Alex Trades Mahomes to Josh for A.J. Green

Sep 19

Sep 19 Alex Trades Mahomes to Josh for A.J. Green

What QB controversy?

Mere hours after the Power Rankings were posted praising Patrick Mahomes for his historic Week 2 performance, Alex shipped his backup QB off to Josh in exchange for second-round pick A.J. Green. Moving forward, it appears Drew Brees will remain the starter for Alex with new teammate A.J. Green starting opposite Davante Adams as WR1s. Meanwhile, Josh gets a serious upgrade at QB in Mahomes, a player whose ceiling we can’t yet fathom, sending Stafford to the bench. The move will also likely activate Robert Woods into starting duty in place of Green.

There are a lot of ways to look at this trade, but fundamentally it’s a trade that makes a lot of sense for both sides. That’s because it involves two teams with complementary strengths.

For Alex, it’s QB where he ranks third in scoring with 24.0 ppg, which doesn’t even take into account Mahomes’ 33.0 ppg. By comparison, Josh ranks 11th in QB scoring with just 10.0 ppg. Clearly, Alex gets more value out of Brees and Mahomes by trading away one of the two rather than allowing those points to go to waste on his bench. And given his dearth of scoring at QB, Josh makes the most sense as a trading partner.

Luckily, Josh’s strength also happens to be Alex’s weakness—WR. While Josh ranks first in WR scoring with a ridiculous 44.5 ppg through two weeks, Alex ranks 11th with 21.0 ppg. By the way, the fact that 21 points ranks that low is a testament to how much scoring there has been at WR so far this season. Through two weeks, scoring from WRs is up +5.1 ppg over historical averages. Maybe those new rules protecting QBs is helping passing offenses.

We can visually represent the exchange of talent using our fantasy footprints. These are spider charts that plot average scoring at each position. For Alex, we see that his strengths at both QB and RB (thank you, James Conner) are mitigated by a lack of scoring at WR. (I’ve also included a point where Mahomes scoring would be even though that’s technically not accounted for since he has been riding the bench.) Then for Josh, we see his biggest strength is WR, though he’s virtually anemic at QB.

But if we overlay the other owner’s footprint onto the first owner’s area of strength, we see how a trade between these two is mutually beneficial. It’s like one of those brain transplants where the mad scientist hooks up two people with a bunch of wires, a metal cap and two thousand volts of electricity. Only way less painful. Well… I guess it depends how painful you think trading away the early frontrunner for NFL MVP might be. I couldn’t do it, but Alex has some serious cojones.

And for Josh, it’s not exactly a no-brainer either. He’s giving up his second-round pick for a guy that Alex picked up in the 12th round. After just two weeks! And while Josh is leading the league in WR scoring, that’s largely because of two guys. There’s not a lot of WR depth there.

Still, you have to rate this as a win-win for both sides.

Of course, the question now naturally turns to who stands to gain the most from the trade. This is some loosey-goosey math using two-week scoring averages, which is an extremely small sample size, but…

Alex gives up 9.0 ppg at QB (the opportunity cost of playing Brees over Mahomes), but sees an upgrade of 11.0 ppg with the inclusion of A.J. Green over the player most likely to be pushed to the bench—Royce Freeman. That’s a net increase of +2.0 ppg.

Meanwhile, Josh gets an upgrade of 23.0 ppg at QB (the difference of Mahomes over Stafford), but sees a drop of 13.0 ppg from A.J. Green to Robert Woods. That’s a net increase of +10.0 ppg.

By that math, Josh comes out on top. And by a healthy margin. But almost certainly Mahomes will not continue to average 33.0 ppg. Ditto for Green who will not continue to average 18.5 ppg. Truthfully, the difference between Mahomes and Brees or Green and Woods is not that great. You could argue it both ways. Really, it comes down to how confident you feel about the players involved.

Regardless, one thing is clear. Both of these teams got better. And given that they both rank first and second in the most recent Power Rankings, that’s a scary thought for the rest of the league.