All last offseason, we offered rankings, breakout and bust candidates, and everything else fantasy owners might need as general advice to fill out a fantasy roster. As part of that, I had a series of what I called “draft battles,” breaking down specific player-vs.-player conundrums that many fantasy owners were facing, taking an in-depth look at situations where mere rankings might not be enough to settle a dispute.
There were 14 of them that ran on PFF in the preseason. And as always, it’s important to evaluate the process to see if the assumptions and predictions made in the preseason were grounded in reality, so today, I’m looking back on my draft battles to see what I evaluated correctly, what I didn’t, and in some cases, what was ultimately impossible to figure out.
Randall Cobb vs. Golden Tate
This one should come up as an incomplete due to Cobb’s lingering injuries, though I’ll accept the loss. While Cobb was hurt throughout the year, I expected Tate to lose some of his work to both Anquan Boldin and Marvin Jones, especially in the red zone. As it turns out, Tate scored just four touchdowns on the season, which ranked 35th among wide receivers despite seeing the 13th-most targets. You also must remember that even if you drafted Tate, it’s very possible that you dropped him after he failed to record more than 41 yards in any of the first five games and didn’t score a single touchdown. If you drafted either of them at their ADP, you regretted it.
Grade: C+
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