Dynasty Fantasy Football Trading Post: Amon-Ra St. Brown
Do you know what my favorite thing to do is? Nothing. I love doing nothing. If I had the choice between doing something or doing nothing, nine times out of ten, I would choose to do nothing. So when someone asks me, “Where do you have player X ranked?” I just shrug my shoulders and tell them that I don’t do rankings. If you have never tried to do rankings I can assure you they are a lot of work. I also think a lot of that work isn’t necessarily worthwhile.
Right now, Bijan Robinson is the clear running back one in dynasty. Who is number two? What about three and four? If you ask me to think about which, after being upset, you asked me to think, I would say Breece Hall, Christian McCaffrey, then Jonathan Taylor. I can give you reasons as to why I have them in that order, but it would also be completely OK if you told me you have those three in a different order.
This is where the idea of tiers comes into play. Instead of worrying about the granularity of each running back and the specific number they are ranked as, I just say, “These three are my tier two running backs.” It gets the same point across “I think these are the next best running backs, all of which I value close together, and I would be happy with any of them.” So much easier and just as valuable!
How do we take advantage of this? One of the easiest ways to use this information is to go and try to trade for the players at the bottom of the tiers. This way, you have players that you still hold as valuable as the rest of a group of very good players and believe they can produce to similar levels, but maybe you can get them at a little bit of a cheaper price. Since I have already spent two paragraphs talking about running backs, which is more than I ever like to talk about them, we are going to pivot over to wide receivers.
At the top in tier one, we easily have Justin Jefferson and Ja’Marr Chase. What about tier two? AJ Brown, CeeDee Lamb, Garrett Wilson, Jaylen Waddle, Chris Olave, and this week’s subject:
Amon-Ra St. Brown, WR DET
Our lower end of tier two wide receiver may have only finished his rookie year at wide receiver 31 in points per game, but in the last five games of the season, he was WR3 averaging 25 PPR points per game. This was enough to catapult him from an ADP of 129.75 in December 2022 up to 51.83 in January 2023. St. Brown did not disappoint us the next season when he finished as WR9 in points per game and entered the NFL off-season as the 11th player off the board on average in 1QB drafts.
Let us venture into the DLF Trade Finder and Trade Analyzer and see if the prices for St. Brown seem more digestible when compared to what we might have to pay for the rest of the players in that tier.
In 12-team superflex leagues, Derek Carr does still hold some good value. Christian Watson showed that he could be a solid wide receiver, at least when catching passes from Aaron Rodgers. The combination of QB age and lack of ceiling, and the risk at the wide receiver downgrade, this is easily St. Brown to me. Regardless of the situation your team finds itself in, this is a move that will make your team better at a price that I don’t think you get any other player in that second wide receiver tier.
You will know this quote if you watch Family Guy or The Weekly Grind (on the fabulous DLF YouTube Channel).
At the 1.06 in superflex rookie drafts, you are most likely choosing between Jaxon Smith-Njigba and Jordan Addison. Personally, I love both of those players. I have already drafted multiple shares of both and plan to continue scooping them up. But do we remember the paragraph about how good Amon Ra St. Brown has been in the NFL? Sure, JSN or Addison can be as good and maybe even a little better than St. Brown at some point, but you already have ARSB on your team, and you know just how many points he is capable of scoring! Why assume any risk when the only way you can profit is if the rookie wide receivers finish better than WR9 consistently?
This trade is very interesting to me. On one side, I really like the idea of going from the bottom of tier two to the top of tier three and gaining a (hopefully) solid QB2 in a superflex league. On the other side, I don’t think I would mind adding Russell Wilson to tier up at wide receiver here. I hate to use a cop-out answer in an article, but this is a very team-dependent trade.
Even if you have different feelings about any of the specific players listed in this article, use this exercise to figure out which players you can apply this to and go make some trades!
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