Week 4 HHG: The Sunday Drive

Backfields in transition... and backs fighting back

A lot of this week was quite fun… before an injury that was probably the low-point of the fantasy year for me (and I’m guessing a lot of people who subscribe to this newsletter) in the late games.

Rashee Rice is undergoing a series of tests to determine whether he tore his ACL as was initially anticipated, but it’s clear that his injury is quite serious, and potentially season ending. If that’s the case, it’s of course a massive hit to his dynasty value. Rice is also widely anticipated to serve a suspension to begin 2025, so we may not see him back on the field until the middle of next season, at which point he’ll be in year-1 post recovery.

The first long-term injury to an elite fantasy asset is typically the time when I use this column to discuss an interesting piece of dynasty strategy: how do you trade for and trade away injured players?

NOTE: I wrote this intro before news has gotten increasingly more bullish on Rice. I decided to keep it in place since (A) it may still be a season-ending injury and (B) the advice is pretty evergreen. That being said, don’t sell low on Rice right now with the injury timeline uncertainty

There is a school of thought that you #AlwaysBuyInjured, because of the likely increase in value over time between when they suffer the injury and when they eventually return. Then of course there are cautious managers who would rather eat the value loss now selling short, and not deal with the injury headache. Every player heals differently, and while there are examples like Breece Hall who get back to full strength far faster than you’d anticipate, there are also cases like Kyle Pitts who has seemingly never recovered his form.

Then you have to consider the specifics of a player. There aren’t a large number of guys you can confidently say will ever return to the role they’re in presently after a year of injury, and potentially a second year of recovery. Also, there will naturally be some players I’m much higher or lower on than the market prior to their injury, which will inevitably inform whether I’m more inclined to buy or sell at their new prices. Every player has to be evaluated in their own context.

That being said, as far as there is any degree of universality to how I evaluate trading injured players it’s this: play both sides.

The first 24-48 hours after an injury are the best time to do it, but any time there is a major injury you are bound to have a far wider range of valuations than with any other player. Because of that, if you are extremely active in the trade market on all sides, there’s a decent chance you can come out ahead in the aggregate.

For instance, in one league I was offered Rice for Brian Thomas Jr. I think this is reasonably fair — I had Rice worth approximately 2 Base 1s pre-injury, and I will probably knock him down to 1.25 or the high-end of the 1 Base 1 tier depending on the nature of the injury. About 0.5 of that drop is purely owing to the lost time, and the remainder is about uncertainty in what he’ll be when he returns.

Brian Thomas Jr. is a clear riser coming off his best game of the season, and was someone I wrote about wanting to “buy high” on after Week 1.

He’s only become more impressive since, currently at 2.34 YPRR — the history of rookies who post above a 2.00 YPRR is almost exclusively big hits.

So at this point I’m likely treating Thomas as 1.5 Base 1s level asset, which is where he will be ranked in the next update.

I counted the Rice manager with two options: first, I’d send Diontae Johnson or Stefon Diggs and a moderate plus. OR, if he wanted Thomas, I’d need a lot more value. He took the second option, and the final trade was:

Thomas + Diontae Johnson + Justice Hill = Rice + Zay Flowers + Isiah Pacheco

At the same time, I’ve been checking in on what’s happened in my other leagues. I myself traded Rice + Ja’Marr Chase + a late 2025 1st for Justin Jefferson and Garrett Wilson. I’ve also seen Rice traded straight up for DeVonta Smith, for Tyreek Hill, and in of the best deals for the side trading Rice away that I’ve seen; Rice + Chris Godwin for Amon-Ra St. Brown and Dontayvion Wicks.

I’m not positive that I’ll win my deal: Rice is a highly volatile asset and Brian Thomas Jr. has a sky high ceiling, but by only adding one other starter, a veteran with a capped value ceiling in Diontae Johnson, and receiving two other young starters in Pacheco and Flowers — I have captured the majority of the value upside in the deal. Most importantly, I think my buy is pretty clearly one of the more favourable value Rice buys I’ve seen.

I’m going to remain active on both sides of the Rice market this whole week, with the hopes I can use this opportunity to pick up value across my portfolio simply by arbitraging better-priced sells than buys.

When and why would you buy injured vs. sell and who should you target if you’re doing so?

