Fantasy football starts and trade candidates based on high-value opportunities

When it comes to fantasy football, volume has always been king. We want the players who generate the most targets and touches — more opportunities equates to more fantasy points. But not all opportunities are created equal.

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Over the summer, I wrote about money opportunities — the most high-value touches and targets players can receive, including end-zone targets, deep targets (20 yards or more), air yards, carries inside the 10-yard and carries inside the 5-yard line.

It's time to take a look at players whose stocks are up based on the high-value opportunities they saw in Week 3. Whether these opportunities resulted in fantasy production is irrelevant — if these players keep seeing high-value opportunities, fantasy points will follow.

We can use this information to inform our Week 4 sit/start decisions and help us identify intriguing buy-low trade targets and upside DFS options.  

END-ZONE TARGETS

Most WR end-zone targets | Week 3

I talked at length about how A.J. Green’s massive number of opportunities over the first two weeks weren’t likely to continue because of how inefficient he was with them. Lo and behold,  that is exactly what happened in Week 3 — Joe Burrow found better options near the end zone in Auden Tate and Tee Higgins. 

Higgins hauled in both of his two targets for touchdowns, cementing himself as a trusted option for Burrow to rely on as the team tries to punch the ball in for a score. He also had one end-zone target in Week 2.

Tate was not as fortunate; he failed to bring down either end-zone target despite both being catchable. It’s also worth noting  — because it won’t show up in the stat sheet — that Tate had a third end-zone target that was negated by a penalty.  

Green’s fantasy value is on life support because Higgins and the other Bengals wide receivers are going to continue to be more involved. 

I'd do whatever it takes to ship Green off before his value bottoms out. It would not surprise me at all to see Higgins outproduce Green the rest of the way. He's one of my favorite targets off the waiver wire this week because he is the FUTURE.