The Houston Texans appeared primed to develop one of the top breakout candidates at wide receiver for fantasy football purposes this season – that is, until Jayden Higgins went down with a torn ACL. Now, the team is bringing in help via the trade market, having just acquired Kayshon Boutte from the New England Patriots.
Boutte has flirted with fantasy relevance in the past and earned some headlines at times last season. Now that he’s found his way to a new home, will he have any fantasy football value this season with the Texans, and should you take him as a flier in your drafts?
Kayshon Boutte fantasy outlook
On Monday afternoon, the Texans and Patriots agreed to a trade that sends the wideout to Houston in exchange for safety Jaylen Reed and a draft pick, per the Ringer’s Tom Pelissero. It’s a move that certainly works nicely for both sides – with the receiver room thin following the injury to Higgins, Boutte will provide some much-needed help while New England simultaneously frees up snaps for names like Kyle Williams and DeMario Douglas in its own position group.
So, what does this deal mean from a fantasy football perspective?
For Boutte, this is definitely a trade that moves him up slightly in the rankings this season. The Patriots traded for A.J. Brown and gave a four-year, $68 million contract to Romeo Doubs this offseason, adding a clear WR1 and capable WR2 who made the picture much murkier for Boutte and the other players at the position. It was unlikely that he would command significant volume moving forward in New England, so heading to a thinner position group will make it much easier to get on the field. In Houston, he’ll clearly slot in behind top wideout Nico Collins, but could reasonably become the second receiver on the depth chart ahead of names like second-year pro Jaylin Noel and Tank Dell, who’s coming off a severe knee injury.
There’s more leaning in Boutte’s favor than simply being a warm body at a position of need, though. He did flash genuine upside at times last season, posting five weeks of double-digit fantasy points. He finished with just 46 targets on the year, but he hauled in 33 of those for 551 yards and six touchdowns as an emerging deep threat in the Patriots’ offense. Boutte also led all NFL wide receivers with at least 30 targets in passer rating when targeted (133.2), yards per target (12.0), and EPA per target (0.74), also finishing 11th in receiving yards over expected (153).
He didn’t see significant volume with a target share of just 12.3%, but the metrics suggest that Boutte was near elite levels on a per-target basis as a deep threat. That means he may be a little boom-or-bust without an uptick in volume, but he should provide a boost to the outlook for the Texans’ offense as a whole. By taking the top off the field, Boutte’s presence should operate as something of a pressure valve for the short and intermediate game – that means tight end Dalton Schultz could continue to command lower-value looks, while Collins may see slightly more diversified deployment with less of a reliance on working into deep levels of the field from the outside.
Is Boutte necessarily going to become a start-worthy fantasy asset thanks to this trade? Probably not, but it’s not unrealistic to think he could become worth a spot on fantasy benches in Houston. He ran just 373 routes in 14 games last season and should see plenty of time on the field in two-wideout sets for the Texans. If he shakes loose as a deep threat, he could serve as a boom-or-bust bench player for bye weeks, with a little bit of room for more if he can command a higher target rate than in previous seasons.
