Dynasty Fantasy Football Trading Post: CJ Stroud
The NFL is finally catching up with other sports (and dynasty football) when it comes to player trades. It used to feel like there were only one or two trades per year involving players. And even then, it never felt like the players who were moved were never very big deals.
Those boring days are behind us and it feels like every few months we get a blockbuster move and sometimes we don’t even see it coming. That was the case last week when the Buffalo Bills traded Stefon Diggs to the Houston Texans.
Over the past year or two, there were some rumors about Diggs being unhappy in Buffalo but they never amounted to any real discourse, and for the most part both the Bills and their star wide receiver were thriving. It appears there was some truth to the rumors because here we are, Diggs joins the already star-studded offense of Tank Dell, Nico Collins, Dalton Schultz, Joe Mixon, and our subject, the clear winner of the Stefon Diggs trade…
CJ Stroud, QB HOU
There is still a lot to figure out about how the ball will be distributed in Houston with so many viable weapons. Which wide receiver will suffer more from the lost targets? Will having a more talented running back this year demand more targets? But the one constant will be that Stroud will be the person throwing the ball to all these talented athletes.
Stroud finished his rookie season as QB9 in points per game and is currently QB5 in March Superflex ADP. Due to his young age and high level of production, he was already holding the trade value of a top-tier QB. As talked about in earlier articles, this is the time when it makes sense to look around and see just how much your league-mates value him.
Since I can’t personally talk to the people in your league, we are going to look at the DLF Trade Finder and Trade Analyzer to see how we feel about some real-life trades that have gone down.
12 team, superflex, PPR.
Look, of course, if you just keep adding pieces to one side of a trade it is going to win in the Analyzer. But besides the 1.01 there isn’t much worth valuing in this trade. Sure, Dallas Goedert and Courtland Sutton might make your starting lineup a few times during a season but if you are giving up a young, super talented, high-producing, crazy valuable asset like our QB then you need so much more coming back and then the lottery ticket of the first rookie draft pick.
Maybe if you took the value totals of all those small pieces and added them together into one piece it would feel better. Scrolling a little further through the Trade Finder I found Stroud for 1.01, 2.12, and Jaxon Smith-Njigba. Maybe you still don’t take that trade but it definitely feels so much closer. I went to the Trade Finder expecting to find mountains of overpayments but this was one of the first trades and stuck out for different reasons.
12 team, 1QB, PPR, start 18 (w/ IDP).
Like the Analyzer, I still value Jalen Hurts above CJ Stroud. That means this is the exact kind of move I am looking to make. If you know someone who has a top-tier QB on their team and is either looking to get younger or just happens to value your guy more, send this offer. Add a small piece to Stroud and get yourself the player you value/like more. On the other side, if you have these QBs close enough in value and someone offers you one of them with a small piece added, take that small victory piece and celebrate!
12 team, superflex, PPR, TE premium, start 9.
This move is very close to the move I would be looking to make. Trade CJ Stroud for half of a starting lineup. I wish the last piece was a little stronger (Sorry Adam Thielen) but you can slot all four of these players in your lineup every week and your team will be better for it. Dak Prescott may be eight years older than Stroud but he is still producing at a very high level, finishing last year as QB5 in points per game. In a tight end premium league, Mark Andrews is a premier asset and positional advantage. Terry McLaurin and Thielen are nice pieces to have on your team as low-end starters. As with the first trade, I wish we could add their two values together and make it one player but this still feels like a great pivot off of value and into production.
When I typed CJ Stroud into the Trade Finder I was expecting to find a lot more trades of people willing to pay up to get the newly crowned stud. There were a few but most of them involved far too many pieces to be able to coherently list in this kind of article. But most of them still seemed to either be decent prices or still in favor of Stroud. Maybe this means you don’t immediately go spamming every league mate with offers to sell Stroud but maybe bring him up in the league chat and see how others respond and then slide an offer over to them.
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