I usually spend the introduction writing about some aspect from my life or the player’s connection to my fantasy strategy that I am writing about. But this time I have to give it up to my Razzball companion and friend, Rudy Gamble. Rudy is one of the founders of Razzball and one of the boldest fantasy football rankers in the yearly FantasyPros rankings contest. For a short time a couple of years ago we did a weekly podcast during the season and I was always excited to hop on with him and was fascinated to learn more about his process.Â
During the season, Rudy’s projections are behind a paywall, but during the preseason, you can view them for free. He has all of his rankings and depth charts for each team. What I really like about Rudy’s rankings compared to the rankings that you can just google, is that Rudy lists the stat projections for each player. So you can take a look at a lot of stuff that you aren’t getting elsewhere, including targets. I was combing through his projections recently and had to do a double take when he had Terry McLaurin as his WR4? Look, I’m with you, that’s crazy talk. But clearly, you don’t have to pay a WR4 price tag for him so I decided to take a deeper look.Â
McLaurin was an early season waiver wire darling that later turned into a trade throw in. The talent is very evident but the offense in Washington was at a standstill for most of the season. Case Keenum couldn’t do a whole lot behind a bad offensive line so the Dwayne Haskins experiment was enacted. Dwayne Haskins was terrible, plus there were rumors going around that the playbook and concepts were not clicking for him.Â
Dwayne Haskins will be entering the 2020 season as the starter, but this time, with another training camp and some valuable NFL snaps under his belt. This time, the Redskins have a new coaching staff being led by Ron Rivera. Things could actually be promising for Terry McLaurin in 2020 with some fresh starts in DC.Â
Last season, Scary Terry finished as the WR29 after finishing 34th in targets with 91. The targets should go up in 2020 if Washington gets more comfortable with Dwayne Haskins letting loose. Haskins only attempted 30 passes in a game once in 2020. For as little as Washington did in the passing game, McLaurin did snag 8 redzone receptions to go along with his 7 TDs. Both of those numbers were in the top 20. Also Scary Terry had the best contested catch rate in the NFL catching 68.4% of contested passes thrown his way. Catching contested passes is going to be a very valuable trait to have with Dwayne Haskins who at best is an unpolished Jameis Winston at this point in his career.Â
If you bump the targets up to about the 110-120 range for the 2020 season, I’m actually a little excited to target McLaurin in the 6th round. There are also a couple of new weapons that Washington drafted that could take some focus off of McLaurin if Rivera plays his cards right. Terry has the potential to pay big dividends to fantasy owners.Â
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