Nothing ruins a fantasy football season more than watching your first-round pick turn into a massive bust. Todd Gurley was a disaster in 2016, and last season Odell Beckham’s ankle injury had his fantasy owners banging their heads against a wall.
This season, just four weeks in, we already have our leading bust candidate, and it’s time for fantasy owners to cut bait.
The longer this Le’Veon Bell holdout continues, the more damage he will do to your fantasy roster. If you don’t act fast, you’re going to be the one standing there without a chair when the music stops.
The worst part about drafting Bell was the blind faith many had in him missing just one, maybe two, games at most. We knew of the rift between him and the Steelers due to the franchise tag, and we heard the comments from his agent Adisa Bakari regarding his client’s status, beliefs and goals. Yet for whatever reason, we let the talent and promise outweigh the facts of the situation and he remained a top-four draft choice. It hurts to see him sitting on your bench, but it hurts even more when you add in your draft regret.
Now the question that plagues fantasy owners is what to do with him. Do you keep him and hold out hope for his eventual return and potential to carry you through your fantasy playoffs, or do you trade him for immediate production? The answer is to trade him, and the longer you wait, the lower the return.
Right now, there are fantasy owners still willing to pay full price for Bell’s services. Maybe they believe in him more than you do because they haven’t felt the sting of his holdout, or maybe they just don’t understand the concept of buying low.
Regardless, we’ve seen offers ranging from Dalvin Cook and Kenny Golladay for Bell to straight-up swaps of him for Leonard Fournette. If you’re sitting with Bell wasting away on your bench, you need to stop worrying about what he could do for you in the playoffs and focus more on getting yourself to the playoffs.
The season is still young enough and unheralded players still are overperforming enough to have fantasy owners willing to blow up their rosters to acquire him. But the longer you wait, the longer you hold out hope that these trade rumors will materialize, the lower the return value. The closer we get to the Steelers’ Week 7 bye, the higher the risk that these Bell-hunters wise up and offer less.
No one wants to accept pennies on the dollar for their first-round pick, and that is completely understandable. Right now, you don’t have to. People still believe. Why shouldn’t you reap the benefits of their stupidity?
Howard Bender is the VP of operations and head of content at FantasyAlarm.com. Follow him on Twitter @rotobuzzguy and catch him on the award winning “Fantasy Alarm Radio Show” on the SiriusXM fantasy sports channel weekdays from 4-6 p.m. Go to FantasyAlarm.com for all your fantasy sports advice and NFL player rankings.
