What can Fantasy Football owners expect from Taylor Gabriel this season?
Taylor Gabriel is an interesting case for fantasy football owners. He has a solid rookie season for the Cleveland Browns but fell out of rotation in year two and was moved to the Atlanta Falcons in his third year. He had an excellent season his first year in Atlanta and many people expected his second year there (last year) to be even better, but just like in Cleveland, Gabriel’s reps dropped and Atlanta chose to let him leave via free agency.
Now Gabriel is a member of the Chicago Bears and the Bears expect big things from him this season. Gabriel is going to be on the field more this year than at any point in his career. He’s going to be one of the top players on Chicago in terms of targets and he’s going to have an opportunity to have major success.
Gabriel is a great fit for a Matt Nagy offense. Nagy has talked about how he doesn’t play to use Gabriel as a gadget player. He’s going to line him up on the outside, allow him to use his speed to get open, but he’s also going to set him up underneath with screens and let Gabriel’s speed and shiftiness create yardage for the offense.
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The Bears are going to have Allen Robinson be the main target in the passing game, but Gabriel will be in competition with Trey Burton, Tarik Cohen and rookie Anthony Miller to emerge as the number two target on the team.
Gabriel will probably emerge as the team’s number two targeted option, but expect him, Cohen and Burton to be all very close together.
The Bears went from almost no options to so many options that after Robinson, it’s going to be very muddled each week, which is going to make it a challenge to know who to start from the Bears offense.
Next: 2018 Allen Robinson Fantasy Projections
Gabriel is going to be worth a roster spot on your fantasy squad, but he’s not going to be worth starting on a regular basis. If you are in a league with 8 or 10 teams, Gabriel will have to stay on the wire, but if you are in a 12, 14 or even 16 team league, he will be worth a roster spot and settle in as your WR5 or WR6 (depending on depth).
Taylor Gabriel stat projections: 45 catches, 630 yards, 14.0 avg, 4 TDs