5 Reasons Why Terry McLaurin is a Fantasy Bargain

Photo: Jeff Hanisch, USA Today Sports

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Terry McLaurin was arguably the most surprising top-30 wide receiver in fantasy football last season. His current ADP indicates early drafters aren’t expecting much of a step forward in year two. The crowd has it wrong. McLaurin has a clear path to a top-15 finish in his sophomore season for five reasons:

1. You already know he was good as a rookie, but may not realize how good

2. Competition for targets in Washington’s offense barely exists

3. Big plays help win weekly matchups and they happen to be McLaurin’s specialty

4. Washington’s quarterback play has nowhere to go but up

5. New offensive coordinator Scott Turner has shown a willingness to tailor his scheme to the strengths of his best players
   

Torching Expectations

McLaurin was the 77th pick in last year’s draft (3.12) and probably would have gone later had it not been for a strong Senior Bowl and an electric showing at the scouting combine. It’s not that McLaurin was a dog at Ohio State, especially not as a senior. He led the entire 2019 wide receiver class with 14.3 yards per target and scored 11 touchdowns.

But it wasn’t until McLaurin ran a 4.35 40-yard dash at 208 pounds (95th percentile size-adjusted speed) that he was thought of as an early-round option for NFL teams. Before his standout senior year, in which he was still only fourth in targets on the team, McLaurin was rarely featured in OSU’s offense.

If any doubts remained about McLaurin’s lack of college production (which can be attributed primarily to the Buckeyes run-first offense from 2015-2018), he erased them in Week 1 of his rookie season by hanging a 7-5-125-1 receiving line on the Eagles. McLaurin went on to score five touchdowns over his first five NFL games, ranking 14th in cumulative PPR wide receiver scoring through Week 6, despite missing one game due to a hamstring strain.

His production waned in the middle of the season, but McLaurin wasn't to blame. Washington jettisoned offensive-minded head coach Jay Gruden after the team started 0-5 and handed the reins to assistant head coach, Bill Callahan. On Callahan’s watch, Washington finished with the second-fewest pass attempts in the league despite being outscored by a combined 60 points.

McLaurin would end the season as a top-30 wide receiver. We know that’s helpful in fantasy football, but history shows us wideouts who achieved similar statistical milestones as McLaurin did as a rookie often go on to bigger and better things. Take a look at the cohort of rookie wide receivers since 2000 to total at least 800 yards, five touchdowns, and average 9.0 yards per target:

Some takeaways:

• Before we get too carried away with the group of elite fantasy producers at the top of the list, McLaurin’s numbers more closely resemble those towards the bottom.

• In particular, Chris Chambers, Lee Evans, and T.Y. Hilton are interesting comps in terms of height, weight, speed, and athleticism. The trio had varying degrees of career success, but they all posted a top-15 fantasy season by Year 3.

• With the exception of famous one-year wonder Michael Clayton, it’s comforting every other player went on to play at or near an All-Pro level at some point in their respective careers (besides the rookies and JuJu Smith-Schuster who we’ll grant a mulligan for 2019); McLaurin's bust rate potential is low.

• A.J. Brown and DK Metcalf also made the cut as rookies in 2019. Both are being drafted ahead of McLaurin due to their higher theoretical ceilings, but Brown was an outlier in terms of his per-target efficiency and plays in a notoriously run-heavy offense, while Metcalf also plays in a run-first scheme and isn’t the clear No. 1 target on his team.
  

The Alpha Dog

McLaurin, on the other hand, is the clear No. 1 target in Washington. And the path to a top-15 wide receiver finish often intersects with target hogs on teams that figure to be playing from behind most weeks. Let’s review who McLaurin will be competing for targets with this year in Washington, whose over/under for wins is set at five games -- second-lowest in the NFL ahead of only Jacksonville:

• Kelvin Harmon - Showed he belonged in the NFL last year when given an opportunity, but last year’s sixth-rounder lacks the physical tools to add value to his targets.

