By The Hudsonian, Joshua Hudson
If you head over to the Club Fantasy Instagram page, you can stay up to speed on all the transactions as they occur, or as fast as my graphic designer can make some bomb ass pictures for you to like. Below you’ll see how I view all of the relevant NFL offseason transactions. I say relevant because, for the purposes of fantasy football, defensive signings don’t impact us as much as the offensive ones. I’ll cover the defensive signings when I do my team-by-team previews later in the summer.
I’ll identify the player, who they signed with or were traded to, and how I think it impacts their fantasy value going into 2017, positive or negative. Next up: Dwayne Allen is traded to New England.
TE Dwayne Allen on the Patriots is similar to Vernon Davis on the Redskins: players you know about but shouldn’t worry about drafting. Design credit: Kathilia Colón (@katcolon37 on Instagram)
Transaction: TE Dwayne Allen traded to New England
Fantasy Outlook: I have a question for the entire NFL: why in God’s name do you trade with Bill Bellichick? He’s the smartest man in football. If he wants one of your players, you’re clearly doing something wrong. The Colts have been doing it wrong since they drafted Andrew Luck, but that’s another story for another day. Let’s talk about Dwayne Allen.
Just a season ago, the Colts chose a Dwayne Allen extension over a Coby Fleener extension. Fleener left for more money with the Saints and garnered mixed reviews upon the completion of his first season. But Allen did what he always does – he blocked well, caught a few passes, and found a way to not play all 16 games. That’s pretty much the book on Allen. He gets hurt and when he’s not hurt, he does what is asked of him.
That brings us to the Patriots. It seemed pretty clear before free agency started that they weren’t going to bring back FA Martellus Bennett. He wanted more money than the Pats were willing to spend. So Bellichick dipped into the trade market – the same place he plucked Bennett just a year ago – and dealt for the reasonably affordable Allen. Starting TE Rob Gronkowski tends to get hurt a lot too, so providing him a backup is a necessary move. Providing him a backup that also gets hurt a lot is a risky strategy. If they alternate injuries, this plan could work, though I doubt they can sync their injuries the way women sync their times of the month (don’t hate, it’s science!).
It’s a low risk move on the Patriots part, but Allen isn’t destined to be in your starting lineups, let alone on your bench, even if you own Gronk. There will be the inevitable other-world performance from Allen – remember that Week 13 game against the Jets where he scored 3 TDs? – that will spike his ownership. And just as fast as it will go up, it will fall back to the norm – he missed Week 14 if you needed a frame of reference.
The Patriots run a lot of 2 TE sets, but remember last year when we all talked about how Bennett and Gronk were going to go all Gronk/Hernandez 2011 on the fantasy world? Yeah, not so much. Add to that, the Patriots traded for Saints WR Brandin Cooks (write-up on him coming soon), and Allen will be lucky to see 400 receiving yards. He’s a top 25 TE, no doubt, but most leagues won’t roster 20 total TEs at a time. But just so you’re aware: now that he’s on the Patriots, he’ll play the Jets twice. Just saying.