Week 14 Dynasty Stock Watch: Buy, Sell, Hold Trade Advice

How should you handle a pair of Packers in their potential final year with the team? And what about the tight ends? Analyzing the dynasty moves to make.

Setting up your team for success is micromanaging every aspect. It’s not just the Najee Harrises and Jonathan Taylors that win dynasties—it’s the whole team. Think of it like a stock portfolio—a diverse smörgåsbord of values. You try to find a way to improve each player and therefore, improve your team.

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Tennessee running backs Dontrell Hilliard and D’Onta Foreman are the hot names in redraft leagues. Hilliard was an undrafted free agent and Foreman has rebounded after disappearing from everyone’s radar. All the research in the world can only take you so far because there’s too many teams, too many players, too many contingencies. You need to be flexible enough to pivot to the guy scoring the points.

This leads to this week’s dynasty tip: Unpredictability. You can know every player down the practice squad, but someone will always emerge and you have to be able to recognize the potential for anything to happen. When Derrick Henry went down, were you thinking about Jeremy McNichols? Probably, but what about the next guy? Or the next guy?... Because you have to know you never know.

Let’s ring the dynasty stock watch opening bell:

Mandatory Credit: Jeff Hanisch-USA TODAY Sports

QB Aaron Rodgers, Green Bay Packers
WR Davante Adams, Green Bay Packers

Oh, boy. So, the simple part of this may actually be Adams. He is in a contract year and, rightfully so, he wants to be the highest-paid receiver. To complicate matters, if Aaron Rodgers is traded, will Adams want to return to the Packers? Or will Green Bay even want Adams to return if they no longer have Rodgers?

I don’t worry about these sorts of trade, free agent situations. Unless someone is willing to significantly overpay for the status quo on either player (everybody stays and gets paid), I’m not budging. Any intrigue here will be more about the media covering what it feels is an interesting situation rather than the public’s actual interest in hearing about Rodgers over and over again. It’s junk sports media coverage.

We don’t know who will be back and you shouldn’t make a move based on speculation. Would it be bad if Daniel Jones is Adams’ new QB? Sure, but I’ll wait and see. I can understand the temptation to sell both in rebuilds, but I’m going to hold until somebody really wows me with an offer.

Common wisdom says a rebuild should sell, of course. However, there’s a big difference between trading somebody like Melvin Gordon, an aging veteran running back at the tail-end of a contract year, and big-ticket players like Adams and Rodgers. You need to be wringing out every drop of value.

Rodgers price check: 1QB 2022 late 1st / 2QB 2022 mid 1st & mid 2nd
Rodgers superflex win-now: Hold
Rodgers superflex rebuild: Hold for max offer

Adams price check: 2022 early 1st & mid 1st
Adams win-now: Hold
Adams rebuild: Hold for max offer

QB Taylor Heinicke, Washington Football Team

Will Heinicke be the Football Team’s quarterback in 2022? I think he will be. Does that mean I feel he has much dynasty value? Yes and no.

I like watching him play. He guts-out so much out of so little. On a points per game basis, he’s around QB15. That exceeds preseason expectations, and a strong finish could even see him creep into the low QB1 conversation. His PPG is about a point less than Joe Burrow, who I’d say most everyone values much higher than Heinicke. Maybe that’s objectively unfair but I would much prefer the Bengals’ weapons.

Washington just doesn’t have it. They’re the type of team that is trying to finesse into a playoff spot every year. It’s admirable in real life, but likely agonizing to watch as a fan. That’s also how I view Heinicke as a dynasty QB. He’s not going to tank your team, but he’s not providing those high-end performances that you need to win league titles.

In a superflex league, we can be more forgiving. You can do a lot worse for a second quarterback. Given the turmoil at the position with some of the league’s bottom-feeders, you’re probably feeling a lot better with Heinicke than you are with most every other guy in the bottom-third of the QB scoring leaders.

The problem is whether you would feel confident enough in Heinicke to pay for him via trade? Do we really know he’ll be the quarterback next year? The recent news about Ryan Fitzpatrick doesn’t sound ultra-promising. He had a hip subluxation, which is not as severe as Tua Tagovailoa’s hip dislocation injury from about two years ago. But Fitzpatrick just turned 39 and according to my rudimentary Googling, some guys were able to return after six weeks. Fitzy needed 13 weeks and they opted for surgery. I’m not a doctor, I don’t know anything, but it’s a waiting game. If I’m a betting man, I think Heinicke is the 2022 Week 1 starter, for what it’s worth.

Price check: 1QB 2022 mid 3rd / 2QB 2022 early 2nd
Win-now: Hold
Rebuild: Hold
Superflex win-now & rebuild: Hold

Mandatory Credit: Jay Biggerstaff-USA TODAY Sports

Tight Ends

There are 13 tight ends scoring 10 or more PPR points per game—and 16 scoring 9.5 or more. Rob Gronkowski leads the way with 16.1 PPG (seven games) and Travis Kelce (12 games) is right behind at 15.8. So, let’s just call it a sevenish-point difference between Gronk and the 16th-best guy who scores 9.5 pts per week.

Last year, since Kelce averaged 20.9 PPR PPG, there was an eight-point difference between him and the fourth-best scoring tight end, Mark Andrews. Darren Waller looked really promising, so he pushed his way higher on value boards because Kelce was so over-valued. I even took Kelce with the fourth overall pick of the Scott Fish Bowl due to a TE-premium scoring system. And it’s a superflex league too.

That’s how much value Kelce had and his overvalue trickled down to every other tight end. It’s possible Kelce or somebody else goes off to finish the year and pushes the position’s scoring differential wider. However, one thing should be clear to anybody who takes fantasy seriously: the position is, was and always will be a crapshoot after the top few guys.

Last year, it was Logan Thomas and Robert Tonyan. This year, it’s Dalton Schultz and Dawson Knox—when he was healthy earlier in the year. You could have punted the position and not even drafted somebody, yet still landed Tyler Conklin, C.J. Uzomah or Pat Freiermuth.

When it comes to dynasty tight ends, unless I’m playing in a TE-premium scoring system, I’m going to roll the dice on some scrubs, mostly stream the position and hope to hit the TE lottery on draft day. I don’t mind using a high draft pick on a high-caliber prospect like Kyle Pitts, or even Noah Fant or T.J. Hockenson two years ago, but I’m certainly not trading for anybody. Why not? Because I’ll have to overpay since you have to pay for the false peace of mind that your guy crossed some imaginary TE threshold into permanent fantasy-relevance. He hasn’t. He won’t.

Sure, Kelce is having a down-year after killing it for close to a decade. But his excellence has inflated the position in the minds of too many who think, “T.J. Hockenson is going to make the leap!” When the reality is “the leap” is a couple points per game better than this year’s flash in the pan.

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