Week 10 Trade Targets: Acquire Amon-Ra St. Brown, Sell Raheem Mostert

Chris Godwin has yet to score this season, but his target share suggests he’s a player worth trading for.

Fantasy football trade deadlines are approaching, so it’s time to be honest with yourself about your team and its strengths, weaknesses and needs.

We all want top-end talent, depth and the rare every-week tight end. But it’s hard to have all of that. You can try to get at least some of those things before it’s too late to trade. And just as important as finding the players you want to acquire is sniffing out which ones you want to unload. Below are two recommendations for each, but first let’s review the Week 9 buy and sell recommendations.

The Bears ran all over the Dolphins, but unfortunately Khalil Herbert was not a big part of the game plan. I remain bullish on him the rest of the season as Chicago has the easiest remaining schedule for running backs. DK Metcalf, if you indeed traded for him, salvaged a so-so outing with a touchdown grab.

As for the players I recommended you trade away, Dalvin Cook and Christian Kirk both had good outings aided by touchdowns. Though it feels that Kirk’s production was more repeatable than Cook’s, who struggled to run the ball and has a brutal schedule approaching.

There’s good reason to believe Amon-Ra St. Brown will get hot again :: Lon Horwedel/USA Today Sports

Buy Targets

Amon-Ra St. Brown, Lions
St. Brown hasn’t been the same for fantasy since he injured his ankle in Week 3. And since the Patriots shut out the Lions in Week 5, the Lions offense as a whole hasn’t been the goldmine for fantasy production it once was. Still, there’s reason to believe the stretch run of the season should be good for Detroit and its top wideout.

The Lions play the Bears in a divisional bout this week and Chicago’s last few games have seen plenty of points scored after Justin Fields was unleashed and the team traded away its top defenders. After this week, the Lions get the Bills and Giants back-to-back but Detroit still has the second-easiest remaining schedule for wide receivers.

As for St. Brown, the volume has been there the last few weeks with 19 total targets, it’s just the touchdowns haven’t been. He has a good chance to return to the end zone against Chicago and a player of his caliber is bound to break through after five consecutive scoreless games. With T.J. Hockenson now in Minnesota, even more targets will be funneled from Jared Goff to St. Brown and a negative game script in the weeks ahead will mean more pass attempts as well.

Check to see if managers in your league are low on St. Brown and see if you can acquire a top-flight receiver who’s due for a breakout.

Chris Godwin, Buccaneers
Godwin’s season so far has been a statistical outlier and not in a good way. Despite missing two games early in the season with injury, Godwin ranks 24th in the NFL with 65 targets and since his Week 4 return, he has six or more catches in every game. On a per-game basis, Godwin is out-targeting Mike Evans and he plays in the offense that passes at a higher rate than any team in the league. The opportunity is certainly there.

Where Godwin has yet to cash in so far is the end zone. Only Diontae Johnson has been targeted at least as many times as Godwin and not scored yet, and almost all of the two dozen players in range of Godwin’s target total have multiple touchdowns. The same goes for red-zone targets, of which he’s seen seven and caught four but none for scores. He’s never been a high touchdown output player, but he’s scored at least five times each of the last four seasons.

Tampa Bay has a relatively difficult schedule for wide receivers the rest of the way, but Godwin has a clearly established floor in PPR and his ceiling could rise if and when Tom Brady finds him for a score. The Buccaneers aren’t going away from the pass anytime soon.

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Sell Candidates

Cordarrelle Patterson, Falcons
What made Patterson’s 2021 season so remarkable was his success in Atlanta as a Swiss Army knife player. He was effective on the ground, yes, but he was also dangerous as a receiver and scored frequently both ways. So far this season, he’s been used a bit more as a battering ram, admittedly to great success.

His 5.4 yards per carry is miles better than his 4.0 mark a season ago. But last year he averaged more than three receptions per game compared to just eight targets in all of 2022. Patterson’s production in his return to the field last week was buoyed by a pair of touchdowns, which covered up his worst outing of the season (13 carries for 44 yards against a porous Chargers run defense).

I believe Patterson will still be the lead back and will continue to get the valuable goal-line touches in this offense, but Arthur Smith saw what he had with Tyler Allgeier and Caleb Huntley while Patterson was out, and then there’s Marcus Mariota, another running threat. There’s a lot of mouths to feed in this offense, and it seems highly unlikely that Patterson’s touchdown per game pace will keep up.

Raheem Mostert, Dolphins
This advice might be a week late. Jeff Wilson Jr. is by no means the lead back in Miami, but he’s not definitely behind Mostert, either. Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel is, of course, familiar with the two backs that he coached in San Francisco and it seems like his plan is to use them both.

In their first week sharing the field for Miami, Wilson out-snapped Mostert 28-27 and out-touched him 12-10. They each got in the end zone—Wilson through the air and Mostert on the ground—and it was Mostert who got the start. The bad news is the hierarchy is now clouded and Mostert, though solid, was not necessarily dominating before Miami brought in his former teammate.

But the good news is that they both still have value in a dynamic offense. If you don’t want the headache of worrying about which running back is going to get in the end zone on any given week, see what you can get for Mostert on the trade market. He’s also been the less durable of the two in recent years.

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