After missing the entirety of last season to rehab from the torn ACL he suffered in the 2022 Super Bowl, Odell Beckham is finally back. The 30-year-old signed an $18 million deal (including $15 million guaranteed) with the Ravens on Sunday afternoon, joining Mark Andrews and Rashod Bateman in what needs to be a much-improved Baltimore receiving corps. It’s surprising that Beckham was able to get $15 million guaranteed in his 30s after missing all of last year, but it demonstrates the Ravens’ desire to drastically upgrade their WRs after putting a disastrous assortment of wideouts on the field in 2022. Let’s get into the fantasy impact of this signing.
ODELL BECKHAM
Old projection: N/A (projected as UFA)
New projection: 45.4 catches on 80.1 targets for 594.5 yards and 4.2 TDs
- The last time we saw Beckham, he got injured during a fantastic playoff run in which he averaged 11.1 yards per target and scored two touchdowns in four games. However, the regular season before that playoff stretch was merely decent. He averaged a respectable 5.7 targets per game on a run-heavy Browns team and then 6.4 targets in seven games with the Rams (excluding his first game with the team when he played just 27% of snaps), but he only notched 6.5 yards per target on the season. Coming off a lost season of ACL recovery and now on the wrong side of 30, it’s fair to question how much Beckham has left in the tank.
- With that being said, $15 million is no small number and Beckham likely wouldn’t have signed with the Ravens if he didn’t expect to have a big role. We’ll see what offseason reports look like — they’ll probably be glowing given Beckham’s status as a well-known player — but he should get every chance to command an every-snap, high-target-share role right out of the gate. Besides Rashod Bateman, the Ravens are sorely lacking at the WR position — and even Bateman has yet to prove himself as a high-level WR for an entire NFL season (though that’s admittedly been just poor injury luck). Beckham has allure, and we’ll see where his ADP settles. We have him in WR5 territory right now, but he could finish far higher if he regains the form he had a few years ago.
OTHER RAVENS PASS CATCHERS
- The Ravens seemed likely to add another WR given Devin Duvernay‘s previous status as WR2 and Nelson Agholor‘s previous status as WR3. As such, none of their other pass catchers fall too far in our rankings. Duvernay and Agholor take the biggest hits since Baltimore is likely to run a lot of 2-TE sets with Isaiah Likely, and there is now for sure not a full-time role available for either of them. This isn’t great news for Bateman since he’ll now have stronger competition for targets, but that’s not terribly surprising given the Ravens’ clear need for a WR before the Beckham signing.
