Howard Smith-USA TODAY Sports
Before this season began, San Diego Chargers‘ wide receiver Eddie Royal had never scored more than one touchdown in a game since entering the NFL in 2008. Battling injuries and falling in and out of gameplans over the years, he never established himself as a real threat on offense. Odds are he wasn’t picked in your league’s Fantasy draft this year, and wasn’t even on anyone’s radar, nor should he have been; he’s never done anything warranting Fantasy attention before.
That was then.
Unless you just woke up from a two-week coma, you know that Royal not only has one multi-TD game under his belt now, but two. In the first two weeks of the season, we’ve seen him break the plane five times, matching his career-high for touchdowns in an entire season.
Before you start thinking I’m some lunatic who’s going to say that Royal is the next great receiver in the NFL, somehow inexplicably not discovered until now, let me make myself clear. I’m not suggesting he’s anything close to an elite receiver. He’s an average guy with an average skill-set and the law of averages is about to bring him crashing back to Earth. However, that doesn’t mean he should be cast aside and out of lineups either.
Fluky or not, numbers like that can’t be ignored. The pace is obviously unsustainable, but that doesn’t mean he’ll do nothing for the rest of the season. He has the trust of both head coach Mike McCoy and quarterback Philip Rivers, who’s targeted him 14 times so far. McCoy has also made it clear that he intends to keep Royal involved on offense going forward. Besides, it’s not like there’s a Calvin Johnson on this team who deserves to be getting the looks instead of him. Malcom Floyd is sidelined for roughly a month, Vincent Brown has been underwhelming and you yourself have spent almost as much time on an NFL field as Keenan Allen. When Floyd does return, Royal’s stock will take a big hit and it’s impossible to say right now what kind of production we’ll see from him from that point on. In the meantime, though, he deserves to be in lineups until he shows evidence to the contrary.
So, will Eddie Royal score two to three touchdowns a game? Of course not.
Is it possible he won’t even hit the end zone once this week or in the near future? Entirely.
Can he still help your Fantasy team right now? Yes, yes he can.
Dan Freeman is a Fantasy Football writer for www.RantSports.com. Follow him on Twitter @DanFreeman88.
