The Los Angeles Rams are going to spend a lot of money in 2020 on players no longer on their roster. On Thursday night they traded Brandin Cooks, adding his dead money to that of Todd Gurley. While that's pretty terrible for their chances of building a winning team, it's going to be pretty great for someone in Fantasy.
Robert Woods and Cooper Kupp should now have a grip on 45% of the team's targets, but that still leaves about 320 targets for a cast of unproven, high-upside assets. The first, is Tyler Higbee.
Higbee saw a monster target share in the second half of 2020 and his final five outings were downright Gronk-like. Higbee caught 43 of 56 targets for 522 yards. While you shouldn't expect anything like that, this trade seems to indicate he'll have enough room to continue his breakout in 2020. Of course, that's only if Gerald Everett doesn't reclaim his role as the best pass-catching tight end in Los Angeles. Fantasy managers were far more interested in Everett at the start of 2019 and the team has been talking him up again. I'm now ranking Higbee as a top-eight tight end, but it's with some reservation.
At receiver, it looks like Josh Reynolds will finally get a shot to be a productive third receiver and he'll be one injury away from real target opportunity. Reynolds hasn't been very productive in his limited reps but he has scored in four of his six games with at least five targets. He's now draftable as a deep sleeper in the double digit rounds.
At running back, we hope it's Darrell Henderson, who has extreme upside. But for now the safe bet is he'll split work with Malcolm Brown, who has more of the coaching staff's trust. If Henderson could change that he could be a top-40 pick by August, but for now he's a sixth or seventh round pick in most formats.
The piece of this equation we don't know yet is what happens with that second round pick the Rams got for Cooks. If it's Jonathan Taylor, he's a second round pick in Fantasy. Is it a receiver to take Reynolds' spot? Or an offensive lineman to make everyone better? Until we find out, here are my updated projections for the Rams as of April 9:
