Friday, October 10, 2025

Trade Grades 6 and 8

 Still waiting on Esco to provide the grade for my trades (now up to 3 on the season!), but here are the other two.

Trade 6
Nick receives Brian Thomas Jr.
Weissbard receives Woody Marks

As always, these grades are based on what we knew at the time, which was that BTJ was struggling to find the heights of his rookie season, while Woody seemed to be taking a firm hold of the Texans RB1 role. If he hadn't traded away one of his excess WRs earlier in the day, I would say this is great business for Dan. RBs are worth their weight in gold, and getting 10-15 touches per game is never available on the waiver wire. The only thing you can't do is trade a WR1 for the lesser of an RB by committee. This wasn't exactly that, as BTJ is more of a high end WR2 and Woody seemed to be the high end of a committee, but the Texans OL looks like trash. Given that Weiss was basically deciding between 1) which of these guys to start in a given week and 2) who would perform better over the rest of the season, I feel like he came on the short side here.

As for our defending champ, he made the stereotypical move of trading for a player who led him to the championship. We've all been there (Barnard hasn't), though his next move was surprising. Regardless, at the time Woody was his clear RB3, and BTJ immediately challenged for his WR1. Obvious move here.

Grades:
Nick: A-
Weissbard: C-


Trade 8
Marco receives Ray Davis and Brian Thomas Jr.
Nick receives Omarion Hampton and Hassan Haskins

These two trades were a master class by our defending champ. Turning the lesser half of the Texans running game into the best part of the Chargers running game is sorcery in a league that protects their RBs like they're gold. Nick is doing exactly what a 4-1 team should be doing, focusing on building the best team possible for the playoffs, because even if he goes .500 the rest of the regular season he's likely still in the playoffs.

Marco also did pretty well here. He dodged a Diggs bullet IMO and made lemonade after his roster lost his two most valuable assets in back to back weeks. It's still going to be a slog to get to the playoffs from 2-3 without your two best players, but there's at least a path, where there wasn't before.

Grades:
Nick: A-
Marco: B