After acquiring Diontae Johnson this offseason from the Pittsburgh Steelers, the Carolina Panthers have already traded away their top wide receiver after eight weeks of the season.

We’ve agreed in principle on a trade to acquire WR Diontae Johnson from the Carolina Panthers, pending the passing of a physical. pic.twitter.com/iMtdskuEBz

— Baltimore Ravens (@Ravens) October 29, 2024

At the end of the day, this is how things shook out for the Panthers after the two trades that Johnson was involved in:

Carolina received: one fifth-round pick, one seventh-round pick

Carolina gave up: cornerback Donte Jackson, two sixth-round picks

Overall, not a great haul. Especially after considering that Johnson will be a free agent this offseason and will likely return a compensatory pick in the 2026 draft if he signs with a new team.

The acquisition of Johnson might only result in less than a one-year rental for the Ravens, but looks terrific on paper regarding their chances of punching a ticket to the Super Bowl. For fantasy, Johnson’s arrival creates more of a logjam in the Ravens’ passing game. On the other side of the deal, the Panthers are now left with one of the youngest receiving corps in the league (outside of the injured Adam Thielen) and look to have barely gained any ground in their rebuild following a disastrous 2023.

In another NFL example of the rich getting richer while the poor become poorer, are there any fantasy winners in this trade outside of Lamar Jackson?

Baltimore Ravens

The initial reaction of most fantasy managers following the Ravens’ acquisition of Johnson was that all of the receiving weapons in Baltimore will now lose some value.

ZAY FLOWERS

MARK ANDREWS

ISAIAH LIKELY

RASHOD BATEMAN

Johnson has seen his role change during his time in the NFL, finding himself targeted mostly in the short-to-intermediate areas of the field in his first two seasons, then seeing his role expand to the deeper areas of the field starting in 2021. Johnson also saw a considerable amount of his targets over the middle of the field in his first three seasons — particularly within five yards of the line of scrimmage — but was used almost exclusively on the outside areas of the field during his final two years in Pittsburgh.

DIONTAE JOHNSON

While it is hard to predict exactly how Baltimore intends to use Johnson, his historical usage in Pittsburgh mostly overlaps with how Zay Flowers and Isaiah Likely are being targeted this season.

With only so many targets to go around, it is hard to imagine Johnson reaching anywhere close to the volume that he is used to. Still, seeing him get close to a 20% target share is not entirely out of the question. Nelson Agholor and Charlie Kolar are earning a combined 14% target share this season, and it’s safe to assume Johnson will take much of that work. It’s also safe to assume that the top-four options in the Ravens’ passing attack will have to surrender anywhere from 1% to 3% of their current target share, putting Johnson somewhere in the range of a 15% to 20% target share for the rest of the season.

While not ideal after considering the usage Johnson was getting in Carolina, nearly a 20% target share in a good offense is nothing to scoff at. Besides benefiting Jackson, the addition of Johnson will also help to spread the field horizontally and create even larger running lanes for Derrick Henry.

On paper, the addition of Johnson looks great for the Ravens in the quest to bring the Lomabardi Trophy back to Baltimore, but knocks down the entire receiving corps a peg or two.

Carolina Panthers

The Panthers seem well on their way to selecting one of the top quarterbacks in next year’s draft, so it makes sense that they would try to get whatever draft capital they could for a veteran who would likely not be sticking around for their rebuild. After the deal, the Panthers have one pick in each of the first four rounds of the 2025 draft, along with three fifth-round picks and two seventh-round picks.^[1]The Panthers own the Rams’ pick in the second round. We should not expect the Panthers to be done acquiring draft capital at this point either, as there are few players on the roster that the team should deem untouchable.

The rest of the 2024 season in Carolina will likely be used to evaluate their young roster in order to find out what needs should be the highest priority this offseason. After the departure of Johnson, we should expect that most of the time on offense will be spent trying to figure out if any of the Panthers’ young receivers should remain part of the team’s long-term plans.

The Jonathan Mingo experiment looks to be over after the 2023 second-round pick has failed to impress in his second season.

Xavier Legette has shown some flashes in his rookie season, but not enough to this point to silence the bust potential that he brought with him into the league. One thing Legette does hold over Mingo is that the rookie has been able to stay on the positive side of FPOE through the first eight games of his career.

If we’re looking for this year’s breakout-rookie UDFA, Jalen Coker may just be the name that stands above all others at the end of the season. After being a small-school favorite of Blair Andrews in this year’s rookie guide, Coker popped in multiple WR advanced metrics early in the season before putting together a breakout performance in Week 8.

Coker’s respective 45% and 53% college dominator ratings in 2022 and 2023, coupled with an impressive 93rd-percentile explosion score at the combine weren’t enough to help him get drafted, but have translated to him currently ranking as the WR26 in FPOE per game this season.

Rounding out the Panthers’ young receiving corps is fourth-round rookie tight end Ja’Tavion Sanders. As an elite college recruit who fell in the NFL draft due to poor athletic testing, Sanders was starting to see some legitimate volume prior to Bryce Young starting again in Week 8.

Sanders hasn’t been able to translate the opportunities into production, but the fact that the team is trying to get him involved is a positive.

In order to properly assess their receiving corps, Carolina needs to provide their young receivers with the most competent QB play they have available to them. It is likely that the team has already conceded that Young is not the team’s answer at QB, which hopefully leads to Andy Dalton reclaiming the starting job once he returns from injury.

With the draft capital the team used to acquire Legette, we should expect to see the Panthers force feed him volume. We saw the team do something similar with Mingo last season when they were attempting to assess his outlook heading into the offseason. Legette could turn into a solid fantasy asset, but the more interesting WR at this point is probably Coker.

As an UDFA, the team owes Coker nothing. Yet, he has been able to force his way onto the field in the first half of this rookie season, and has been productive in doing so. Coker is a viable add in deep season-long leagues, but is even more interesting for dynasty managers. Due to his absence of draft capital, Coker will have to continue to fight uphill against any WR the team drafts in the offseason. But with the types of profiles the Panthers tend to draft at the position, Coker may not find that battle to be as hard as it looks on paper.