Terry McLaurin: Your Fantasy Safety Blanket
Despite Halloween and the official spooky season being over, “Scary” Terry McLaurin is starting to return the fantasy value that you were hoping for when you drafted him. He has some bright spots to his season so far even though his QB room seems like a revolving door. So how does the rest of his season look? For the rest of the season, McLaurin and the Washington Football Team won’t face a team in the top-12 against WRs, and they have matchups against the worst and sixth-worst defense against WRs. Look for McLaurin to be a viable WR2 the rest of his way for his floor, but his ceiling is a low-end WR1 so at the very least you can be confident with what you are getting heading towards the fantasy football playoffs.
So what is going well for McLaurin so far this year? For starters, they have had their bye week so no need to search for any necessary fill-in. Other than that, he has the sixth most targets in the league for WRs just behind Robby Anderson of the Panthers (PPR God) and just in front of DeAndre Hopkins who many took overall as the WR1. Again, why is this even more impressive? LOOK AT HIS QBS. Dwayne Haskins (benched), Kyle Allen (cut from Carolina, hurt), and Alex Smith (Comeback Player of the Year, but rusty). The WFT QBs have combined for 182 completions for 1,911 yards, and 9 TDs with 7 INTs. McLaurin leads the team in targets by 30, receptions by 16, and yards by almost 450 yards. McLaurin is 7th overall in the league for targets, but if you take out players who haven’t had a bye week, he ranks 2nd in targets. For a team that is going to be down a lot because they just overall aren’t very good, if McLaurin gets into space he is going to be able to rack up fantasy points.
Speaking of getting into space, even though McLaurin ranks 12th overall in total receptions on the year, he is 3rd in yards after the catch and 4th overall (#2 WR) in broken tackles. We often talk about boom or bust plays providing fantasy relevance, but with McLaurin’s target share being so high, he has a higher potential floor than most receivers and his ceiling looks great. He is averaging 14 fantasy points per game and he has been on an upward trend in his previous three games scoring 10.9, 18.5, and 21.0 respectively. Another benefit of Terry McLaurin is that he isn’t sharing his offense with anybody. Sure, the WFT isn’t great, but if you take a look at the 5 WRs ahead of McLaurin on the season, they all have a more slim margin of target share between them and the next wide receiver. For example, McLaurin leads the WRs on his team by 50 targets; Stefon Diggs who leads the league in targets, leads the Bills next most targeted receiver by 37 targets (and the Bills haven’t had their bye week yet). Because of McLaurin’s prominent role in this offense, even if the WFT gets blown out, he should still be involved enough to still put forth a start-able effort.
Is it all sunshine and rainbows? Not necessarily. While McLaurin is WR11 in gaining first downs through receptions, he doesn’t have the red zone involvement you would like to see. Only 8 of McLaurin’s targets have come in the red zone and he has only brought in 5 of them for a total of 22 yards. Because of this, all 3 of his TDs have come from further out, probably adding to his YAC totals. It isn’t ideal for this lack of involvement in the red zone, especially on a team that isn’t the most skilled at getting there. But again, with how high he is ranking, to me it makes it more impressive that if he can develop this red zone role, he will be an even better asset to your lineups.
I think the most surprising thing for me when researching McLaurin and looking at how his season is going was really just learning how sneaky good of a season he is having. As I mentioned he is slotting in as WR 11 in .5 PPR/FanDuel scoring, but to put that in perspective he is slotting in right behind Will Fuller and right above Adam Thielen. Other notable names that are behind McLaurin? Tyler Boyd, Robert Woods, Mike Evans, DJ Moore, and JuJu Smith-Schuster. Some of these names were drafted well ahead of where McLaurin was going in drafts, so through 9 weeks at least, I would say that he is adequately returning the value you drafted him at and I would look that to continue the rest of the season.