How Does The Sammy Watkins Trade Shake Up Fantasy Football?

Why Todd Gurley and LeSean McCoy might be the real winner and loser here

The Buffalo Bills stunned the NFL Friday when they announced two trades, sending star receiver Sammy Watkins to the Los Angeles Rams and acquiring Jordan Matthews from the Philadelphia Eagles in another deal. The move shakes up three offenses and, with fantasy football drafts just around the corner, it’s worth wondering how Watkins and Matthews shape up on their new teams.

But the biggest names affected might be first- and second-round picks LeSean McCoy and Todd Gurley. Those guys will affect whether you win or lose your league, and we may be drafting them in the wrong order.

So what are the fantasy football implications for everyone on the Bills, Rams, and Eagles with this pair of trades?

Buffalo Bills

The Bills offense is the biggest loser, downgrading their only good receiver from Sammy Watkins to Jordan Matthews. It looks like Buffalo is happy to tank, use their many draft picks next spring, and reset with an eye toward a Tom-Brady-less world soon. So what does this mean for Bills’ fantasy prospects?

Bills receivers may not have much value

The top three receivers in Buffalo should now be Matthews, rookie Zay Jones, and newly-signed veteran Anquan Boldin. And none of them will replace Watkins’ production or value to this offense. Watkins was a vertical threat and a game breaker. Those three are all slot guys, and none have Watkins’ ability to stretch the field.

Jordan Matthews enters camp late and sustained an injury his first practice that could leave him out until Week 1. That’s no way to build chemistry with a new team. The team’s best WR is Anquan Boldin, but he’s more of a Robert Woods replacement. He should end up around 60 catches at his usual 12 yards per catch. He has a good chance to lead the team in touchdowns too, but all of that doesn’t add up to more than a WR4. Matthews should not be on your draft board until he shows a role on this team. Zay Jones had 158 catches for East Carolina last year if you want a super deep PPR sleeper, but he’s probably a year away.

There’s only one Bills “receiver” you probably want on your roster this year, and that’s tight end Charles Clay. Clay has a good chance to lead the team in receptions and could threaten his career-high 2014 season of 69 catches, 759 yards, and 6 TDs. He’s a low-end TE1 prospect if you wait.

Watkins’ absence will hurt the rest of the offense

It ain’t gonna be pretty. Imagine an offense with no receivers to stretch the field and a team that will run first, run second, and playaction pass only when needed. Defenses will stack the box with eight or nine defenders, daring the Bills to beat them over the top, knowing they can’t.

That’s bad news for Tyrod Taylor, who has been a different quarterback without Watkins. His yards per attempt plummet and his touchdowns drop off precipitously:

Taylor was always a low-usage quarterback that needed big plays and rushing yards to hold value, and those big plays may be gone now. He still averaged 574 rushing yards with 5 TDs the last two seasons but he’s basically a dart at this point, hoping you get a good rushing game on a week your QB1 is out. The Bills are rebuilding and can move on from Taylor with minimal cap penalty this offseason, so every game represents a chance the Bills run rookie QB Nathan Peterman out there. Taylor just isn’t worth rostering in fantasy this season.

There’s only one Bill that truly matters in fantasy football this season and that’s LeSean McCoy. McCoy has been a top-6 pick all draft season. Optimists might be excited for all the touches McCoy can get now, talking themselves into the lie that McCoy can be better than ever. The truth is McCoy is a huge risk now, reminiscent of Todd Gurley last season who simply couldn’t post usable fantasy numbers on a team with zero passing game. McCoy has a great career YPC, but you can expect last year’s 5.4 YPC to drop mightily with all the stacked boxes he’ll see this year. Extra work is not necessarily good for McCoy anyway. He already had 15 carries and three catches a game last season and he’s one of those guys that’s always banged up. McCoy is a really good running back, but even really good running backs can’t beat an entire defense.

McCoy is a huge risk now. He’s an excellent runner who will touch the ball a lot, and he should still be a top-10 RB when playing. But is that a top-5 pick? McCoy has finished as a top-3 fantasy RB three times in his career. He finished lower top 10 once and as a RB2 three other times. If you draft McCoy at #6, you need him to hit his peak as a top-3 RB when he’s probably more like a top-15 pick with more ostensible downside than upside.

Let someone else take the risk. If you already have McCoy, you lucked into a game against the Jets Week 1. Take your one great game and sell high before a rough Carolina-Denver-Atlanta stretch that might be the beginning of the end. If anything, one Bill I’d really like to stash on my roster is backup RB Jonathan Williams. He should be a workhorse if and when McCoy misses any time, and fantasy football is about opportunity above all else.

