), route participation rate (36% to 19%), and targets (11 to six). He has even played 86% of the Texans' snaps and handled three of five carries inside the 10-yard line. 

This is definitely slightly inflated by the game script, but Marks also set new career highs in snap share (61%) and RB rush share (67%) on Monday night. Given all this, my first instinct was to list him as a buy candidate. A rookie with a three-down skillset has taken over as his team's RB1 at the expense of an aging vet, and he's only trending upward. What's not to like?

However, there are some red flags here. For one, it's not actually a guarantee that Marks is a better player than even 29-year-old Chubb, at least on the ground. The veteran leads the backfield in PFF Rush Grade, yards per attempt, and yards over expected per attempt. For another, Houston's offense is truly dreadful. They rank 23rd in EPA per play, 26th in success rate, and 27th in rush EPA. 

If you can get Marks for cheap, do it. But I imagine most managers with Marks are pretty excited about their rookie RB taking over his team's backfield, even if the situation isn't 100% ideal. With that in mind, Marks makes perfect sense as a player to hold. He's trending up, so you shouldn't be actively looking to sell him if you have him … but I wouldn't rush to pay up for him, either. 

Sell Stefon Diggs

Diggs has been a fantasy football enigma so far this season. Things looked rough for the veteran to start the year. He averaged just 5.9 points per game over the first three weeks. Despite being expected to be the clear top option in a talent-starved New England WR room, his target share was just 14% and his route participation rate was a brutal 57%. 

In Week 4, things changed dramatically for the better. Diggs saw the field more with a team-leading 77% route participation rate, and he turned that into six catches on seven targets (a 39% target share) for 101 yards. In Week 5 against his former team, the Bills, he took another step forward with a massive 19.6 points on an absurd 40% target share … but his route share quietly slipped back down to just 61%. 

With middling results (one good week, one bad) on middling usage over the last two weeks, here are Diggs' averages for the season: 9.3 points per game on a 22% target share, a 24% air yards share, and a 62% route participation rate. And it's that last number that this really all comes down to.

Diggs has been very productive on a per-route basis (he ranks 15th among 100-route WRs in fantasy points per route), but he simply isn't an every-down player for the Patriots, and that will make it very hard for him to be a fantasy difference maker.

Especially with the way Drake Maye is playing, Diggs is by no means a useless fantasy option. However, he is comparable to fellow AFC East receivers Keon Coleman and Khalil Shakir — capable of big games thanks to an elite QB, but also capable of busts thanks to part-time usage.

Especially in shallower formats, players in this mold are very replaceable. I recommend packaging Diggs to upgrade to a more reliable option, even if you have to technically overpay to get the deal done.