More Buy Sell Hold - Week 6

by The Football Fix

BUY - WR A.J. Brown, Titans

I featured Brown as a BUY earlier in the season before a hamstring injury knocked him out of action for a week. In his first game back against the lowly Jaguars he wasn’t very productive, but still played 65.6% of the team’s snaps and didn’t suffer any injury setbacks in a game that the Titans pretty much had won from the first quarter.

Brown now ranks as the WR77 in fantasy points/game, which is just ridiculously low relative to the talent we all know he has. As long as Brown can get back healthy, which it looks like he’s doing, his production can only go up from here. This may be the cheapest you’ll ever be able to get him not only this season but for the next five years of his career.

Sometimes you just have to put talent first. Brown was a supremely talented wideout coming out of Ole Miss who’s done nothing but be hyper-efficient during his first two seasons as a pro. He’s good at football. People who are good at football generally find ways to produce.

On top of that, this Titans offense actually ranks 17th in Pass Plays/Game, so they haven’t even been as run heavy as in years past and it’s not like he’s in a really bad situation for fantasy. A.J. Brown’s time will come and when it does, you’re going to wonder why you didn’t buy him now while you still had the chance.

HOLD - Courtland Sutton, Broncos

Since Jerry Jeudy and K.J. Hamler both went down with an injury, Courtland Sutton hasn’t totally melted faces with his fantasy production like some might have expected. With that being said, he’s coming off a 25-point week against the Steelers where he caught 7 of 11 targets for 120 yards and a touchdown.

I know some of you may be inclined to sell Sutton after his big game, but I would actually recommend you hold him because his big Week 5 could only be the beginning. Sutton currently leads the league in Deep Targets with 12 and his 626 Air Yards are the 3rd most in the league. As you may already know, Air Yards are a great predictor of fantasy points so Sutton’s high ranking there is good.

With that being said, Sutton also has 315 Unrealized Air Yards, which are all the air yards on targets that he didn’t catch. In other words, it’s all the meat left on the bone. For Sutton, there’s a lot of meat left on the bone as he has the 2nd most Unrealized Air Yards amongst all wideouts this season. Sutton also only has 1 touchdown on the season, which is good for a measly 4% TD Rate in 2021 compared to his 7.7% career rate.

So even though Sutton is coming off a pretty good week, there are still more potential fantasy points for him to uncover this season when you look at both the Unrealized Air Yards and his quiet production in the touchdown column. Sutton is also still just five games in after missing almost all of 2020 with a torn ACL and MCL, so if anything, you’d expect his overall game to improve the more he continues to play this season. Hold him with confidence.

SELL - WR Ja’Marr Chase, Bengals

Knox appeared in last week’s variation of this article as a HOLD suggestion and if you listened to that, congratulations. His value just went up again after a primetime game against the Chiefs where he scored 20.7 PPR fantasy points on a couple of super impressive catches.

He now has 5 total touchdowns on the season, which is tied for the second-most amongst all pass catchers in the league and good for a 27.8% TD Rate. He’s catching a TD on over a quarter of all his receptions, which just likely isn’t sustainable. That can also be seen by his +26.2 Fantasy Points Over Expected, which leads all tight ends by a very wide margin and ranks 2nd amongst all skill position players.

Knox is still an okay hold if you’re starting him in fantasy because the tight end position is so rough. However, if you can sell high on the back of his last two big performances for the right price, I’d look to do so. He’s currently the TE4 in weekly scoring, which isn’t very sustainable for a guy who’s only seeing about 5 targets a game.

Knox should still have some big outings in this prolific Buffalo offense, but I could see some pretty inconsistent scoring weeks in the future since much of his production is fueled by big plays and a high TD% without the top usage that some other top tight ends have.

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