Dynasty Fantasy Football Mailbag: A Receiver Trade and Christian Kirk vs a First-Round Pick
Welcome back to the DLF Mailbag, the preeminent mailbag in all the dynasty fantasy football land. As a reminder, there are multiple ways to pose your burning questions! I’ll be soliciting weekly feedback via X/Twitter (look for a new pinned tweet each Monday), and you can also reach out using our Discord channel, or the old-fashioned way (via our online webform).
There’s nothing truly major to report from this past week, but as I’ve alluded to in previous versions of the Mailbag we’re starting to see news about more lightly regarded players trickle out. This is where each team’s beat writers can be invaluable sources of information as we all seek to gain any edge possible. Specifically over the past few days, Patriots receiver Demario Douglas, Giants receiver Jalin Hyatt and Raiders receiver Tre Tucker have all received some positive press. As each of these three second year players has an ADP below 150, they could be sneaky acquisitions with little downside in terms of cost.
Let’s get to it!
From Discord…
Give Me Some Moore
Which side do you prefer for a rebuilding team in a 12-team, PPR superflex league with TE-premium scoring, Puka Nacua and a 2025 second-round pick or DJ Moore and Brandon Aiyuk?
Just to set a baseline level of understanding, let’s start by seeing what the DLF Trade Analyzer thinks. As the team in question self-identifies as a rebuilding squad, I’ll also use an assumption that the 2025 second-round pick will be on the early side, and as such its value may be even slightly higher than what’s listed.
I’ll have to confess a bit of surprise at the results. While it’s true Nacua had a dominant rookie season, he was only just ahead of Moore in the 2023 fantasy rankings, with Aiyuk not far behind.
Statistics courtesy of FFToday.
There is assuredly some additional projectability for Nacua, as his relative youth should yield a theoretically higher ceiling as he continues to improve. But the other side of this coin is that Aiyuk and Moore both just set career highs in terms of fantasy points, asserting that their growth isn’t yet complete.
To the former, while the transition has been gradual, the young 49er has effectively taken over the role of the team’s top pass catcher from both Deebo Samuel and George Kittle. And while there remains some contractual drama, I fall into the “I’ll believe it when I see it” camp that it will affect his future fantasy prowess. Though there do exist examples of players holding out, or getting traded to or signing with a less-than-stellar team, at the root of it all remains the player’s skill. As evidenced by the numbers, Aiyuk has this in spades.
As to Moore, he has been one of the most consistent, and more importantly consistently underrated fantasy assets of the past few years. Despite playing on more than a couple of moribund Panthers passing offenses, he managed three straight 1,100+ yard seasons, along with nearly 900 yards in 2022. Following his trade to Chicago, he exploded for career highs in receptions, yards and touchdowns. Though it’s true there will be additional mouths to feed on the Bears offense with the off-season acquisitions of receivers Keenan Allen and Rome Odunze, I’m not too worried about him falling off, or at least no more than I would be by Nacua needing to duke it out with teammate Cooper Kupp. More importantly, he should receive better quarterback play with #1 draft pick and collegiate phenom Caleb Williams under center.
Age is definitely a factor, but it’s at least worth noting that Aiyuk and Moore are “young” 26- and 27-year olds respectively, each having just had springtime birthdays. So even if you believe yourself to be more than a year away, both players should have years of viability remaining. Rational minds may differ, but this isn’t something that would personally cause me concern.
Pivoting to the remaining asset in the deal, readers of this weekly article know that I’m somewhat ambivalent towards future picks outside of the first round. The reasons are multifold – first and foremost, I just don’t believe the odds are terribly high that you’ll wind up selecting a difference-maker with at least 12 picks already gone. While I don’t intend this in a pejorative way, the fact is we all believe ourselves to be better talent evaluators than we likely really are, and would be better suited taking a conservative tack towards the likelihood of our selections panning out. Downstream of that, we don’t know what we don’t know – the players we hope to be available may not be or may have lost value, and even our own teams (and those of our trade partners) may diverge from expectation. In totality, these draft picks become huge question marks.
With that said, a superflex and TE-premium league means there will be a larger amount of valuable players, and this may bleed into the early second round. As abstracted from DLF’s Cornerstone Rankings, the following list may resemble some of the players available come this time next year.
Two things become immediately and glaringly obvious. First, there are only three quarterbacks listed among the 16 players. There will undoubtedly be at least one signal caller that will rocket up the ranks unexpectedly, but this is a poor foundation for a superflex league setting. Even worse, however, it the total absence of tight ends. Perhaps this would look a bit different if the rankings placed greater emphasis on the position, but the baseline appears to be a low bar.
Obviously you’re not bound to selection of players at either of these positions, but this effectively means your league format doesn’t do overly much to change the base-level rankings. So in this scenario, you should think carefully about how you value the running backs and receivers listed above, along with others in the draft class.
