Chicago Bears: 2018 Fantasy Projections: TE Adam Shaheen

What can Fantasy Football owners expect from TE Adam Shaheen in 2018?

Adam Shaheen had an odd rookie year for the Chicago Bears. Every time Shaheen played well and looked like he deserved more playing time, he seemed to get less playing time the following week. Those types of odd things always seemed to occur with John Fox. But have no fear, Foxy is gone and in comes Matt Nagy.

Shaheen is set to be the team’s TE1 this season (with Trey Burton playing the move TE) and he will see a significant increase in playing time, but that doesn’t mean Shaheen should automatically slide onto your fantasy radar because there are factors playing against him.

First of all is targets. That seems odd to say based off last season’s receivers but with the additions of Allen Robinson, Taylor Gabriel and Trey Burton, as well as the presence of Tarik Cohen and the draft choice of Anthony Miller, Shaheen will probably be behind all those individuals putting him sixth on the team in targets. That is a problem.

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Second, the presence of Dion Sims. Sims comes at a hefty price tag of $6 million and the Bears chose to keep him when they could have let him go for almost no salary cap penalty. Sims is the best blocking tight end on the roster, but you certainly don’t keep a blocking TE for that price. The presence of Sims means one of two things: either they plan to utilize Sims in the offense and he will take snaps away from Shaheen or they wanted to keep Sims because they are afraid Shaheen won’t be ready for a significant increase in his role. Either one of those reasons is enough to proceed with caution.

Here is the big upside with Shaheen- he has great red zone value. He’s huge and already showed some of that red zone potential last year and Mitch Trubusky also showed that he will look his way in those situations. When you have a red zone TE target, he’s always worth a potential match-up play in hopes of vulturing a TD when your starter is hurt or on bye and you don’t have a backup on your roster.

Shaheen is most likely still a year away from having a fantasy impact and in traditional leagues he should be left on the waiver wire. In larger 16 team leagues, you could argue Shaheen could be worth a low-end TE2 spot, and if you have a deep league where you fall into the TE3 category, that’s when you should start looking in Shaheen’s direction.

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The two reasons to draft Shaheen- first is dynasty/deep keeper formats where he can develop on your roster and two is if you draft Travis Kelce (can’t take this luxury with the oft-injured Gronk) and want to draft last round flier on your TE2 that has upside and if he pans out you have something of trade value and if he doesn’t, you cut him, no harm no foul.

Adam Shaheen stat projection: 32 catches, 358 yards, 11.1 avg, 5 TDs

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