Rashid Shaheed Enjoying Recent Opportunity Boost

2025 Fantasy Football Impact

Shaheed has tied or led Olave each of the past three weeks after trailing him in each of the first six contests. Check out their weekly target totals:

Shaheed hasn't seen any playing-time boost in recent weeks. And though he's been subject to trade rumors, it would be a stretch to assume the Saints have engineered more targets in recent games to boost the WR's market value.

So why the upturn in target volume?

Perhaps defenses adjusted to the heavy early-season reliance on Olave. Perhaps HC Kellen Moore realized he was under-using one of the (very) few exciting offensive talents on his roster. And perhaps the QB change is factoring in.

Shaheed drew eight targets to Olave's six after Tyler Shough entered the Week 8 loss to the Bucs. And Shaheed beat Olave 8-4 against the Rams. (Shaheed's other target came on Taysom Hill's lone attempt.)

That gives Shaheed a 30.2% share of Shough targets through two games, vs. just 18.9% for Olave (only slightly ahead of Juwan Johnson's 18.5%).

Of course, it's also possible all this is just noise. Shaheed's target share ran much closer to Olave's across their shared games last season, so the recent shift toward Shaheed might be luck-driven more than anything.

We'll see whether Shaheed's traded this week. And if he's not, we'll see if he continues to garner more looks from Shough.

The struggling Saints offense keeps the WR from being exciting, though. And Week 10 holds a Carolina defense that's actually been a negative scoring matchup for WRs.

In fact, New Orleans has the worst remaining WR strength of schedule, according to our adjusted fantasy points allowed.