Travis Kelce, Mike Evans Traded in Six-Player Blockbuster

Six players were traded last week in a blockbuster deal that involved the preseason consensus #1 TE, another second-round pick and a third-rounder. And yet none of those might have been the best player in the deal.

In this post, we’ll break it all down. But first let’s get to the details of the transaction. Josh traded Travis Kelce, Brandin Cooks and the Rams D/ST to Gray in exchange for Mike Evans, Mark Andrews and the Patriots D/ST. It was the second deal in league history involving six players, tied for the most all-time. And after acquiring two other players in free agency (Preston Williams and the Panthers D/ST), it’s interesting to note that Gray replaced five players in his lineup, nearly a third of his roster, in a single day.

Unlike last week’s deal involving a one-to-one exchange of two QBs, this was a more complicated swap of assets, but makes plenty of sense if we look at the rosters involved.

Through five weeks, Gray is averaging 96.6 ppg. Josh is averaging 92.4 ppg.

Josh, pictured on the right above, was averaging a league-low 15.8 ppg from WRs and only 5.4 ppg from D/STs, which ranked next-to-last in the league. Prior to the trade, his three best receivers were Brandin Cooks, DJ Moore and currently injured Christian Kirk. Maybe you could throw Golden Tate in there who just returned from suspension. But none of those guys have been great. Specifically, there’s not a top-25 WR on the roster.

Meanwhile, Gray is strong at both of those positions. Entering Week 6, he was fourth in scoring at WR (25.6 ppg) and first in D/ST scoring (17.6 ppg). His need? Actually quarterback where he has been streaming lately, averaging a third-worst 13.8 ppg. But I’m guessing Josh was not getting to part with Russell Wilson for cheap. Always the opportunist, Gray targeted Josh’s second-round pick instead.

So let’s break down each piece of this six-player deal.

Gray Upgrades at TE with Travis Kelce

Travis Kelce is arguably the best player in the deal. Certainly, he was the most highly drafted, selected 16th overall by Josh. Entering Week 6, he was averaging 9.4 ppg, which ranked third among TEs behind only Will Dissly (now likely out for the rest of the season) and Austin Hooper.

Coincidentally, he was tied with Mark Andrews with exactly 47 points on the season. Yes, they’ve played evenly on the season so far and both are part of productive offenses. But it’s hard to argue that Kelce is not the significantly better option. Remember, Andrews was taken in the 14th round for a reason. He may be a talented, young player, but Kelce has the longer track record.

If anything, Kelce has underperformed so far. When it comes to Kelce, his measuring stick is usually elite WRs, not TEs. In fact, only 5 WRs were drafted before him this past September. If he were a WR, he would have ranked as WR18 entering Week 6. So clearly, he hasn’t lived up to expectations.

Right now Kelce is operating at his floor, which is still TE3. But his ceiling (~WR6) is much higher. And Gray is betting on that.

Josh Upgrades at WR with Mike Evans

Mike Evans is the next best player in the deal. Selected just five picks after Kelce by Gray in the second round, Evans was just the eighth WR off the board.

Entering Week 6, Evans ranked as WR7, averaging 11.7 ppg. But it hasn’t been the most stable production with 63% of that scoring coming in Week 3 when he totaled 37 points. Other than that, he’d hit double-digits just one other time and was coming off a doughnut in Week 5 against the Saints. Still, he’s been good on an offense that is also producing the the #1 WR in Chris Godwin. If anything, we might expect some of Godwin’s points (a fourth-round pick) to regress in favor of Evans in the coming weeks.

But no matter which way you slice it, Evans is definitely an improvement over Brandin Cooks. The third-round pick was the 13th WR off the board, but has underperformed this season as teammate Cooper Kupp has excelled. Entering Week 6, Cooks was averaging 6.7 ppg, which ranked as WR31—basically a flex option with some upside.

At this point in the deal, it’s a pretty clear exchange. Gray upgrades at TE while Josh upgrades at WR. So why didn’t the deal end there? The fact that Gray had to sweeten the pot indicates that the improvement from Andrews to Kelce was perceived as greater than the one from Cooks to Evans, which I would agree with. Josh still needed more to make the deal happen.

Enter the Patriots D/ST

Since Gray picked them up off waivers prior to Week 2, the Patriots D/ST has been a revelation. Entering Week 6, they were averaging 18.8 ppg, which is obviously not only tops among all defenses, but it’s competitive with the rest of the league. Here’s a list of all the RBs, WRs and TEs in fantasy that were averaging more points than the Patriots D/ST through the first five weeks:

Christian McCaffrey
Dalvin Cook

That’s the whole list.

I mean, come on. Seriously, not a single WR is doing that well. Not Julio Jones. Not DeAndre Hopkins. Not Odell Beckham Jr. And after dropping another 28 points this week, they’ve now passed Dalvin Cook too. If the Patriots D/ST were a QB, they would currently be the #7 QB in fantasy ahead of Carson Wentz and Gardner Minshew. Which means after six weeks, there are only seven other players in all of fantasy (6 QBs + Christian McCaffrey) that have scored more points than the Patriots D/ST. That’s insane.

Their run has been nearly unprecedented. According to Tristan Cockroft, only six other defenses in the history of football have started out this hot and not since the 1987 Bears D/ST has a defense scored more than 122 points through the first six weeks.

And you know it can’t have felt good for Gray when just after trading them to Josh for the Rams D/ST, they scored another two TDs on Thursday, their fourth and fifth of the season. It prompted The Ringer to declare that “The Patriots’ D/ST Is Breaking Fantasy Football.” Remember, the dominant Bears D/ST last season? They averaged 11.8 ppg. The Patriots are now at 20.3 ppg.

So is the Patriots D/ST the best player in the deal?

If they can keep this up, I don’t think there’s a question that the Patriots D/ST is the best player in the deal. Through Week 6, they’ve scored the same number of points as Travis Kelce and Mike Evans combined. But that’s the question, isn’t it? Can they keep this up?

Yes, they’re really good. But defensive touchdowns are extremely flukey and that’s what drives big fantasy scores for defenses. Also, the schedule has been really easy with games against the Steelers, Dolphins, Jets, Bills, Redskins and Giants who have a collective record of 10-23 with only the Bills having a winning record. Not coincidentally, five of those teams rank in the bottom six of points allowed to opposing fantasy defenses.

Moving forward, the schedule gets harder, including games against the four toughest offenses on fantasy defenses from Weeks 9-14 (the Chiefs, Cowboys, Ravens and Texans). The Chiefs in particular are a tough matchup in the first week of the fantasy playoffs.

Gray’s logic was probably to sell high before the schedule gets tougher and the Patriots D/ST inevitably regresses a bit, get the best player in the deal in Travis Kelce and hope he’s buying low on Brandin Cooks. And maybe Gray just has a knack for picking defenses. He plucked the Panthers D/ST off the waiver wire this week and they scored a season-high 18 points.

But at least for one week, it looks like I’d rather be Josh. Mark Andrews actually outscored Travis Kelce in Week 6 as did Mike Evans over Brandin Cooks. And the Patriots D/ST continued to dominate. Ultimately, that will be the key in determining who ended up with the better haul.

Both of these team owners are playoff hopefuls this season. So I wouldn’t be surprised if they face off again with their former owners later in the season. Will Travis Kelce heat up? Will the Patriots D/ST cool down? And can Brandin Cooks salvage some of his value from last season? The answers to those questions will no doubt have an impact on the outcome of this season.