Saints Stars Falling
First Drew Brees retires, and now the Saints star wide receiver Michael Thomas is expected to be rehabbing for the next 3-4 months according to the Tweet below by Ian Rappoport:
Thomas injured his ankle twice during the regular season last year and was expected to undergo surgery on it as early as January of 2021. Unfortunately for his team, it looks like now he won’t be looking 100% until we hit the ⅓ mark of the season. The Saints schedule has a bye Week 6 before they head into a Monday Night Football matchup against the division-rival Seahawks in Week 7. Given the expected timeline, it’s hard for me to imagine the Saints rushing him back there for the week 5 game against WFT at about the 3 to 3.5-month mark given the uncertainty of when the surgery actually occurred in June. Expecting a push for a Week 7 return makes the most sense when projecting this early on.
REDRAFT/BESTBALL IMPACT
There’s really no good way of looking at this for Redraft leagues. Hopefully, you haven’t already drafted or you’ve avoided Michael Thomas in your drafts to this point considering it’s late July. There’s so much uncertainty with the retirement of Drew Brees that it already made Thomas a risky, but high upside, pick. With the expectation of missing almost half of the fantasy regular season, his ADP should be steeply declining. FantasyPros has MT currently as the WR9 off the board in PPR leagues.
I expect him to fall into the WR40-50 range given the uncertainty of whether these players will be consistent for your fantasy teams (although don’t sleep on that Corey Davis value at WR53).
As for the rest of the receivers on the team, we’re truly just throwing darts at someone being relevant. Maybe TE Adam Trautman takes a step in his second year, maybe Marquez Callaway takes advantage of the open receiver spot, or maybe we’re finally going to get that Tre’Quan Smith breakout Twitter has been going on about for years. They’ll all receive boosts in their ADP because of the news, but with the change at QB coming, I’m hesitant to bank any serious draft capital into these unknown commodities. I’ll definitely take some double-digit round flyers though, especially in BestBall leagues where the rosters are normally much deeper.
This is bad news for whoever ends up starting at QB, whether that’s Jameis Winston or Taysom Hill.
The biggest takeaway from this news for me is that the Saints should be relying HEAVILY on their last remaining star, Alvin Kamara. Kamara is the otherworldly talent that has the ability to keep the Saints’ offense relevant for fantasy purposes. My tweet below dives into the impact of Brees or Thomas not being on the field.
Kamara will be relied upon heavily, and I believe he is an extremely safe first-round pick this year. The Kamara/Thomas stack could be an interesting option for teams considering how Kamara should see extra receiving work while Thomas is out.
DYNASTY IMPACT
The Dynasty league impact is less interesting for all of the players above except Thomas. Kamara’s dynasty value shouldn’t change, and most likely people will hold all of the lotto ticket receiving weapons above to see if any of them have a big week one that they can cash in on (if they’re smart and actually cash in).
Michael Thomas, on the other hand, is starting to worry me. He’s still in his prime at 28 years old, but the missing games are piling up now after his incredible 2019 season. His value takes a dip as he will end up falling from my 33rd overall player in 1QB leagues to 43rd overall. He’s right in the mix with JuJu Smith-Schuster, Courtland Sutton, Diontae Johnson, and Robert Woods, however, I still prefer Michael Thomas to those players right now. I expect his value to bump back up once he’s on the field, and that’s the time when more injury risk-averse dynasty players should be looking to sell as the missed games continue to increase with his age.
What do you think of the Michael Thomas injury? Hit me up @DFF_JoeMem on Twitter to let me know! And be sure to sign up for the DFF monthly subscription so you can have access to my Dynasty Rankings and be one step ahead of the competition!
