Last minute Fantasy Football trades to help to win a championship
Running backs to acquire
Primary Target – Devonta Freeman, Atlanta Falcons
It hasn’t been the best season for the Falcons or Freeman himself. There’s been a ton of noise about the role of new offensive coordinator Steve Sarkisian and how he’s running the offense. The truth is probably more in the arena of the Atlanta offense was due for regression. When a team performs as well as the Falcons did last season, they have to come back to Earth the next year almost by default. The funny thing is the perception of Freeman is he’s having a bad year. Yet, coming into Week 11, he was the RB11 in standard formats and the RB14 in PPR formats.
It’s not very often that a running back has the combination of perceived poor performance coupled with still being good for fantasy. The elephant in the room is Freeman left this past week with a concussion and is reportedly going to miss multiple weeks. He’s a great lottery ticket for the fantasy playoffs. If he gets healthy, he’s an RB1 that you could trade for right now at a very cheap acquisition cost.
Their owner has to be ready to jump ship after a solid month of poor game logs. It’s riskier than it was just a few days ago, but Freeman has a soft schedule to close out the season. After Seattle this week, Freeman plays Tampa Bay and New Orleans twice. The only other difficult matchup is against Minnesota. Atlanta desperately needs to regain their 2016 form to make the postseason. Part of that is Freeman getting even more work and he should have a very reasonable price tag.
Secondary Targets
Jay Ajayi, Philadelphia Eagles – This likely wouldn’t be an easy trade to pull off as any Ajayi owner has to be excited about his new home in Philadelphia. Even in very limited work, Ajayi scored a long touchdown before his bye week and that was against the stout Denver Broncos run defense. Ajayi and Miami Dolphins Coach Adam Gase likely won’t exchange Christmas cards this year, but that’s behind Ajayi now. He should be the primary running back in a great offense the rest of the season. His touchdown potential is through the roof.
Jerick Mckinnon, Minnesota Vikings – The Vikings are one of the better teams in the league and part of that reason is McKinnon stepped up when rookie Dalvin Cook was lost for the season with an ACL. His combined volume between carries and receptions is tough to find outside of the big-name running backs. He’s heavily involved and could win leagues since he only has one difficult matchup left in Carolina in Week 14. It’s a great time to ask because McKinnon was VERY quiet against Washington.