Three wide receivers found new teams in the past few days. Here are the updates we've made to reflect them, with a little more detail than usual to give you a better idea of how we adapt to the news as it comes.
Lee Evans traded to Ravens. Lee Evans to No. 43 among wide receivers, behind James Jones and ahead of Plaxico Burress. The upgrade in quarterback and overall team quality warrants a bump in projections of targets, completions and touchdowns. Check out Christopher Harris' trade spin for more details.
Steve Johnson gets a token bump down one spot to WR 20, flopping with Kenny Britt, but no change to his projection. Anquan Boldin gets a bump to WR 24 ahead of Brandon Marshall and Austin Collie and merits a modest targets bump to 120. Torrey Smith, whose deep-threat role now goes to Evans, dives to WR91, aka Donnie Avery territory. We'll adjust his projection to 2.5 targets per game, which comes out to 25 catches.
Then, there's the Buffalo receivers, for what they're worth. Roscoe Parrish gets a bump to WR 70 and gets 100 targets and an extra TD as the one most worth owning after Johnson. David Nelson gets a bump up to WR 86, where Roscoe used to be. Donald Jones moves up to WR 124 and we bumped him to 40 targets and an extra TD. Brad Smith gets a bump to the same area code, WR 122, right below Josh Cribbs, since they're kind of similar players in kind of similarly bad situations. Your guess is as good as ours as far as whether he gets any more play in some sort of trick package. This is a hot mess. Sorry, Bills fans.
Steve Smith, formerly of the Giants, signs with Eagles. Not much impact here until we get clarity on Smith's injury. We've updated the profiles of Smith, Jason Avant, Mario Manningham, Hakeem Nicks, Jerrel Jernigan and Riley Cooper, but no rankings or projections changes at this time.
Jerricho Cotchery signs with the Steelers. Bad landing spot for him. We moved him to right ahead of Devin Aromashodu at WR 92. Docked him a few targets, down to 65. Some moves have more impact than others.
In Carolina, David Gettis, who tore his ACL, is essentially removed from the rankings. Brandon LaFell doesn't look to benefit too much with Legedu Naanee in the fold.
