Fantasy Football Outlook for St. Louis Rams WRs After Danny Amendola's Injury

The St. Louis Rams don’t have a transcendent talent at wide receiver, but they are equipped with guys who can shoulder the receiving load for Danny Amendola while he heals up from his separated SC joint.

St. Louis may incorporate its running backs, Steven Jackson and Daryl Richardson, into the mix as targets out of the backfield, but the team’s other wide receivers should see additional passes thrown in their directions as well.

The first place that scrambling fantasy owners in need of a wide receiver in the PPR sector should look is an unlikely one. That’s because the suggested replacement for Amendola’s role in the offense was a healthy scratch in Week 5.

Steve Smith—also known as “the other Steve Smith” in national circles—spent 2009 catching passes out of the slot position for the New York Giants’ Eli Manning.

That was the last season in which he played 16 games. He caught 107 balls for 1,220 yards and seven touchdowns.

Knee injuries have derailed his repeat bids in recent seasons, but if he’s 100 percent now, then he can provide a good volume of receptions out of Amendola’s vacated position on the field.

The second candidate to take Amendola’s reps is sophomore receiver Austin Pettis. Pettis only caught one ball against the Arizona Cardinals in Week 5 (when Amendola got hurt), but that was because Sam Bradford had just seven completions.

That’s why you might not want to depend on a Rams receiver in fantasy in the first place.

Pettis caught multiple passes in six of the last seven games that he played during his rookie year. Amendola was absent for all of those after injuring himself in the Rams’ first game of the 2011 season.

Brandon Gibson, the Rams’ other starting wideout, should assume much the same role that he had before Amendola went down. If you weren’t starting him or interested in owning him before, there probably won’t be much reason to do so now.

The highest amount of intrigue in standard leagues may belong to the fantasy prospects of rookies Brian Quick and Chris Givens going forward.

Quick, the 33rd pick in the 2012 NFL draft, was certainly selected with intentions of using him as a starter in the near future. He has been unable to crack the lineup with any regularity thus far, however.

He’s worth stashing away in very deep leagues, keeper leagues or leagues with deep benches in case he breaks out later in the season, but Amendola’s injury shouldn’t catapult him into the spotlight just yet.

Givens offers the most upside to fantasy owners in standard leagues. He (along with Gibson) is the guy that Bradford looks to when he goes deep with the football.

The problem is that he’s a boom-or-bust type at this stage of his career, but he is beginning to get enough snaps to be fantasy-relevant on a regular basis.

Givens has hauled in passes of 52 and 51 yards in the last two weeks—the latter was a touchdown—but those were his only receptions in that time frame.

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