Fantasy Football Trade Value Chart Week 4: Tight Ends

Championships are won with trades.

RSJ’s Jackson Barrett created a value-based drafting Excel tool to create the preseason values for this Fantasy Football Trade Value Chart. The tool uses the FantasyPros consensus projections to assign values based on a 12-team, full PPR league.

Each week throughout the season, these values will be altered to reflect the player’s value for the rest of the season. Changes made to player’s value will be based on FantasyPros Rest of Season ECR, results from the season thus far, and The Wolf’s Rest of Season Rankings. But for the most part, the below values should generally reflect consensus rankings. The values provided also allow for comparing player values across positions, not just within one positional group.

For more information on how to make successful deals, check out our strategies for negotiating trades.

Be sure to tune back each week throughout the season. We’ll be adjusting the chart, discussing risers & fallers, and pinpointing trade targets.

The trade value chart for each position is linked below.

Fantasy Football Week 4 Trade Value Chart: Tight Ends

Tight End Riser

At this point, it would be malpractice to rank Brock Bowers lower than TE2. We have seen a significant decline in many of the so-called “elite tight ends”, but Bowers has been able to maintain somewhat steady production. Through three weeks, Bowers is your TE2.

Bowers is one of the strongest producers at the position and he has incredibly encouraging underlying metrics as well. He is being targeted on 26 percent of his routes and is producing 2.46 yards per route run. Both of these numbers are phenomenal for a tight end through three career games.

In a position that has been a complete wasteland, Bowers has been a small bright spot. It appears that he will carry the future generation of TEs in 2024 and for years to come.

Tight End Faller

Things could not be uglier for Mark Andrews. The panic button was pulled out of the drawer and placed on the table after Week 1. Following his Week 3 performance, it’s been completely smashed.

Not only did Andrews put up a goose egg in the box score, but his usage metrics were horrendous. He played just 33 percent of snaps and ran four routes on 17 dropbacks from Lamar Jackson. It doesn’t matter how talented a player is, they cannot produce with this usage.

Some people already feel comfortable dropping Andrews. I have not reached this point yet, but he does not belong anywhere near your starting lineup for the time being. We need a few more weeks of data on Harbaugh’s tight end rotation before Andrews should be considered for fantasy lineups.

Tight End Trade Target

To be honest, the tight end position has been so barren that it’s hard to recommend anyone as a trade target other than Trey McBride and Brock Bowers. But if there is one mid-tier TE who has looked promising and could climb the rank in future weeks, it’s Jake Ferguson.

Despite missing Week 2, Ferguson is second on the team in total targets and leads all Cowboys pass catchers in targets per route run. Brandin Cooks has proved to be on the decline as many had expected and Ferguson is the clear No. 2 option in Dallas.

The only concern is that the Cowboys’ offense has taken a significant step back from last year. The box score from last week looked fine, but a significant portion of the offensive production came in the 4th quarter during a comeback effort. Given the state of the tight end position, this may not even matter and his target earning ability and production (regardless of where it comes from) should be enough to make him a strong TE option.