Keep Trade Cut — Dynasty Fantasy Football (Week 9)

Welcome to the Week 9 edition of Dynasty Keep Trade Cut here at Faceoff Sports Network. Now is the time to either acquire pieces to compete or to look towards the future at each position of your team. In this series, we look at three similarly ranked players for dynasty fantasy football purposes. This week we look at the vital position of quarterback and three young starters that managers are hoping can reach the upper echelon of QB1 status in the future.

In dynasty fantasy football, a player’s week-to-week viability factors into their value across the season. That can lead to volatile valuations from managers and surprising trades involving the assets trending up and down. Weekly during the 2023 season, we’ll look at a trio of players who are valued back to back to back. Each week we’ll use a different source. From those rankings, we’ll discuss the three similar players that should be considered worth keeping, trading, or “cutting”, them. No, you won’t be actually cutting these players in most dynasty leagues at this time, but that’s not the purpose of this scenario.

Keep Trade Cut

For this exercise, the keeper is a player who can sustain their current value in this season and beyond. In other words, the player who should be valued most by managers or potential managers. The player worth trading is a player whose value may be buoyed by unsustainable volume. That, or is holding a level of value that may be more useful to move along for your team’s makeup. Finally, the “cut” in this scenario is a player who is trending down or has a rapidly changing future outlook, therefore being seen as the least valuable asset in the trio.

This week, we’ll be looking at a set of rankings of quarterbacks valued as top 12 quarterbacks. Let’s take a peek at these rankings from The Football Guys and discuss their current QB11, QB12, and QB13 for dynasty leagues.

Keep: QB Kyler Murray

We start this article off with a Keep Trade Cut first by discussing a player who has not yet seen a snap during the 2023 season. Arizona Cardinal’s starter Kyler Murray is the keep this week, a player who seemingly is on the verge of returning to the field any week now. When Murray returns to the lineup, we’ll be expecting him to return to the electric player we saw his first three NFL seasons when finished as a top 10 quarterback each time.

Murray has produced for fantasy when healthy and now appears to be on track to be ready to go during the November slate. His past production plus young weapons in Marquise Brown, Michael Wilson, and Trey McBride puts him in the best offense of this trio, and with his future secured with the Cardinals, we should finally see some maturity and consistency within this organization.

Without Murray, this was always likely to be a lost year for the Cardinal’s playoff hopes. However, they have an abundance of capital and valuable high capital in next year’s draft, which should further allow the team to target weapons for their franchise quarterback. Although he hasn’t played this season, the advantage he has in this trio is a track record to back up this projection. He’s been a solid starting option in the league and that should continue as he moves into his athletic prime. All in all, Murray is a keep at this stage with his return on the horizon. Additionally, he may even be a savvy buy for contenders and rebuilders alike.

Trade: QB Bryce Young

Our player to trade this week is a difficult one for his managers to hear, but Bryce Young‘s long-term potential needs to show up sooner rather than later for this Panthers team. They’re struggling to find an effective offensive identity, something our player to cut has dealt with during the early stages of his career. More on that later, but for now, we must be realistic about the Panther’s short and long-term future. Yes, managers who took Young are likely either in a rebuild, or he’s on the bench of an unlikely competitor. He’s had a difficult start and managers need to be cautious and aware of this team’s grim capital outlook.

One positive for Young has been the acquisition of former Viking, Adam Thielen. Young’s saving grace has been his chemistry with the veteran receiver, and that may be a narrative to latch onto as you look to move this player for high value. Additionally, his value is intact at this moment due to his stature as the top overall pick.

However, we’ve already seen fellow first-rounders CJ Stroud and Anthony Richardson already show more for fantasy lineups than Young. The Texans and Colts also find themselves with a clearer identity built off rushing. Additionally, those teams had been winning games with those quarterbacks at the helm.

Young has had a few performances in the teens for fantasy football purposes. However, he isn’t gonna be able to rely on a top wide receiver nearing the end of his career for long. Ultimately, Young may be the perfect candidate to sell high on. Yes, they could sign a few weapons or draft some solid mid-round picks, but this feels like a situation where getting a first-rounder plus more would be a sensible re-roll at the position.

All in all, Young’s an asset whose value could become shaky sooner than later. He may be a player to package with other assets and to up-tier, of course, that would require a rebuilding team that also has reason to sell a top quarterback. Not to mention, one that dynasty managers are out on quickly if he doesn’t begin to show some high-end quarterback production.

Cut: QB Justin Fields

Our cut of the week is an unfortunate casualty of the touted 2021 quarterback class in the form of Chicago Bears quarterback Justin Fields. He’s come out this season and seen a significant regression in his rushing impact for the Bears offense. This team has difficulty getting Fields going in a positive direction with the offense, despite having outside talents in DJ Moore and Darnell Mooney. Even with a serviceable tight end in Cole Kmet on this offense, they just haven’t found the proper rhythm to win football games.

Eventually, that will lead to shake-ups in the coaching staff and player development. Fields in 2022 finished with 8 rushing touchdowns for the Bears, while this year he’s only reached the end zone rushing one time.

Furthermore, his development hasn’t been positive this year with the Bears. Outside of two performances in Week 4 and 5 that have propped him up to the current QB19 in fantasy football. More importantly, the team just isn’t winning games with Fields as the starter. The game starts and ends with how your quarterback is performing, and unfortunately, Fields hasn’t had the most positive situation in his three seasons.

Of course, a change of scenery may drastically change his future, but he’s the closest player in this trio to being moved on from in this league. It’s an unfortunate result after a season in 2022 when he would finish as the QB7. However, his passing game hasn’t developed and eventually, some of the blame has to go onto how the quarterback is performing. Hopefully, he will find a new situation and reinvigorate his development in the next year or two. However, if a dynasty manager is holding him and is able to receive a sensible trade to move on, now may be the time to cut ties before his value completely falls off.

Conclusion

Trading quarterbacks and moving on from this position is always a difficult venture for dynasty managers. You likely spent significant capital on all these players, but results in this league need to be quick and development usually doesn’t take an entire rookie contract. For this article, it feels almost obvious that Murray would be the keep out of this situation. In dynasty leagues, you want that top guy, and Murray has been the one to show it here across multiple seasons. Not to mention, finishing as the sixth overall quarterback in his rookie season.

Young and Fields don’t have the output we’ve seen Murray have over the early part of his career, and unfortunately the Panthers and Bears future don’t have particularly bright outlooks at this time. The Cardinals are at least looking at a lot of capital down the line and realized they needed a full re-tooling with Murray at the helm of the offense.

When Murray returns, we should see the quarterback who led them to the playoffs just two years ago. Personally, I believe those who are rostering them will have a locked-in QB1 once again.

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