Roy Helu Sitting Out with Achilles Tendonitis…

Posted by Scott Pashley in SPIN News & Views No Comments »

NEWS

Roy Helu missed practice today with what is being called achilles tendonitis. Interesting considering that this development may provide Evan Royster with an opportunity to go further ahead of Helu in the race to earn the lead back job. We’ve written several times about Royster outperforming Helu in camp and the fact that the Redskins coaches have no faith in Helu’s ability to stay healthy and this seems to lend credence to the concerns about Helu.

VIEWS

In our NFC East Preview we wrote that Roy Helu was overvalued and Evan Royster was a sleeper and we believe that more than ever.

Helu is the 26th ranked RB on the NFL.com rankings. He would be even higher if Adam Rank didn’t have him unranked. Matt Smith somehow still has him at #23.

FANTASY FOOTBALL SPIN

Our advice has been to stay away from the Redskins backfield all along and that is still true, sort of. Helu where he is being taken is simply insane. Right now, however, you can get Evan Royster 180+ picks into the draft and that, my friends, is a pick and a risk worth taking. There is no way we can advocate taking any Redskins RB in the first 9 rounds. With Shanahan comes instability and lots of frustration.

We get the feeling that Royster may change positions with Helu in the draft by late August – meaning that he will be going off draft boards as a top 30 RB and in the first 7 rounds and we will almost surely be warning you away from him for the same reason we have told you to avoid Helu. You don’t want to deal with the headache of the third RB on your roster being a week to week question mark.