• Steven Sims Jr - A pint-sized undrafted free agent slot receiver. Like Harmon, Sims played well when given an opportunity but he now has to fight for targets close to the line of scrimmage with...

• Antonio Gibson - The team has gone out of its way to list Gibson as a running back after taking him in Round 3 of this year’s draft. But Gibson is an offensive weapon. He played wide receiver at Memphis and comfortably runs routes from the slot. We need to account for Gibson when projecting team targets, but his looks are not the ones that were ever headed in McLaurin’s direction.

• Antonio Gandy-Golden - A small school developmental prospect who failed to impress at the Combine and Senior Bowl. He’s got some long-term upside but it would be surprising if he saw the field over Harmon as a rookie.

• Trey Quinn - Somehow caught only 55% of his targets last season even though they only traveled an average of 4.4 yards through the air.

• Jeremy Sprinkle - OK, we’re done here.
  

In addition to having essentially zero target competition, the schedule looks favorable. The NFC East defensive backfields range from awful to average. And Washington has quality matchups against the Rams, Lions, Bengals, and Panthers.

Let’s assume a modest 10% increase in pass attempts over last season due to the soft passing schedule and change in offensive philosophy. The resulting 32 pass attempts per game would still rank below league average.

McLaurin commanded a 22% target share last year. We’ll bump him up to 25% for this exercise since he’s farther along in his learning curve and we should expect him to play 16 games (as opposed to 14 last year). At those rates, it’s safe to project somewhere between 120 and 130 targets for McLaurin.

A Bonafide Lid-Popper

Now consider the efficiency of those targets. McLaurin is one of the league’s premier deep threats. He posted a 62.4% catch rate as a rookie, which is remarkable considering the following nuggets:

• His 41% share of team air yards tied for best in the league

• He had a 14.0-yard average target depth (18th)

• 29.7% of his targets traveled at least 20 yards downfield (11th)

• He had 12 receptions of 20+ yards (9th)

• Washington quarterbacks completed 62% of their total pass attempts (18th)
  

Give McLaurin 120 targets with zero increase in last year’s efficiency and something close to a 70-1100-7 season is well within his expected outcomes. Those numbers would place him in the WR15-18 range most seasons.

It Can’t Get Worse?

The strongest argument against McLaurin breaking into the low-end WR1 tier is poor quarterback play. Last year, Washington’s quarterbacks ranked dead last in yards per game (175.8), 29th in yards per attempt (5.8), and 28th in passing touchdowns (18).

Spending your fifth-round pick on a wide receiver hitched to Dwayne Haskins shouldn’t give you the warm and fuzzies, but are we sure Haskins is as bad as everyone thinks?

Haskins started only one season in college before being selected 15th overall in last year’s draft. It shouldn’t surprise anyone he looked lost after supplanting Case Keenum. He was always going to need time to acclimate to the NFL, and encouragingly, he improved drastically as the season wore on.

The on-film improvement Samuel Gold illustrates above translated to the box scores. In Weeks 15 and 16, Haskins combined for a 72% completion rate and four touchdown passes against zero interceptions. His ability to create off-script and unleash an effortless deep ball was evident as his confidence grew. Not surprisingly, the main beneficiary was Haskins’ former teammate at Ohio State, McLaurin, who combined for 12 catches and 216 yards in those games, including a 75-yard touchdown.

For what it’s worth, McLaurin is singing Haskins’ praises for his improved conditioning and focus during the offseason.

Bye, Callahan

Ousted interim head coach Bill Callahan was a plague on the team’s offense in 2019. He ran the ball 58% of the time on first down, the sixth-highest rate in the league. When many of those runs were unsuccessful, Haskins was faced with third-and-long situations where the defense knew exactly what was coming.

Scott Turner, son of long-time NFL coach Norv Turner, is taking over play-calling duties and figures to have carte blanch to do whatever he sees fit under new defensive-minded head coach, Ron Rivera.

