Fantasy football is back, and it feels so good. We now have a week’s worth of data to help find undervalued players, overvalued players and everything in between. Hopefully, we can use this to make some profitable trades.
However, trading after Week 1 is very hard. If your leaguemates are anything like mine, they probably see their players’ bad Week 1 outings as small-sample variance, but the good outings as proof they’ve hit on this year’s big breakout. Buying low on studs who just happened to disappoint in Week 1 is a pipe dream.
With that said, there are still some players who are more liquid than others. Today, I’ll focus on some moves to make involving some of those players. Hopefully, these are moves you might actually be able to pull off even in competitive leagues. Make sure to also check out our fantasy football trade analyzer. Let’s get started.
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3 Fantasy Football Trades to Propose Week 2 (2025)
David Montgomery (RB – DET) for Kenneth Walker III (RB – SEA)
According to FantasyCalc.com, Kenneth Walker III is currently the second-most commonly traded player in redraft fantasy football leagues (No. 1 is Jacory Croskey-Merritt, whom I covered last week in a trade that admittedly hasn’t aged too well). This makes sense, as Walker’s value probably fell more in Week 1 than any other non-injured player.
Despite being expected to be Seattle’s clear No. 1 RB, Walker recorded fewer snaps, carries and routes than teammate Zach Charbonnet against the 49ers. Obviously, that’s not good. However, there are still some reasons for optimism. Walker’s usage may have been limited due to an ankle injury he dealt with during training camp.
Also, although Charbonnet finished with more snaps, he only touched the ball on four of Seattle’s 10 drives; Walker was involved on eight drives. For the most part, the duo rotated by drive, as there was no one drive where both backs recorded multiple touches. It’s possible Charbonnet’s usage was simply inflated because the drives where he was the team’s primary back happened to be sustained longer than Walker’s drives, even though Walker had more of “his” drives in total.
Of course, this is all a bit speculative. There’s a real chance this is the new normal, and Walker is in a fairly even 50/50 timeshare. That’s why I’m not recommending you trade for him at his draft-day value, or even send just anyone in exchange for him. I’m specifically recommending David Montgomery (who is right next to him in rankings based on real trades) because Montgomery is basically already in Walker’s worst-case scenario.
As you may know, Montgomery splits work in the Lions’ backfield with Jahmyr Gibbs. This worked fine for his fantasy value when the Lions’ offense was historically elite, but it will get ugly fast if they keep putting up 13-point games like they did in Week 1 (they had zero games with that few points in all of 2024).
Where Walker at least has a chance of re-establishing himself as the Seahawks’ bell-cow back, there’s no world in which the Lions decide to increase Montgomery’s workload at Gibbs’ expense. If anything, the opposite is likely. This might be a hard move to pull off, as one-for-one trades at the same position often are. But if the Walker manager in your league is panicking and looking for a safer RB2, this is a great opportunity to add upside to your roster at a very low cost.
Brian Thomas Jr. (WR – JAC) for A.J. Brown (WR – PHI) + Something Extra
I know I said in the intro that buying low on studs after one bad week isn’t actually realistic. But that doesn’t apply if you’re willing to part with a stud yourself. It may seem strange to give up Brian Thomas Jr. in exchange for A.J. Brown. After all, Thomas was drafted higher than his three-initialed counterpart and was far more productive in Week 1 (not that that is saying much). And I wouldn’t do this trade straight up — the “+ Something” is important.
But I do think that there is a chance to sneakily make a move here. After he had arguably the worst game possible on the biggest stage possible, the current sentiment on Brown is terrible. But the man himself has said that his Week 1 dud was just a scheme issue. There’s no secret hamstring injury here.
Meanwhile, these two receivers averaged the same number of half-PPR points per game last season. That was with Brown playing on a historically run-heavy team, while Thomas scored most of his points down the stretch, seeing 30% or higher target shares from Mac Jones.
Since then, the Jaguars have added another explosive young playmaker in Travis Hunter. Despite only playing in 11-personnel in his NFL debut, Hunter saw more targets than Thomas in Week 1, eight to seven. Sure, a lot of Hunter’s targets were designed, easy-button looks, but that’s exactly the kind of usage that allows players to rack up fantasy points. As long as those plays are going to the rookie, Thomas’ ceiling is capped.
And I’m not sure that Brown’s is. Last year, he ranked second to only Puka Nacua in both Pro Football Focus (PFF) receiving grade and yards per route run (YPRR). The only thing keeping him from being a truly elite fantasy receiver was the Eagles’ run-heavy offense. Of course, that hasn’t changed so far in 2025. But it certainly could, for any number of reasons, from a Saquon Barkley injury (fantasy gods forbid) to defensive regression.
At the end of the day, this is a risky move. If Thomas maintains his status above Hunter as the Jaguars’ alpha No. 1 WR (and Trevor Lawrence gets it together), he could easily be a league-winning player. But Brown also has that upside. If you can get a real asset on top in exchange for making this swap, it has a real chance to be a league-winning move.
Isiah Pacheco (RB – KC) for Just About Anything
In last week’s article, I recommended moving Joe Mixon for this same package. Pacheco joining Mixon should give you a pretty good idea of how I am feeling about the Chiefs’ running back, given that the thesis of my Mixon take was that he might not play at all in 2025. Obviously, Pacheco is less likely to be a literal zero than Mixon. But he might be even worse — the kind of player “too good” to cut, but also too useless to ever actually put in your lineup.
The hope for drafting Pacheco heading into this year was that, fully recovered from the broken ankle he suffered in 2024, he would reassert himself as the Chiefs’ workhorse running back. In Week 1, that couldn’t have been further from the truth. Pacheco finished Week 1 with five carries and three targets. Those were the same numbers as Kareem Hunt. Rookie Brashard Smith also played on some passing downs, meaning Pacheco finished with less than a 50% snap share.
In theory, Pacheco could still have value as the goal-line back in Kansas City’s offense. But, especially if Xavier Worthy misses a large chunk of time, this offense simply isn’t elite anymore. And Hunt is likely the team’s preferred goal-line back. In the eight games they played together in 2024 (playoffs included), he outcarried Pacheco three to one inside the 5-yard line and five to three inside the 10-yard line. In Week 1, he played four of the Chiefs’ six snaps inside the 10.
With Hunt claiming whatever goal-line work Andy Reid doesn’t use for weird shovel passes and the explosive Smith likely expanding his passing-down role as the season goes on, there is no valuable role left for Pacheco in this offense. Maybe “just about anything” is harsh, but I would swap him in a heartbeat for players like Chris Olave, Keon Coleman and Tyrone Tracy (just to name a few), all of whom he is still ahead of in trade-based rankings.
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Ted Chmyz is a fantasy football contributor for FantasyPros.com. Find him on Twitter and Bluesky @Tchmyz for more fantasy content or to ask questions.
