Is It Too Late To Get Luke Jackson? | Patreon Exclusive

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After a dominant first up performance as a solo ruck, many are looking at Luke Jackson as a trade target this week? But is it too late to get him?

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It’s the question that cash and trade strapped fantasy coaches are wrestling with throughout this week. In his first week without Max Gawn, Jackson delivered a 125 in AFLFantasy/DreamTeam and 122 in SuperCoach. He’ll make some decent coin over the next few weeks and likely score well again this week against Reilly O’Brien. But is trading into Jackson the right move?

Giving generalised trading advice can be filled with danger at any time of the season. But it’s even more so in the final third of the year. The reason being is teams are all in varying shapes with the variables of injuries and bullets teams have copped throughout the year. Despite this, I’m happy to make a ‘sweeping statement’ across teams.

In SuperCoach and DreamTeam, I cannot advocate for trading into Luke Jackson! All the news from Melbourne is that Max will be back next week. As a result, coaches will likely only get one more week of maximum output before his scoring returns to something that resembles his prior scoring trend. Which, for the record, is low 70’s in AFLFantasy and low 80’s in SuperCoach. Even with the flexibility of long-term structure support as a RUC/FWD DPP, it was a move that needed to be made last week to capitalise on the maximum games of Gawn’s absence. By getting him now, your chasing points missed and have lost the trade’s full value. A vast majority of teams in the limited trade formats aren’t in the luxurious position of trading into bench depth, which, based on his scoring history, you’ll need Jackson to become.

Ultimately, in these formats, it was a last week trade!

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In AFLFantasy, it’s a little more team dependent. The weekly ‘use or lose‘ two trades mean that coaches can play a slightly different strategy. Should Jackson score 90 this round, he’ll increase his value by approximately $43,000. Should Gawn return the following week and Jackson returns to scoring a 70 he’ll still make a further $21k. One more week beyond that of a 70, he’ll increase his value by just $3,000.

I highlight this to ask one question? Is the forecast scoring of 160 points over two weeks and $64,000 generated the best moves for your team? After that, you’ll likely want to trade him out.

For some teams, it’s how they can get a cash cow off the ground and make some money simultaneously. So for those scenarios, I don’t hate the move. However, most teams can do better over a three week period from a cash generation and points on-field perspective.

So is it too late to trade into Luke Jackson? Unfortunately, for most coaches and their teams, the answer is yes.