FantasyPros has opened the 2026 fantasy season with a Week 0 trade guide that sorts players into buy, sell and hold territory just 48 hours before the first game. For managers still weighing late moves, the timing matters because a few values have already shifted hard enough to change the market.
That is why Juwan Johnson is one of the names drawing attention. He finished the 2025 season third among tight ends in yards, and his 3.9% touchdown rate suggests there may be more scoring coming if the Saints keep feeding a high-volume passing game. In a week when early season fantasy football trades can still reshape a roster, a tight end with that kind of production profile is the sort of player managers want to sort out before kickoff.
The same guide points to other moving pieces that are easier to price now than they were in early offseason drafts. Malik Nabers was available at an injury-related discount then, but that discount has already faded for managers who moved quickly. D’Andre Swift is now 100% healthy heading into the season, while Kyle Monangai is dealing with a knee injury that could easily cost him Week 1. Jacory Croskey-Merritt also appears to have the inside track to the Commanders’ No. 1 running back job, which changes the way his role has to be read in a trade market that is still settling.
There is also a quarterback wrinkle that does not fit the usual script. Patrick Mahomes’ 2025 fantasy production leaned heavily on uncharacteristic rushing volume, yet he is still being drafted outside the top 12 at quarterback even though he is widely treated as the greatest quarterback of the current generation. That gap between reputation and draft slot is exactly the kind of market inefficiency weekly trade advice tries to exploit. Fantasy managers are not buying a name here; they are buying or selling the shape of a season before it starts.
Elsewhere, the guide suggests that receiver usage could swing value quickly. Josh Downs has been limited by a lack of snaps in 2-WR sets, but Michael Pittman Jr. is out of town, which changes the pathway for targets. Zay Flowers ranked sixth at the position in yards last season and scored five touchdowns, and Declan Doyle in Baltimore gives that passing game another angle for fantasy managers to consider. Parker Washington is also part of the mix, even if he entered as an unheralded prospect and did not make much of an impact for the first 2.5 seasons of his career; Liam Coen’s slot receivers tend to be fantasy gold, and Washington is in arguably the most crowded receiver room in the NFL.
That is the real point of a Week 0 column. The season has not started, but the market has already moved, and FantasyPros is signaling that the best trade window may be now, before the first snap forces everyone to react instead of plan. The column will continue with weekly fantasy football trade advice throughout the season, but the first pass is the one that can still save a manager from paying full price for a player whose value is already changing.
