With all the hard work and research that goes into the fantasy season, every analyst usually feels good about their season projections/rankings. Obviously we can’t predict the future (although we would like to think we could), and sometimes things don’t work out the way we thought they would. Sometimes it’s injury, and sometimes it’s coaching or just bad performance. There’s no question that 2017 was the most difficult season to analyze. We saw many star players go down to injury and a lot uncertainty around who will step up in their place. Regardless of the reason, we aren’t afraid to share where we went wrong, and what players either fell short of, or greatly exceeded our expectations.

 

There’s obviously nothing we can do about a player getting injured, and therefore, we won’t get into too much detailing those players as our “misses”. That will be the case for David Johnson and Aaron Rodgers. Both players were our #1 ranked players at their respected positions. However, that is not the case with our # 1 ranked wide receiver heading into the season. Mike Evans.

 

Biggest Miss of 2017

Mike Evans– Having seen Evans end 2016 with over 1300 yards, 12 touchdowns on 96 receptions, it was an easy call for us to expect that he would take another step forward, and become the #1 ranked fantasy wide receiver for the 2017 season. After all, the Bucs brought in DeSean Jackson, and drafted OJ Howard, which we believed would take some attention and double teams away from Evans. His quarterback, Jameis Winston, was entering his 3rd season and showed signs of progression in his previous two seasons, getting us excited about the Winston to Evans connection for 2017.

Why didn’t we just stick with Antonio Brown or Julio Jones as the #1 wide receiver? The answer is simple actually. Rarely do things play out the way they’re expected to in fantasy football. Antonio Brown was dealing with Ben Roethlisberger uncertain regarding his future and whether or not he would even play this season or retire. How much motivation would there be for a QB that has doubts about playing the game anymore? As for Julio Jones, you’ll never hear me question the talent and ability of Jones. However, he has never been a TD guy (and that continued into this season), and he frequently leaves games due to nagging injuries. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a top wide receiver in the league and will continue to be a top pick in fantasy drafts. He just didn’t ( and will not) warrant being the top receiver off the board. With our biggest miss of the season taken care of, we’ll break the rest down by position.

Quarterbacks 

Matt Ryan- Very rarely does a quarterback have a career year and is able to repeat that performance the following season. We knew that, and yet we still made the mistake of ranking Matt Ryan as our #4 quarterback for 2017. He finished 2016 as the #2 fantasy quarterback, behind only Aaron Rodgers, and was able to take home the NFL MVP award as a result. We fell in love with the Falcon’s offense last season, and despite the loss of Kyle Shananhan, we believed the team would employ the same offense that Shanahan was able to successfully run. Not so much. Through 16 weeks, Ryan sits outside of QB1 range.

 

Derek Carr- Right behind Ryan on our rankings was Derek Carr. Carr finished last season as the 8th best fantasy quarterback and we were

photo: (Raiders.com)

expecting another jump forward with his talented receiving corps. Things haven’t played out that way, and Carr has looked very inexperienced at times this season. When you realize that Carr has given you the same fantasy production as Jacoby Brissett, it puts things into perspective.

 

Jameis Winston (#8)- We featured Mike Evans as our biggest miss of the season, so it should go without saying that the guy throwing him the ball also makes the list. Winston wasn’t great for fantasy purposes in 2016, but finished as a top 15 quarterback. We thought the growth and progression of his talents would bump him up into the top 10 for 2017, and we couldn’t have been more wrong. Winston will still flash his abilities at times, but we obviously gave him too much credit. In fairness to him though, he’s been dealing with a terrible offensive line and inept running game.

 

Marcus Mariota (#7) Perhaps we believe too much in progression? Considering where Mariota will finish the season (#18) as a fantasy quarterback, ranking him at #7 wasn’t that bad of a call, as he finished 2016 as the #9 ranked quarterback. Even so, he didn’t live up to our ranking, and therefore it goes down as a big miss on our part.

 

Jared Goff (#25) / Alex Smith (#27)– C’mon, you really aren’t going to blame us for these two are you? Jared Goff looked terrible in his limited action last season and Alex Smith finished as QB22. I don’t believe there was anyone in the industry that ranked Goff as a top 7 fantasy QB, or Smith as the #2 overall fantasy QB…Was there?

Running Backs

Todd Gurley – Gurley wasn’t a major miss for us, as we ranked him at #9 heading into the season, despite ending the 2016 season as the #18 fantasy running back. We’re mentioning him here only in part because it appears we were a year too early on him. Gurley was one of our biggest misses after last season, as we had ranked as our #1 fantasy running back for 2016. Better to be early than late?