When to buy injured is pretty straight forward. Any team you’ve decided is not competing this year should be a team you’re sending out offers for Rice on — and any other stud that suffers an injury this year. This is economics of trade 101: part of an asset’s value in a vacuum is what they can produce in 2024, 2024 production has value to one manager, and no value to another. Therefore it aligns well for a ‘win win’ deal so long as the two managers can come to a consensus on what Rice is worth.

Also, if you are looking to buy Rice, please think from the seller’s perspective. No manager is looking to dump him for a 2025 1st. If a manager is willing to move Rice, they’re doing it because they need production — production Rice just provided that he can’t anymore. Your best trades will either be an asset with similar value to Rice when both are healthy with a substantial plus on the Rice side, or an asset in Rice’s present value range that is clearly of lower value if / when Rice gets healthy.

When to trade away Rice is a bit more complicated. When you trade an injured player you are effectively ‘locking in a loss’ from a value perspective. This is different than selling low on an under-performing asset, where the previous day’s value is largely irrelevant to what you should do now. In this case, it’s quite foreseeable that Rice eventually regains his pre-injury value, or at least will be valued much higher than he is today. Can your team withstand that type of value loss?

I will have a Dyansty 101 video coming out on Fantasy Points this week about whether to trade your 1st round pick and my advice here is much the same. If your team is a bye-week team without Rice, you should likely hold. Every decision should be about maximizing the expected value of your team over time, and if you are already a top team this year, any actions centred on increasing win equity this year will have diminishing returns. You really can’t be more than a 60-65% favourite in most playoff matchups (the higher seed wins 56% of the time on average) so once you’ve clinched a bye — or have a team projected to clinch a bye — you’ve mostly done all you can, and it’s in the fantasy gods’ hands. The better use of your assets is to extend your contending window as far out over as many years as you can.

At the other end, if you just lost Rice on a particularly fragile contender, I would say you’re better off packing up shop — or at least letting things play out — than throwing good money after bad. Say you are middle of the league in points scored, 2-2 in record, and somewhere around average or slightly below in roster value. This is a spot where if you move Rice to lock in a value loss, you’re putting a ton of pressure on your team to over-perform the rest of the year, otherwise you’re likely looking at a rebuild in the upcoming seasons anyhow. Getting ahead of the curve will allow you to spend as little time not competing as possible.

Teams where I would move Rice are the following:

• High-Production, Average-Low Value Contenders where you’re going to be rebuilding in 2025 regardless: at this point you might as well maximize EV in the short term, and accept a slightly lower starting point for your incoming rebuild

• High-Value, Average-Production Contenders where you have a long contending window set up, and sacrifice little long term EV to increase your odds this year

Along with those two team archetypes, I would be mindful to trade Rice away for production that maximizes value over replacement. In other words, you’ll get a lot more bang for your buck trading any non-productive asset for a productive asset on a ‘stars and studs’ type team than on a relatively flat, deep one. If depth is your strength, use that depth now to backfill the injury. But if the Rice injury opens up a massive hole in your lineup, you’ll get more out of a trade.

For example, the team I moved Rice fits a lot of these. It was a team with Patrick Mahomes, Lamar Jackson and Ja’Marr Chase — very top heavy — and largely filled out with ageing veterans. This is year 3 of the league, one that I won in year 1, lost in the semi-finals year 2, and am set up to compete for a bye this year. However, the team is dependent on production from the likes of Derrick Henry, Tony Pollard, Aaron Jones, Mike Evans, Christian Kirk and Travis Kelce outside of the the three first-round startup picks. I only had my 1st in 2025 as it was, but have all my picks in 2026.

I’ve been working under the assumption to contend one final year, then trade off whatever I can next year and tank 2025: potentially keeping 1-2 of the superstars and selling off the rest for massive packages of draft picks. In this spot, my trade alters my ideal lineup to the tune of playing Garrett Wilson instead of Tyler Lockett — a very meaningful difference (at least in theory, please start scoring points Garrett).

And once again I need to note: the FantasyPoints Data Suite is where I get the bulk of my info for this column. If you want access to the single best database of key metrics for every fantasy format, use JAKOB25 at checkout for 25% off, and join the data suite!