Los Angeles Rams

It’d be easy to write Sammy Watkins out of your life now that he’s on the Rams, much like you’ve done with most other Rams for the last half a decade. Jared Goff is young and unproven, and many were burned by Todd Gurley last year. But this is not last year’s Rams. New head coach Sean McVay brings a potent offensive system that lit up scoreboards in Washington with a top-10 passing offense the last three years, and he’s brought Wade Phillips with him to lead a talented defense. Add in an improved offensive line, and these Rams might be onto something.

Sammy Watkins still isn’t a great fantasy pick…

Sammy Watkins held steady as a late third-round pick before the trade, but he’s sliding since then. Expect him to end up somewhere late in the 4th round by draft day, around the likes of Davante Adams, Martavis Bryant, and Allen Robinson as super talented boom-or-bust WRs. That makes him a fantasy WR2 on most teams. Is he worth it?

Watkins should take the DeSean Jackson role as the vertical threat for McVay’s offense. That’s good news for his YPC but not great for his consistency or targets. Jackson averaged about 6.5 targets a game under McVay and caught 58 percent of them. That would give Watkins three or four catches a game, about his usual 55 or 60 catches for the season. That will make it hard to get more than five to seven touchdowns, and it likely puts his ceiling around 1000 yards. Add all of that up and you might still get a top-20 WR — but only if Watkins plays all season. With the adjustment to a new team, a bad young QB, and the major injury history, you’re better off looking for upside in one of those other choices.

Kenny Britt had 1002 yards and 5 TDs last season for these Rams, but he was the first Rams receiver since Torry Holt in 2008 to even hit 750 for a season. It’s been a full decade since any Ram caught more than five touchdowns. McVay may change that, but it’s going to take some time. Watkins goes from an overrated 3rd round pick to an overrated 4th rounder.

…But the rest of the Rams will benefit greatly from his presence

But that doesn’t mean the rest of the Rams won’t benefit from Sammy’s presence. The vertical threat of Watkins opens up everything else in this offense. Look for Robert Woods to take on the Pierre Garcon role with Tavon Austin in the Jamison Crowder slot. For Austin, that probably means around 60 catches for a low YPC and pushes him off the fantasy radar, but Woods may be a decent sleeper if he approaches Garcon’s target level. He’s going in the 14th round in drafts and has some upside.

The better sleeper may be Tyler Higbee at tight end. Higbee is a converted wide receiver like Jordan Reed, and he could eat up a lot of those underneath routes that will be open with Watkins stretching the field. Reed and Higbee are similar profiles with similar size. If Higbee approaches Reed’s 5.5 catches per game from his time with McVay, he could lead the team in receptions and finish as a starting fantasy tight end. He’s basically undrafted right now but is a great late swing if you wait at TE.

But the big winner is Todd Gurley. An improving offensive line, a passing game that stretches the field, and an offense in line to score more this season should certainly all help Gurley. All that really disappeared last season was Gurley’s YPC, plummeting from 4.8 to 3.2 when the offense collapsed around him. He was still among the league leaders with 17 rushes a game, right in line with his terrific rookie year, and he doubled his receptions. The opportunity was still there, but his offense stunk.

So what if Gurley gets that same opportunity again — 275 carries and 40 catches — in an offense that has some direction? Even a bounce back to 4.0 YPC would push him over 1100 rushing yards, maybe 1500 combined yards, and it’s easy to see him nearing double digit TDs. A high volume workhorse back in a decent offense with high TD potential? That sounds a lot like last season’s LeSean McCoy and, like 2016 McCoy, Gurley is going mid-2nd right between two guys that didn’t even play in the NFL last year in Leonard Fournette and Marshawn Lynch. It should be clear which of the three to draft.

The biggest winner and loser in these high-profile WR trades might actually be the RB on each team. LeSean McCoy is being drafted high in the first when he’s probably more of a second round pick, and Todd Gurley is a higher-upside pick available 10 or 15 picks later.

Philadelphia Eagles

There’s not much to note with the Eagles. Jordan Matthews fell out of favor over the past season, and word out of training camp is that Nelson Agholor was set to replace him as the third Eagles receiver anyway. Matthews was mostly a throw-in on an Eagles trade for Bills cornerback Ronald Darby. Agholor takes the Philly WR3 spot, which should not be on your fantasy radar. Alshon Jeffery and Torrey Smith’s value should remain unchanged. Zach Ertz may still be the leading Eagles receiver when it’s all said and done. He could pass his career highs of 78 catches and 853 yards. He’s a perfectly usable TE1 available in the 10th round.

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