Saints Trade Rashid Shaheed to Seahawks: Fantasy Football Impact

The New Orleans Saints have traded wide receiver Rashid Shaheed to the Seattle Seahawks in exchange for fourth- and fifth-round NFL Draft picks. Let’s dive into the fantasy football implications of the NFL trade.

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Fantasy Football Impact: Saints Trade Rashid Shaheed to Seahawks

Rashid Shaheed heads to Seattle to reunite with Klint Kubiak and add a talented pass catcher to a red-hot Seattle passing attack. Seattle’s passing attack ranks first in yards per attempt, sixth in passing yards per game, and second in CPOE, per Fantasy Points Data. Sam Darnold is playing arguably the best football of his career.

Let’s get this out of the way from the jump. The addition of Shaheed crushes the hope and hype of Tory Horton regardless of Cooper Kupp‘s health. Kupp is also now droppable in all formats. Seattle has utilized three wide receiver sets at the second-lowest rate in the NFL (36.2%). Jaxon Smith-Njigba isn’t coming off the field, so Kupp and Horton will likely fall behind Shaheed in the route share pecking order with this move.

Rashid Shaheed is an interesting WR3/flex moving forward. With New Orleans, he was the WR38 in fantasy points per game, commanding a 21% target share with 55.4 receiving yards per game, 1.75 yards per route run, and a 23.4% first-read share. In nine games, he had seven red zone targets and 12 deep targets. Among 110 qualifying wideouts, he ranks 40th in separation score. Seattle’s passing volume could increase, but I wouldn’t bank on it, which will hurt Shaheed’s weekly consistency. Seattle has the fifth-lowest neutral passing rate in the NFL. Shaheed will have plenty of spike weeks during the rest of the season, but he’s not a set-and-forget weekly flex. Seattle ranks 17th in the rest of the season strength of schedule for fantasy wide receivers.