The most potentially impactful personnel move this offseason may have been the Seattle Seahawks' acquisition of Percy Harvin.
Harvin's dangerous level of perimeter quickness potentially serves as a great change of pace to Marshawn Lynch's inside power rushing. He also could add much-needed intermediate-level route depth help to an offense that needed an upgrade on those types of throws (12.9 yards per attempt on medium-depth passes last year, tied for 16th).
From a fantasy perspective, this collection of skills was seen as a potential boon to quarterback Russell Wilson and explains why a quarterback who finished 11th in fantasy quarterback points last year is currently averaging a No. 8 overall quarterback draft ranking in ESPN live drafts.
Now that Harvin could be out for a while with a hip injury (he's getting a second opinion next week in New York), it has to be expected that Wilson's fantasy value will decline by enough that he should start falling back in those same draft rooms.
But a closer look at this situation shows that even if Harvin misses extended time, while damaging from a team perspective, it should not have that big of an impact on Wilson's 2013 fantasy football prospects.
It all starts by noting the most likely reason Harvin was acquired: to help bring more rush/pass balance to the Seahawks' offense.
Last year, Seattle ranked at the bottom of the league in pass attempts (405) and at the top in rush attempts (536) -- the largest imbalance between these two areas. To get an idea of just how out of balance they are, consider that a change of just 50-75 rushes to pass attempts would still leave the Seahawks near the top and bottom of the two aforementioned categories -- yet would represent a big step toward balance.
A full season with Harvin would likely see him rack up somewhere in the range of 175 combined targets and rush attempts, as he posted that many when he played 16 games for the Vikings in 2011.
Let's assume that 50 of those targets/rushes would be additional offensive plays for the Seahawks (i.e. above and beyond what they posted last year). That would mean 125 other plays would have to be cannibalized from elsewhere on the Seahawks' roster.
It's going to be difficult to take many targets away from the Seahawks' receiving corps. Last year, Sidney Rice had only 80 targets, and Golden Tate (68) and Zach Miller (53) don't have much room to spare, either. It's possible most of Doug Baldwin's 49 targets would go to Harvin, but all in all there really aren't many avenues here for Harvin to get his targets.
For the sake of argument, let's say he gets 60 targets from the receivers. That leaves 65 targets/rushes for Harvin to get from the rushing game.
Those aren't likely to come from Lynch, as Seattle already does a good job of keeping Lynch at a 275-300 carry count. It's possible Harvin could get some of Robert Turbin's 80 carries, but Turbin and Christine Michael are the power inside rushers who will be used when the Seahawks want to rest Lynch, so there isn't much to be drawn from that area.
Harvin could ostensibly pick up some of the 47 rushes compiled by the Seahawks' myriad small-change rushers last year, but there are always players like that on the stat sheet so it isn't likely they would all go away.
Because it really doesn't look like Harvin could get all of the rest of his workload from these players, let's assume he'll get slightly more than half and give him 35 of their carries.
This leaves 30 rushing plays, and there is only one more area they could come from: Wilson's rushes. Wilson ran the ball 94 times last year, which was the third-highest quarterback rushing attempt total in the NFL. Seattle almost certainly will not want Wilson, the smallest starting quarterback in the league, to take the potential punishment that 94 rush attempts can bring, and thus would be happy to find a way to dramatically reduce that number.
So what is the fantasy impact if Wilson loses 30 rush attempts but ends up picking up a net of 50 pass attempts with Harvin in the lineup? Let's do the math based on Wilson's productivity from last year.
Wilson ran for 489 yards and scored 4 touchdowns on those 94 rush attempts, good for 72 fantasy points. Divide that by 94 rushes and it equals just under eight-tenths of a points-per-rush attempt (0.77). Multiply that by 30 rushes and it turns into 23 points that Harvin would cost Wilson in rushing points.
Now let's look at the potential passing gain. Wilson averaged about 0.48 fantasy points per pass attempt last year. Multiply that by 50 passes and it equals 38 points that Harvin would have gained for Wilson.
Those are rough estimates, but put them together and Harvin would have added about 15 net points to Wilson's bottom line. That's about one point per week, which is just not enough to warrant dropping Wilson's stock, especially considering that Harvin's injury status might allow him to play for a considerable amount of time this year. Seattle will adjust its offense if Harvin is out and those adjustments will find a way to feature Wilson's skills one way or another, so keep his draft stock where it is.