Buy Low Sell High

Fantasy Football Buy Low Sell High Week 5

By Leo Sells

Posted on October 4, 2023

Share

Tweet

Share

Share

Email

Comments

BUY LOW SELL HIGH WEEK 5

We’re about a quarter of the way through the fantasy football season so far, and no matter if you’re doing well or doing bad at this point, you can always make improvements to increase your chance of bringing home the title. Today, we’ll look at three players who are great values that you should try to buy and three players that are overproducing that you should look to sell.

Buy

Aaron Jones

RB | Packers

Fantasy managers who started Aaron Jones in Week 4 were thoroughly disappointed with his performance. He ended the day with just six touches and less than 14 total yards in Green Bay’s primetime loss to the Lions. This was his first week back from a hamstring injury that he suffered in the season opener, so many people were hoping for a breakout game to solidify him as an RB1 for the rest of the season coming off of his injury. Sadly, that didn’t happen.

Despite this bad game, there’s reason to be optimistic about Jones’ future outlook. It’s worth noting that he was extremely limited in this game. The team wanted to take it slow with his return from injury, so he saw far less opportunities than what he’s used to. That should return to normal in Week 5, with the Packers having over a week to ensure he’s fully healthy. On top of that, this offense as a whole should get better with the return of WR Christian Watson. We saw what kind of a ceiling Jones has on a week-to-week basis when he finished as the overall RB1 in Week 1, and he should be able to recapture much of that upside as he returns to full health.

Aaron Jones did individual drills at #Packers practice, both ball carrying and route running. pic.twitter.com/6lUKr8ZomV

— Ryan Wood (@ByRyanWood) October 3, 2023

 

Austin Ekeler

RB | Chargers

Ekeler is another player who had a great Week 1 performance but hasn’t helped fantasy managers since. He’s currently dealing with an ankle injury but should be back after the team’s bye week in Week 5. While he’s been out, Joshua Kelly and Isaiah Spiller have been trying to replace him in this backfield, but neither of them have been good and it’s clear just how vital Ekeler is to this offense.

Also, Mike Williams suffered a torn ACL and is out for the remainder of the season. This is a tough blow for him, but in Ekeler’s case, this is good news for his fantasy value. We’ve seen him have much better splits without Williams on the field vs. with him on the field over the past couple of years, and now the veteran RB will get to operate as possibly the second receiving option on this offense. Anybody who drafted Ekeler with a top-seven pick is getting antsy right now in his fourth-straight week without playing, so you should be reaching out to see if you can get a deal done while his value is still low.

Garrett Wilson

WR | Jets

Many people completely freaked out and sold all of their shares of Garrett Wilson when Aaron Rodgers went down with a torn achilles, but now we’re seeing how that was a mistake. Yes, a lot of Wilson’s elite upside for the year is lost without his starting QB, but people were too quick to forget that he was good last year without Rodgers. Now, through the first four weeks of the season, Wilson is averaging nearly 14 points per game in what will be the toughest stretch of matchups he has all year.

https://twitter.com/NFL/status/1708659207745221092

I think that Week 4 represented what we’ll see from Wilson the rest of the year. They finally played a defense that wasn’t elite, and we saw the young receiver haul in 9 passes on 14 targets. The Jets know they need to get him heavily involved, and that’s what they’ll do moving forward. Zach Wilson being the one to throw him passes is less than ideal, but don’t forget that he went for over 1,100 yards with him last year and won Offensive Rookie of the Year in the process. Garrett Wilson’s value clearly dropped too far after Rodgers’ injury, and now’s the time to capitalize on that before he explodes against Denver’s terrible defense in Week 5.

Other good buy-low options:

• Breece Hall, RB
• CeeDee Lamb, WR
• Amari Cooper, WR

Sell

David Montgomery

RB | Lions

A lot of people felt stupid leaving Montgomery on their bench in Week 4. He exploded for over 34 points in PPR leagues against a bad Packers’ run defense and showed an elite workload that many fantasy managers are drawn to. He’s been great so far this year, but I can’t see a world where he’s a locked-in starter week-to-week.

Not only does David Montgomery not catch passes, but he’s also overproducing on touchdowns. He has five through the first four weeks of the season despite missing a game, and that puts him on pace for over 21 touchdowns on the year. For reference, Jamaal Williams led the NFL with rushing touchdowns with 17, with the next closest person having 13. It’s great that he’s the goal-line back, but touchdowns are flaky, and they’ll come and go on a week-to-week basis. When his touchdown numbers inevitably start regressing, there won’t be much to compensate for that. He’s inefficient as a runner and doesn’t catch passes, and he would have put up less than 8 points in 2 out of 3 games if he had no touchdowns. Obviously that’s an unfair thing to say, but the point is that he will be bad on weeks when he doesn’t find the end zone, which makes him unreliable week-to-week and the perfect sell-high candidate moving forward.

https://twitter.com/FantasyPros/status/1707563265994408029

Cole Kmet

TE | Bears

Believe it or not, Cole Kmet is a top-three tight end in both PPR and non-PPR leagues. That’s absolutely crazy to think about, but it makes sense with him coming off of a week where he had two touchdowns and finished as the overall TE1 on the week. That’s great and all, but that was against Denver’s terrible defense; he won’t see that type of production every week.

Cole Kmet wide open for 6️⃣!pic.twitter.com/EhsaLLE7sk

— SleeperNFL (@SleeperNFL) October 1, 2023

There’s a lot of reasons to not trust Kmet moving forward, but I think that the main one is the offense he’s playing on. The Bears have one of the worst offenses in the NFL and project to finish near the bottom of the league in all relevant metrics. That’s not the situation I want for my tight end, especially when the starting quarterback is Justin Fields and there’s not a lot of volume to go around to begin with. He’s averaging a very pedestrian 6 targets per game so far this season, and I’d be looking to try to package him for someone better like Sam LaPorta or Mark Andrews while he still holds value.

Isiah Pacheco

RB | Chiefs

Pacheco is in a similar situation to the one I described for Montgomery. He’s been great over the past couple of weeks, but much of that can be attributed to touchdowns. That’s all fine and good, but he doesn’t have any other kind of production to help lessen the blow of a game where he doesn’t get a touchdown. He doesn’t get targeted much, and the team doesn’t get particularly creative with the way they use him.

For me, reliability is super important in fantasy football. Will Pacheco end the season with a solid finish? Quite possibly. Will he have big games? Absolutely. His problem, however, is that he’s going to put up a lot of stinkers too. There will be plenty of weeks that he doesn’t get a touchdown and ends pretty far in the single-digit range in points. I know I won’t be able to trust him in my starting lineup moving forward, so I’d be looking to move off of him while he’s the current RB13 on the season.

Other good sell-high options:

• Khalil Herbert, RB
• Zack Moss, RB
• Kenneth Walker, RB