 

Photo Credit: ESPN

Jay Ajayi– We were so high on Ajayi heading into the season that we ranked him out as the #3 fantasy running back. Ok, we can’t be at fault that part of his current production (RB31) is due to him being traded to an already crowded backfield during the season. However, his production while on the Dolphins was abysmal. Apparently, the Dolphins didn’t look back on the film from last season and use the scheme that saw Ajayi run for overe 200 yards in three games.

 

Alvin Kamara- Yes, we are being hard on ourselves here, but a miss is a miss and we we’re taking responsibility for our actions. We loved Kamara coming out of college, but didn’t love his landing spot. The Saints already had Mark Ingram and Adrian Peterson on the roster, so predicting his 2017 usage was tough. We ranked Kamara as our RB48 in ppr formats, so watching him produce 45 spots higher is a miss no matter how you look at it.

 

Chris Thompson- With Rob Kelley and rookie Samaje Perine also in Washington, we still ranked Thompson higher than most. However, at RB51 in PPR formats, we were still way off the production that he gave his fantasy owners. Thompson probably helped many people get to the playoffs, but hasn’t played since week 11. Despite only playing in 10 games, he is still the RB24 and fits into the RB2 category. Assuming he has a full recovery, he should be drafted with a mid-round pick in PPR leagues.

 

Jerick McKinnon- We were way off on our McKinnon ranking, having him as the #72 running back and behind both teammates, Dalvin Cook (11) and Latavius Murray (43). Arguably the best waiver wire adds of the season, McKinnon has performed well enough to make him as the RB16 in PPR formats. As a Unrestricted Free Agent in 2018, he’s looking for a nice pay day, and his 2018 fantasy outlook will be determined by his landing spot.

 

Devonta Freeman– We surely weren’t the only ones that over-ranked Freeman, but he’s worth mentioning since we had him 4th, and will finish outside the RB1 range for the season.

Wide Receivers 

We already mentioned Mike Evans as our biggest miss of the season, but you could also make the argument that Terrelle Pryor should be. He’s barely in the top 100 for the season and we are ashamed to say that we ranked him at #13 heading into the season. Having finished his 2016 campaign, and first full season as a wide receiver, with over 1,000 yards receiving, we assumed the move to Washington would actually benefit him. Let’s be realistic here…He showed a lot of promise as a receiver while catching passes from Robert Griffin, Josh McCown and Cody Kessler. The upgrade to Kirk Cousins surely would improve on his abilities, right? It just never clicked from day one. Will be interesting to see where he ends up for 2018.

 

Adam Thielen- We loved Thielen coming into the season, but we also wanted to be a bit conservative when our final rankings were completed. One of the toughest aspects of fantasy football is not getting overly excited and chasing the points, so we were comfortable ranking him as WR3. Did we know that he would be a fantasy contributor in 2017? Absolutely. Did we believe he could carry over his 2016 performance? Yes. However, we didn’t envision him ending the season as a top 10 fantasy wide receiver. We won’t make that mistake again. He’s a legit receiver in this league.

 

Robbie Anderson– The reason we ranked Anderson as WR4/5 really didn’t have anything to do with him. I had absolutely no confidence in whoever the Jets quarterback was going to be. Josh McCown surprised a lot of people, including me, and Anderson will enter the 2018 season as high-end WR2.

 

Devin Funchess-  Sorry if we didn’t know that the Panthers would be trading their #1 wide receiver in Kelvin Benjamin, and losing Greg Olsen for most of the season due to injury. Funchess showed some promise, finishing as the #21WR for the season, but you may be surprised by our 2018 rankings come this summer. I’m just not as big a believer as most.

 

Robert Woods- I’ve been a fan of woods going back to his Buffalo days, so it is nice to see him succeed with the Rams. Sammy Watkins may have more talent overall, but Woods is the #1 in Los Angeles, and I’m not surprised that he finished the year as a WR3, even though we ranked him outside our top 60 for the position

Tight Ends

(Photo by Tom Rothenberg/Zuma Press/Icon Sportswire)

Jordan Reed- I have never been a fan of Jordan Reed, and when I ranked him at #7 for the position, I still felt that was too good a ranking. Truth his, the entire tight end landscape was a mess ( and was the entire season) and he just ended up there. However, Reed was on my “avoid” list, and will be again for 2018. Do not draft this guy. Ever.

 

Evan Engram- I hated this pick in the NFL draft, and just didn’t think he fit in well with the Giants and what they had on offense. Well, the entire Giants offense fell apart, and Engram proved me wrong. Bad miss by me to have ranked him at #26, and watch him finish as the fourth best fantasy tight end.