Erik, Jess Make In-Game Trade

Just a quick post today to add a few thoughts about a trade that is now 10 days old.

But perhaps it’s timely again given the sudden blight of injuries to QBs. As of Week 2, several fantasy-relevant signal-callers are nursing injuries including Ben Roethlisberger, Cam Newton, Sam Darnold (and his backup Trevor Siemian), Nick Foles and of course Drew Brees who suffered ligament damage to his thumb in Sunday’s game against the Rams. Now he’ll need surgery, which will likely sideline him until at least Week 10.

None of those guys were drafted as starters in our league, which means Tyreek Hill or maybe Derrius Guice are still the most significant injuries to befall a fantasy team owner this season. But unfortunately for Jess, she traded for Brees just last week. Now because she wisely benched him in favor of Derek Carr in Week 2, it appears he may never start for JU JU ON DAT BEAT. At least not for a long while.

But let’s talk about the trade itself. Two Sundays ago at 2:12 PM ET, Erik traded Drew Brees for a pair of WRs in Sammy Watkins and Dante Pettis. It was significant not necessarily because of the players involved, but because it just might be the first-ever in-game trade, at least that I can recall.

(For the record, I don’t really have much in the way of trade data in my spreadsheet, nor do I really care to go back and look. But I certainly can’t remember a trade going down like this in-game. Perhaps, that’s because for many years we had the veto and the mandatory two-day waiting period.)

Regardless, because this trade happened in-game, it created quite the drama, specifically because the aforementioned Tyreek Hill got injured. And at that point, Sammy Watkins started to go off. In fact, he was the highest scoring player in fantasy in Week 1, totaling 37 points. Currently, he’s the #2 WR in fantasy, trailing only John Ross. (It’s been weird at WR so far.)

One has to wonder at what point in the game the actual trade occurred relative to the performance of Watkins and the injury to Hill. I wasn’t watching, but based on the play-by-play, it appears Watkins came out of the gate hot, scoring a 68-yard TD less than two minutes into the game. Then it appears Hill got injured with about 3:23 left in the first quarter. And then Watkins scored another TD (this one a 49-yarder) on the very next play. All of which seems like would have occurred before the trade was agreed to at 2:12 PM ET.

Which seems like, if I’m Jess, it’s a reason not to do the deal. But maybe all of that was the impetus for the trade. Why not sell high while Sammy Watkins is doing well? After all, he scored just 4 points last week. Who knows?

Regardless, it looks bad now. Not necessarily because Watkins exploded in Week 1. As a reminder, he came back down to Earth last week. But because Brees will now miss, at minimum, the majority of the regular season.

Also, the Dante Pettis throw-in is a bit of a head-scratcher for me. Look, I know the 10th-round pick hasn’t exactly lit the world on fire (he’s scored as many fantasy points as I have right now, which is to say 0), but it seems like some deft negotiating on Erik’s part to include Pettis in the deal. He’s still a sleeper people like.

If anything, you could argue Jess should have gotten the throw-in given that Watkins was arguably the best player in the deal. After all, Watkins (77th pick) was drafted 50 spots higher than Drew Brees (127th pick), which as the season progresses means less and less. But this deal happened just five days after the draft before any of the players involved had completed a single game.

Imagine it this way. What if before the draft Jess had offered to give away her picks in both the seventh and tenth round, and in exchange, she gets an extra pick in the 11th? That’s basically what happened. But perhaps Erik had the leverage. After all, he did draft four QBs, which means there aren’t a lot of them out there on the waiver wire. Currently, you’re looking at Phillip Rivers, Jimmy Garoppolo or Jacoby Brissett.

Plus, the move was not without cost for Erik. Because at least one of the players involved in the trade was already playing at the time the trade was processed, the trade was not officially processed until after games had concluded Tuesday. As a result, I have to imagine he was stuck in the tricky position where either all of his players were undroppable because their games had already started or he would have to drop a player of real value in order to pick up a kicker. And he probably didn’t want to drop any RBs or WRs considering he didn’t draft many backups on his roster. But as a result, he lost the game by just four points.

Now with news that Ben Roethlisberger will have surgery and is out for the season, Erik’s roster of QBs is down to two. Sammy Watkins appears to be in the lineup against me in Week 3. And meanwhile, Jess is likely still in search of a QB. The beat goes on.

This was certainly the first trade of the season. But it’s unlikely it will be the last.