All we can ask as fantasy gamers is for an offensive coordinator to bend their scheme around the talent at their disposal, and thankfully, it appears Turner has a track record of doing just that. When he took over as the Panthers offensive coordinator last year, Turner recognized the shortcomings of his quarterbacks and began scheming more short and intermediate routes for after-the-catch weapons D.J. Moore and Curtis Samuel, as well as getting the ball into Samuel’s hands out of the backfield.

There’s no doubt Turner also learned a thing or two from his dad, an Air Coryell disciple who emphasized the vertical passing game, which suits McLaurin’s game perfectly. The early buzz on Turner’s offense, as well as McLaurin’s role, has been exceedingly positive:

The biggest thing that McLaurin has noticed about the new offense: Scott Turner wants to spread the field and create explosive plays downfield. He feels that it can be a “receiver-friendly” scheme. #Redskins

— Zach Selby (@ZachDSelby) June 11, 2020

The #Redskins coaches have told McLaurin that he could potentially be the X receiver, but they don’t want him to get too bogged down with where he plays. He could be placed all over the field, which he is definitely willing to do.— Zach Selby (@ZachDSelby) June 11, 2020

Terry McLaurin coaches have mentioned playing the slot to him. The expectation is he'll start be mostly at the X spot, but the coaching staff values versatility.

— Matthew Paras (@Matthew_Paras) June 11, 2020

Projections

Final Thoughts

McLaurin is typically being selected in a sweet spot for high upside wide receivers, but he comes with fewer question marks than most of them:

• Courtland Sutton - Excelled as the only show in town after the Emmanuel Sanders trade but now competing for targets with two hotshot rookies. Does Drew Lock sink the entire offense?

• Tyler Lockett - Solid value in fantasy drafts as usual. But does Metcalf take a step forward and emerge as Russell Wilson’s WR1?

• Stefon Diggs - Great real-life acquisition for the Bills but can Josh Allen support a top-20 wide receiver in fantasy?

• Marquise Brown - Potential league-winner if healthy but his ADP is beginning to surge. Can a sub-170 lb. wide receiver be expected to stay healthy for a full season?

• DeVante Parker - Coming off an extremely late breakout year. How much will the eventual move from the free-wheeling Ryan Fitzpatrick to a rookie quarterback hurt him?
  

While McLaurin admittedly comes with quarterback concerns of his own, Haskins showed evidence the game was beginning to slow down for him as a rookie. Washington hired a promising young coordinator who played a key role in mentoring Cam Newton, Teddy Bridgewater, and Josh Gordon early in their careers. And most importantly, McLaurin was a rare fantasy difference-maker as a rookie who now has a path to 120+ targets.

In a year where a running back-heavy approach in the early rounds looks like the ideal draft strategy, it’s more important than ever to get the wide receiver position right in Rounds 5 and 6. McLaurin is the safest of the bunch due to his locked-in volume and the efficiency he displayed during his final year at Ohio State and rookie year in the NFL adds significant upside. Prioritize him in drafts ahead of ADP.

Other Thoughts From Around The Web

Ian Hartitz of Rotoworld also thinks McLaurin is a draft-day bargain:

"He's my PPR WR18 entering next season. It's rare that No. 1 pass-game targets are available so late and drafts. It's even rarer when those players are legit talented young studs not dealing with a new QB under center. The value is coming because McLaurin went from being an absolute world-beating talent with Keenum under center ... and then was merely a WR3 with Haskins. Luckily, he's not being priced as anything more than a WR3 at the moment. Buy McLaurin in fantasy leagues of all shapes and sizes in 2020."

Ryan Weisse from the Fantasy Footballers lays out the path to a WR1 season for McLaurin:

"I might be crazy but I love Terry McLaurin at his floor and adore him at his ceiling in 2020. My optimism lies in his overall situation. He finds himself in the very advantageous position of being the undisputed top target on a team that will likely throw the ball a lot. At his worst, assuming he plays all 16 games, he should see an uptick in targets with this coaching staff and safely finish with a 62/1000/5 stat line. That should tuck him in right around WR27, where he finished last year and about seven spots ahead of his current ADP. But at his ceiling, we could see a 79/1250/9 stat line and that would firmly make him a fantasy WR1."

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