How does Deebo Samuel’s new extension affect his fantasy stock?

In the Yahoo Fantasy Football Forecast, Matt Harmon and Andy Behrens break down San Francisco 49ers WR Deebo Samuel’s new 3-year extension and debate how it will affect his fantasy stock.

Video Transcript

MATT HARMON: Moving on, speaking of Mike McDaniel, his former guy in San Francisco gets his contract extension. Deebo Samuel, three years, $71.6 million, a lot of guaranteed money. Awesome, he gets what he wants. He actually has some-- I thought this was interesting. He has like incentives in his contract, that if he gets rushing work, he gets like a few-- what is it? Like 1 point something million dollars or whatever. There's certain bonus-- there's bonuses in there, basically, that if they use him as a running back, they've got to pay him a little extra, which is great for Deebo. I think that's awesome.

I think it leaves the door open that they could still use him a little bit in that role, which Andy, I know is not the best for-- like you would rather just have him be a pure receiver from a fantasy perspective, I think. But I really do think-- I know I talked about Brandon Aiyuk off the top, like, I'm inching Brandon Aiyuk up and up my rankings. And I'm wondering if that should cause me to bump Deebo from like wide receiver 8 to wide receiver 10 or something.

But I do think, like listen, Deebo's targets evaporated when Aiyuk actually got into the fold and Kittle was back healthy. That if we're going to still treat him as an elite fantasy asset, it might be good to have him have some of this rushing work. I don't know, what was your reaction to his contract extension.

ANDY BEHRENS: Yeah, no, I'm glad you highlighted that. That was, I thought, the most interesting thing about it. And it's not-- within the scope of the contract, it doesn't seem like a huge amount of money. But like a million bucks is, I imagine, no matter how wealthy you are, that's not a trivial amount of money.

MATT HARMON: I'd like a million bucks for a little extra, yeah. Right.

ANDY BEHRENS: Right, that's a little something. So I thought that was really encouraging. Because we, obviously, we want as many paths to fantasy relevance as possible. And he was really good as a rusher last year. I mean, he's just really good when he gets the ball in his hands, right? So that's exciting.

Also, it's like, it's crazy to me that it was just a couple of years ago, it was like two, three years ago, that almost every target Deebo Samuel saw was at the line of scrimmage. This guy-- like you'd look at the NextGen Stats on like his average depth of target, and you thought it couldn't possibly be right because it was like two yards, right. Like they never targeted him, even really in the short areas of the field, right. It was like-- these were like Rondale Moore targets.

MATT HARMON: Yeah.

ANDY BEHRENS: And all it took was just inch him a little bit downfield, just get-- bump that up to like 8, 9 yards per target, and he's a 1,400 yard receiver. So I don't know that he necessarily repeats that 1,400 yards, but if man, if we can get him 60 carries a year, that's pretty awesome. And I'm-- as you say, I'm glad he's getting paid for it.

MATT HARMON: Yeah, I've said many times that I wish I had just like taken all of the results, whether it was that average depth of target, his reception perception from 2020, and just like thrown it in the trash and like ignored it because he clearly wasn't healthy, and just looked at him as a rookie.

But yeah, so basically, the actual details of this rushing bonus. Deebo-- this from Adam Schefter, Deebo will receive $650,000 per year for each year he has 380 or more rushing yards. He'll also earn $150,000 if he scores 3 rushing touchdowns in any one year. He maxes out at $650,000 per year, and $1.95 million over the life of his new contract with all of these rushing bonuses if he hits them.

So I think that's good for Deebo. And I would still like to see him in this role because I think it saves-- I think it saves his fantasy ceiling and flaw a little bit. Because if you just look at the target numbers when Aiyuk got back, it was like, it was not good. So I think that does move the needle a little bit for me personally.