One thing I have taken care not to write about is my fantasy team, as I’m currently only 5-5, but I have been somewhat hot as of late, winning 4 out of the last 5 weeks. The “somewhat” is appropriate because I still rank dead last out of 12 teams in total points scored this season, my opponents during those 4 wins averaged only 83.5 points per week, and my current healthy running back options are Shonn Greene, Jonathan Stewart, and Alex Green…yeah, not much to write home about there…which just goes to show that hot streaks are usually equal parts your own doing and just plain luck in most situations. If there’s one thing that has kept me flummoxed all season though, I have 2 words: Antonio Gates.
Believe me, I know what it’s like to root for a franchise whose owner treats the roster like his own fantasy football team. I’ve seen my share of Deion Saunders, Bruce Smiths, and Donovan McNabbs roll through town, all past their primes by the time they got to Washington, all basically mediocre players with humongous price tags during their time in burgundy and gold. Well, actual fantasy football owners can be guilty of being too “fantasy” as well.
I thought I had blocked this from my memory, but I guess not.
Such was my luck with Gates, who I’ve coveted but never been able to get ever since my 1st fantasy football team in 2006. For many years, I think the fantasy universe regarded tight ends as only slightly more valuable than kickers and defenses. If you were lucky enough to get Gates or Jason Witten, then that was actually a great value. Even so, I drafted Witten in a league a few years ago, but so desperate was I to get either him or Gates that I probably reached for him a round or 2 too early, and it was the main reason that season went south in a hurry.
You could argue for guys like Tony Gonzalez or Dallas Clark too, but either way the dropoff from the top shelf fantasy tight ends to the 2nd tier seemed substantial enough that you could basically play position roulette every week if you wanted, dropping and adding tight ends based on matchups, who had been hot of late, or any other tea leave reading methods you could think of. Oddly enough though, guys like Gates, Witten, and Gonzalez paved the way for what can probably be considered the golden age of tight ends. With rule changes in recent years that favor the passing game, teams have targeted freak-of-nature, hybrid type tight ends in their scouting, and almost half the teams in the league have 1 of these NBA power forward lookalikes: Rob Gronkowski, Aaron Hernandez, Jimmy Graham, Vernon Davis, and on and on and on.
This year in our league Graham was picked as someone’s keeper, and Gronkowski was picked in the following round. In the 4th round, there were better players available and probably better tight ends as well (no other tight ends had been taken up to that point), but I had heard good things about Gates coming out of the preseason. He was motivated by all these younger tight ends coming into the league taking his shine. He was the healthiest he had been in years.
F*** my life.
I couldn’t help myself. I had wanted Gates for 6 years. There he was. I took him, but regretted it almost immediately. Reggie Bush, Darren Sproles, and Percy Harvin were selected just a few picks later. The run of tight ends didn’t start until a round or 2 after my Gates pick. This was a “Daniel Snyder” pick: a once great player who still had flashes, but was mostly just a decent to good player and a name on the back of a jersey at this point.
What’s been most frustrating is that Gates hasn’t been a complete bust this year. If he was or had gotten seriously injured, I could have dropped him and cut my losses. Gates started off the year with 4 games under 60 yards receiving and no touchdowns. He was a scratch minutes before kickoff in week 2, which I didn’t see in enough time to edit my lineup, causing me to take a bagel for him that particular week (so much for feeling healthy).
At that point, I had seen enough. Owen Daniels had been sitting on my bench as the Texans leader in almost every receiving category almost every week up until that point in the season. I benched Gates, and he responded with 81 yards and 2 scores against Denver. In week 7, Gates had a bye, but Daniels had a bye the following week leaving me stuck with Gates, who had only 14 yards against the Browns. At that point, I had thought Gates’ week 6 game was nothing short of an aberration. With Daniels in my week 9 and 10 lineups, Gates found the end zone both weeks. (Daniels was out for Houston’s game against the Bears, but in the infamous “Yahoo crash of 2012,” I was stuck with him.)
On the year, Daniels has Gates beat in receiving yards and touchdowns, and he has tallied about 20 more fantasy points in our league. But you would think that I would want to ride Gates moving forward (the hot hand)…however, San Diego’s offense is not the explosive system it was several years ago. Phillip Rivers seems to have regressed in the past season or 2. LaDainian Tomlinson, Vincent Jackson, and Sproles are long gone, which means more double teams and defensive attention for Gates. And there just seems to be an overall unsteadiness with the team that makes it hard to predict what you’re going to get week to week. (See the Chargers' and Gates’ clunker of a game referenced above against the lowly Browns.)
So it looks like another lost season at the tight end position for me, and I will probably play tight end roulette with Gates and Daniels for the rest of the season, which is never fun. It should be a 50-50 proposition, but it feels like I pick the player who has the worse game 80% of the time. At least I will be able to look back and say that I once had Antonio Gates on my fantasy team…sike.
I've had Antonio Gates on my team also and really can't count on him to bring in too many points. Watching other fantasyfootball owners with Gronkowski and Witten is tough since they can bring in 20 points each week. Next year, I don't know who I'm going to draft for TE since Gronkowski since he is injured.
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