For me, I’m more or less unmoved by the pick, and as such would agree with the outputs from the DLF Trade Analyzer. Nacua is a beast, but Aiyuk and Moore are both Tier 2 (if not Tier 1b) players and obvious fantasy starters. As such this trade has the potential to improve your starting lineup, improve your depth, and potentially even make the second-round pick you’re trading a little bit worse.
A Framework for Kirk?
In a 12-team, PPR superflex league, which side to you prefer for a contending team – Christian Kirk or a 2026 first-round pick?
To the Trade Analyzer!
Right off the bat we can see this passes the red face test, and stands as a fair offer. So the next question becomes, just how valuable is Kirk to your starting lineup?
Statistics Courtesy of Pro Football Reference.
As can be discerned from the above, Kirk has been a remarkably consistent player who has shown a fine floor, if perhaps not an elite ceiling. After very nearly breaking out in Arizona, he achieved new heights upon signing with the Jacksonville Jaguars and catching balls from quarterback Trevor Lawrence.
As shown above, Kirk’s numbers shoot up across the board when he’s paired with Lawrence, with all relevant receiving metrics improving. He has turned from, on average, a low-end WR3 to a low-end WR2, averaging an additional 2.0 PPR points per game. Continuing, when last fully healthy in 2022 he finished the year as the PPR WR12.
This ceiling becomes more obvious when comparing Kirk’s 2022 and 2023 campaigns. While the latter (righthand side of the figure) still shows a lot of green, it’s more in the WR2 range, with two WR1 finishes. The floor remained high, but it wasn’t quite the same as his four WR1 efforts and nine instances of finishing as the weekly PPR WR20 or better (lefthand side).
So, why does this matter?
Fellow receiver Calvin Ridley, he of the 136 vacated targets, has packed up and moved on down the road to division rival Tennessee. Also gone is Zay Jones, who is now with Kirk’s former team in Arizona. Tight end Evan Engram is still kicking around, but he was there in 2022 as well, when Kirk had his finest fantasy season to date.
Replacing them are former Bill Gabriel Davis, and first-round draft pick Brian Thomas. The former has remained something of a tease to date, countering multi-touchdown fantasy blow-up performances with week-losing efforts. To that latter point, Davis incredibly had five zero-yard efforts in 2023, and three more with 21 or fewer yards. As the saying goes, when someone shows you who they are, believe them – Davis has shown us he’s a middling boom-or-bust player who couldn’t make it work with an elite signal caller in Josh Allen. All told, his presence is not worrisome.
Thomas’ could very well be, especially when you couple his elite physical profile with an above-average college dominator. It’s true his breakout age is older than we prefer, but he still managed nearly 1,200 yards and 17 touchdowns in 2023 while playing alongside fellow first-round pick Malik Nabers.
Metrics courtesy of MockDraftable.
In this era of immediate gratification, there are likely many who expect Thomas to put up a rookie season similar to Nacua above. But given his slow rise, we shouldn’t be shocked if his ascension takes a little bit longer. As such, Kirk should still be the main show in town in 2024, which could again yield WR1 or WR1-adjacent numbers.
Speaking of slow burns, that 2026 first-round pick on the other side of the deal is more like a long-term bond than a stock. There’s certainly nothing wrong with playing the long-game, and as shown below we know its value is only going to appreciate between now and then.
If considering the pick as a trade chip, it will continue to gain value until the moment it is used. Alternatively, if you wanted to make a move next off-season, it could be used to potentially level up a 2025 pick, or gain an additional first-rounder.
Using this year as an example, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to believe you could move up half a round, likely opening up an ability to select a player taken early in the NFL Draft’s first round. All told there are undoubtedly a myriad of opportunities for its utilization, as rookie draft picks remain perhaps the most consistent asset in dynasty football.
In weaving this together, I suppose we must come back to the original question – how vital is Kirk to your chances of winning it all?
If he’s a mainstay in your starting lineup, then I have no issue choosing his side in this deal. He’ll turn 28 in November, which isn’t ideal but also isn’t exactly on the precipice of the age cliff. And if he picks up where he left off in 2022 as Lawrence’s first target, it’s not unreasonable to assert that your roster will gain around 500 PPR points before you’re even able to use the 2026 pick.
Alternatively, if you believe everything needs to go right for you, or that you’re an injury or two away from becoming an also-ran, then the pick makes sense. I’m usually a big fan of shooting your shot when you think you have one, but we also need to be honest with ourselves regarding our likelihood of success. If you view your window of contention as something more akin to a house of cards, not cashing out could yield detrimental ramifications to your future viability.
I’d probably go with Kirk by a slim measure, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I happen to view veterans more favorably than do others, and as such Kirk’s age is only a dim yellow flag as opposed to a bright red one. Regardless, this appears to be one of those trades that is fair and works for both parties in the deal – even if perhaps short of a firm answer, hopefully this response has given you some additional data to think about.
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