Fantasy Football: Does a midseason trade improve a player’s production?

• We assume that players traded mid-season are ready to take on bigger roles, but is that true? In our sample, only three of nine qualifying players saw more touches per game after being traded.

• There are exceptions in both directions: Kenyan Drake in 2019 is the shining example of a player taking on a bigger role post-trade, but there are also cautionary tales from Golden Tate in 2018 and Chase Claypool in 2022.

Estimated reading time: 10 minutes

The day of the NFL trade deadline could change with just one or two deals around the league. Imagine if X, formerly known as Twitter, was around when the Herschel Walker business went under. Pre-season pretenders suddenly realize they are contenders and a good choice for players, while teams that started the campaign with high ambitions fall down and decide it’s time for a reset.

With so much action comes so much reaction, the wildest of which often takes place in fantasy football circles. This author traded a first-round pick and two second-rounders for Kadarius Toney after moving from the New York Giants to the Kansas City Chiefs.

There is a very binary analysis involved when a player, especially a skill position player, is traded. A team has given up resources on player X mid-season, so they must want to include player X very heavily in their offense. Player X is therefore on the verge of becoming a fantasy megastar.

But how true is that exactly? Does a midseason trade mean an automatic increase in fantasy production? Let’s find out.

Since 2015, there have been 26 deadline deals involving only skill position offensive players. These range from useful (Calvin Ridley from the Atlanta Falcons to the Jacksonville Jaguars in 2022) to almost meaningless, but perhaps there’s a chance they’ll become more accented, meaning you can flip them for something, anything, like Ty Montgomery being traded from the Green Bay Packers to the Baltimore Ravens in 2018.

This year, several skill position players switched teams: Jakobi Meyers, Rashid Shaheed, Adonai Mitchell and John Metchie III.

We won’t mention all 26 players turned over. Instead, we’ll analyze ten of the most high-profile names moved at the deadline and use them as a control group for what to expect in terms of fantasy production post-trade.

Before being traded, the ten names mentioned above averaged 62.31 PPR points from Weeks 1 through 8 with their original teams. After the trade, they averaged 73.61 for the rest of the season with their new teams. The evidence shows a marginal increase throughout the season, although there are some exceptions in both directions.

For example, Kenyan Drake posted 56.8 PPR points through the first eight weeks of the 2019 season with the Miami Dolphins, making him the RB41 overall — hardly a streamable commodity. After moving to the desert, Drake was the RB4 starting in Week 9, behind only Ezekiel Elliott, Derrick Henry and Christian McCaffrey.

His 156.4 PPR points over eight games (over 19 points average) made him an RB1 option, a miraculous turnaround considering how low his stock was before the trade. Drake stepped into a workhorse role in Arizona, with David Johnson’s production taking a nosedive and Chase Edmonds unable to carry the load. Drake averaged almost 19 touches in a game with the Cardinals, a huge increase from the 11 touches in a game he saw in Miami.

It helped that the Cardinals ran the ball a lot more than the Dolphins. Through the first eight weeks of the 2019 season, the Dolphins ranked last in rush attempts (144), while the Cardinals were 15th (206). Ironically, the Dolphins ran the ball more after Drake’s trade, and the Cardinals recorded an identical 206 carries – 11 fewer than Miami from Week 9. The difference was in EPA per play. The Cardinals ranked third with 0.088 EPA per rush, and the Dolphins ranked 29th with -0.141 EPA per rush.

At the other end of this spectrum is Golden Tate. While suiting up for the Lions in the 2018 season, the wide receiver recorded 117.9 points, averaging 16.8 points over his seven games played, ranking him as the WR15. After moving to the Eagles, he was the WR53, averaging 7.8 points per game.

Tate was one of the key drivers of the Lions’ offense that season. His 62 goals were the third highest on the team all year, even though he left with half the campaign still to play. Among Lions with at least 20 goals that season, Tate ranked second in passer rating when targeted, with quarterback Matthew Stafford posting a 105.4 rating.

When the former Seattle Seahawk arrived in Philadelphia, he found himself part of a crowded pass-catching room led by tight end Zach Ertz, who paced the team in targets (154), Alshon Jeffery and Nelson Agholor (90 targets each). It meant Tate was often reduced to the third or fourth option when passing on concepts. While his overall PFF grade didn’t suffer much (69.3 in Detroit compared to 67.0 in Philadelphia), his targets, yards, touchdowns and yards per route all dropped.

Touch is the lifeblood of fantasy production. Let’s look at the average number of touches per game before and after the trade, excluding Jimmy Garoppolo, since he is a quarterback and thus touched the ball on every snap after moving to the 49ers.

For this sample, only three players saw a role increase post-trade: Drake, Moss, and Hockenson, with their average number of touches increasing as a group from 6.6 to 11.6. The remaining six players dropped from a combined average of 7.5 touches per game to 4.2.

It’s easy to get caught up in fantasy about paying for a newly traded player while assuming their role will increase dramatically, especially if premium draft capital or a player was involved in the deal that went the other way, as was the case when the Bears sent a second-round pick to acquire Claypool. However, many of the numbers simply don’t bear that out, so buyer beware. If you select a player who was flipped at the deadline, take advantage of some naivety and cash in.