Players to Buy and Sell Before Week 9

If your season-long fantasy team is struggling: There’s still plenty of time to right the ship and make moves to put yourself in a position to make the playoffs. If you started out hot: Now’s the perfect time to get that one last piece to put you over the top.

Trading is a critical component of optimizing your fantasy football team. Today, we’ll walk through eight pairs of similarly ranked players and nominate one as a buy candidate and another as a player to sell. This ideally serves as inspiration for exact trades you can make, but it’s also more general advice on players we believe are valued too high or too low.

BUY CHRIS OLAVE, SELL ADAM THIELEN

Olave has just 103 yards over his past two games and hasn’t hit paydirt since Week 5, but he’s still getting consistent volume, plus he’s had a few narrow misses on long plays and/or touchdowns (including one that bounced off his helmet). This is still one of the best ascending WRs in the league, and he hasn’t been this affordable since early in his rookie season.

Thielen has posted at least a 31.7% target share in three straight games, which is truly otherworldly volume. He’s likely to be a target hog all season but lacks the rest-of-season upside of a more explosive downfield threat like Olave.

BUY DE’VON ACHANE, SELL RAHEEM MOSTERT

Achane is eligible to return after the Dolphins’ Week 10 bye and should pick right back up where he left off. He’s averaging 12.1 yards per carry and scored seven touchdowns in three games in large part due to speed we haven’t seen at the RB position since Chris Johnson. There isn’t a running back in the league with the same week-winning upside.

Mostert has been terrific in his age-31 season, but Salvon Ahmed and Jeff Wilson are both involved right now, and Achane is set to return to double-digit touches per game in Week 11.

BUY JOSH DOWNS, SELL JERRY JEUDY