10 Players You Should Be Avoiding in Fantasy Football Drafts

Greg Olsen, TE, Carolina Panthers

It's Rob Gronkowski, or it's a late-round tight end. That, at least, is how my research told me to approach the tight end position this year.

That alone makes Greg Olsen a questionable fifth-round selection. But so does his recent history.

Olsen was off the injury report for only six of his regular season games last year, but even still, he finished the 2017 season with fewer than 200 receiving yards. And 116 of those yards came in one game.

Olsen struggled. He finished the season with a yards per route run rate -- a metric courtesy of Pro Football Focus -- of 1.06, which was far worse than his 1.95 rate in 2016 and his 2.17 average in 2015.

That downward trend is concerning, especially when you consider that Olsen's also scored a grand total of one touchdown in his last 15 regular season games. Since that second touchdown happened -- which was in Week 9 of 2016 -- Olsen's averaged 1.37 yards per route run. During the first eight weeks of the 2016 season (prior to his touchdown drought) that number was 2.27.

Maybe this isn't that big of a deal and we're just working with small sample sizes and an unfortunate injury. That could be the case. The real problem may be that the Panthers have arguably more weapons at receiver now than they've had since Olsen became a member of the team.

Aside from last season -- remember, he was injured -- Olsen had seen 21% or more of Carolina's targets in four consecutive campaigns. Those seasons didn't feature Christian McCaffrey (22.55% target share last year), Devin Funchess (22.16%), and D.J. Moore (he's a rookie), though.

So we're looking at three main problems with Olsen. First, he plays tight end, and sacrificing an early-ish pick at the position brings forth a decent-sized opportunity cost. Second, he's now 33 years old and hasn't produced like a top fantasy starter in a year and a half. And third, he's got more competition for targets in his offense than he's probably ever seen.

That's enough for me to avoid Olsen in 2018.