Dynasty Fantasy Football Sleepers To Stash: Cheap Trade Targets

March 24, 2025

John's dynasty fantasy football trade targets for undervalued players. Which cheap fantasy football trade targets should you buy for 2025 dynasty leagues?

Stashing players that you can pick up for cheap (or at least at great value) is always a good idea in Dynasty fantasy football. You want to get players ahead of their breakout seasons so you can get the best possible value on them.

Despite there being many clear leading indicators of a breakout, several players who have shown impressive production and efficiency when accounting for their situation are being largely ignored by the majority of the community.

This gives you a chance to pounce on certain players who are highly likely to have breakout seasons upcoming and pay off in a big way. Let's break down these players below.

Rashid Shaheed, WR, New Orleans Saints

Everything except for the already set-in-stone opinions of the majority of the Dynasty fantasy football community has indicated that Shaheed is the WR1 for the New Orleans Saints. Though WR Chris Olave was chosen in the same draft with much higher capital, Shaheed was the clear favorite of quarterback Derek Carr before he went down with a knee injury that ended his season.

Shaheed was targeted more and was more productive in the first six games of the season, which were the only ones that both Olave and Shaheed played fully. Olave had more receptions, but Shaheed easily bested him in target share, 1st-read target share (even more so), yards, and touchdowns, despite playing a lower number of snaps and running fewer routes.

Rashid Shaheed's weekly target shares: 20.8%, 26.6%, 21.7%, 30.5%, 28.1%.

Saints WR1.

— John Daigle (@notJDaigle) October 8, 2024

Draft capital is irrelevant right now. Carr clearly showed us that he prefers to not only look Shaheed's way first but to throw him the ball first before he looks Olave's way. And Olave has issues of his own that have stunted his first few seasons, even aside from the fact that Carr seems to not like him much.

He now has a concerning history of concussions, suffering multiple terrible blows to the head. Just last season, he suffered two major traumatic brain injuries, the second of which put him out of commission for the rest of the year. He has five documented major concussions going back to his college days.

Tough seeing guys knocked out on these big hits. Prayers for Chris Olave. 🙏 pic.twitter.com/R27fhPLuiF

— Brett Favre (@BrettFavre) November 4, 2024

The more concussions a player gets, the more brain damage they suffer, and often subsequent concussions can be even easier to pick up. Shaheed has no such concerns, and his knee injury was a meniscus issue that was fully addressed by surgery. He picked it up after Week 7, so he'll have had nearly a year to recover before the 2025 season starts.

Were it not for their injuries, I suspect Shaheed would have been the clear WR1 throughout the season, while Olave continued to show streaky production. So the knee injury is likely warping peoples' perceptions of how the WR room has shaken out.

For those reasons, you should make a move for Shaheed right now. He's ludicrously cheap, with monster upside.

Ricky Pearsall, WR, San Francisco 49ers

I highlighted Pearsall as a breakout candidate in a few of my previous articles. One big reason for this is that it made perfect sense for the 49ers to trade away WR Deebo Samuel Sr., who had a massively disappointing season in 2024. Now that Samuel has officially been traded to the Washington Commanders, it's even more important to make a move for Pearsall as quickly as you can.

The presence of both Brandon Aiyuk and Jauan Jennings might lead people to believe that Pearsall is, at best, the team's WR3, but this likely won't be the case. I strongly believe that Pearsall was starting to break out at the end of the season, as he caught 14 of his 18 targets for 210 yards and two touchdowns. These were high-scoring games, and one of them was a blowout, but Pearsall's production wasn't empty.

Fuck it... Ricky Pearsall 2024 rookie highlights tape
pic.twitter.com/TIFi08if1Z

— FoN9ne (@FoN9ne) February 24, 2025

Getting shot in the chest being a disruption to your life and season-long production in the NFL is completely understandable, and we shouldn't be just looking at his statistics for the year in a vacuum. Instead, we should try to think of what would have happened if he hadn't been shot. And he likely would've put together an impressive season.

For now, the presence of Jennings and Aiyuk is actually a good thing. They help push down Pearsall's trade value. There are likely plenty of Dynasty fantasy managers who are willing to part with the soon-to-be 2nd-year pro for a great deal. Pearsall ran a 4.41-second 40-yard-dash, faster than Aiyuk and Jennings by 1-2 speed tiers, so he has the most athletic upside of the three.

Expect a big breakout season in 2025, as quarterback Brock Purdy is one of the best in the NFL, and head coach Kyle Shanahan runs a highly prolific offense that produces very well when they're not decimated by injuries. Even when they are, the O is perfectly serviceable.

Tank Bigsby, RB, Jacksonville Jaguars

The arrival of former Tampa Bay Buccaneers offensive coordinator Liam Coen as the new head coach of the Jacksonville Jaguars is perplexingly not majorly shifting the opinions of Dynasty fantasy football managers. Both RB Travis Etienne Jr., whose value in Dynasty/Keeper leagues rests around RB30, and Bigsby, who is roughly the RB36, are being largely ignored.

It makes no sense for either of these players to be valued similarly to Bucs RB Rachaad White. Coen's run-game schemes made White and Irving the most productive backfield in the league. Though other teams had higher total rushing outputs, these were due to the presence of running quarterbacks. Coen's schemes will likely vault Etienne's and Bigsby's statistical production in 2025 to new heights.

Tank Bigsby ... DOG pic.twitter.com/rbuUZEJabi

— Ian Hartitz (@Ihartitz) December 12, 2024

We're featuring Bigsby because his abilities after contact and adeptness at breaking and avoiding tackles were, at one point, in elite territory, before the offense collapsed as a whole. Injuries to starting quarterback Trevor Lawrence, tight end Evan Engram, and wide receivers Gabe Davis and Christian Kirk, as well as the horrible coaching of former offensive coordinator Press Taylor, made life extremely difficult for Bigsby.

In addition, their terrible defense led to the offense often completely abandoning the run game in favor of heavy passing to try to even the score. The new coaching regime in Jacksonville should help alleviate this. At a minimum, Coen's productive offense will help the team keep the score close, and stop blowouts from occurring, especially early in games.

Tank Bigsby is outplaying Travis Etienne and the only ones who don't see it are the Jaguars coaches.@SharpFootball can't make sense of how the Jags are handling their backfield.

Get more hot NFL topics nobody is talking about on the Sharp Football Show below. https://t.co/qnr65CPmXS pic.twitter.com/q2Z7Mu2cmz

— Sharp Football Analysis (@SharpFBAnalysis) October 16, 2024

This will lead to a more positive game script for Bigsby. And more chances to make plays like the ones in the clips above. He had multiple highlight-reel-worthy, massive runs on the same offense in which Etienne was struggling to find any running room. Much of this was due to Bigsby's ability to fight through contact, re-accelerate, and outrun opposing linebackers.

We don't really know if ETN is cooked, and while he has solid pass-catching upside, it might be Bigsby who becomes the primary early-down back. Yet even if they split time, Coen's blocking schemes in Tampa Bay gave his backs plenty of space to work with, something they didn't have under Taylor.

There is plenty of value here to be had. If the backfield is even 90 percent of what the Irving and White combination was, Bigsby will likely benefit massively and have a much better season for fantasy football. So you should trade for him as soon as you can.

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