Another NFL season has come and gone, and while the research and preparation never stops, it’s always healthy to take a break from the constant studying and just have some fun. That’s what we’re going to do here. Today, I will both pat myself on the back and call myself out.

Each year, all of us will hit and miss on many players. After all, we are required to have an opinion about literally every player, so it goes without saying that some will be correct and some will be not so correct.

From a success perspective, certain opinions are more important than others. I whiffed on Keelan Cole this year.

I thought he would be fantasy relevant. He wasn’t…not even close.

However, that kind of miss has little to no impact on your season. While it would’ve been nice to have who I still believe to be a talented player emerge as a useful fantasy asset, getting Cole wrong isn’t the type of error that will derail seasons. It is far more damaging to miss on an early round player than a late-round flier.

At the same time, I was a believer in Saquon Barkley this year, which was great. However, getting Barkley correct isn’t nearly as helpful as nailing a mid to late round guy that performed so well, he will be drafted significantly higher in 2019. In getting Barkley correct, all I did was simply not fail.

We’re not here to look at the Saquon Barkleys or the Keelan Coles of the fantasy world. I am going to go through the players I had the strongest opinions on and, in the most cases, the ones where I put my money where my mouth was, saw how correct I was, and discussed the relative impact of my opinion.

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Draft Theory

After 2017’s running back renaissance, it came as no surprise that wide receivers rebounded in big way in 2018. The single biggest advantage you can have in fantasy football remains the elite running back, which is exactly what I advised teams to try and get in drafts back in August. This year’s strategy was “Single RB,” which is essentially Zero RB with one stud RB instead of zero.

The most successful point of the strategy was less about what you did in rounds one and two and more about rounds three through six, where I believed all of the running backs in that range were mostly the same and largely not worth it. While obviously there were some useful players in that range, the majority of the third- to sixth-round RBs were equally unproductive. Guys like Alex Collins, Kenyan Drake, Derrick Henry (at least for the first 13 weeks), Dion Lewis, Rex Burkhead, and Royce Freeman failed to live up to their draft positions.

One of the keys to success in 2019 will be to avoid overreacting to what happened to you in 2018. It is way too early to decipher what the optimal approach will be, but making a blanket proclamation that you are never taking a running back early because you were burned by David Johnson or Leonard Fournette is not something you should actually stick by come draft season.

Now, let’s get to some actual players.

*Note that for all fantasy point discussions, I am using average PPR points per game from Weeks 1-16.

QB Hits

Deshaun Watson (HOU)
three-way is admittedly a soft “hit” because I think it’s fair to say the single most obvious thing in fantasy football, perhaps in the past decade, was the fact that Deshaun Watson was severely overvalued as the overall QB2 heading into 2018 drafts. Watson actually finished as the QB5 and proved once again he is a quality real life and fantasy QB, but he was nowhere near worth a pick in the top five rounds. To be fair, with the way scoring was this year, no QB was worth a high pick, except Patrick Mahomes, which no one could have known at the time.

2019 Outlook: Watson, along with just about every QB not named Mahomes, will experience a course correction in draft price next season. He will be a fine QB target as long as you don’t have to take him before the seventh or eighth round.

Philip Rivers (LAC)
Every year, Rivers is drafted as a mid-low QB1. Every year, he disappoints. 2018 was no different. Even I had to go back and double check to confirm that Rivers wasn’t a QB1 this year. It seemed like he played so well. Rivers threw multiple touchdowns in all but two games this season. How is he not a QB1?

That’s what Rivers does. He will rarely completely flop, but he doesn’t have week-winning upside. Rivers finished the season as QB13, exactly where I expected him to be.

2019 Outlook: I will once again be avoiding Rivers as his ADP never seems to correct itself and I anticipate the fantasy community will remember Rivers’ 2018 more fondly than it actually was.

QB Misses

Matt Ryan (ATL)
Technically, I missed on Jimmy Garoppolo, too, but we’re mostly ignoring random injuries here. I had Ryan well outside my top 12 QBs, but he finished as the QB4 and was the perfect late round QB target to plug into your lineup every week and not worry. Even in an overall bad year for the Falcons offense, Ryan delivered for fantasy owners every week.

2019 Outlook: The Falcons offense still has room to grow and Ryan still has a few good years left as one of the league’s better QBs. I would be fine with him as my QB next season, but, as with any QB, won’t overpay.

RB Hits

Joe Mixon (CIN)
For most of these, you all are just going to have to take my word for it (or scour my Twitter history), but Mixon, my affinity for his talents is well documented. By the time draft season had really gotten into full swing, Mixon was pushing towards the second round, but he was still going outside the top 12 RBs. I had Mixon as an RB1 and he finished the season as the RB9. It wasn’t just Mixon’s final numbers that have me declaring victory, it’s the way he got there.

Mixon played in 13 full games and posted 20+ fantasy points in six of them. He only failed to reach double digits three times all season, one of which was that Week 2 game against Baltimore where he hurt his knee and was in and out of the game. As you will see in the coming sections, the mid-round RBs were terrible, but Mixon was well worth the price of admission.

2019 Outlook: Giovani Bernard is no longer a thorn in Mixon’s side. This is Mixon’s backfield and Bernard is purely a handcuff (if he is even still with the team next season). Mixon closed the year with carry counts of 26, 27, and 17. He is a true workhorse and will be well worth a second round pick next season, especially if the Bengals improve their offensive line.

LeSean McCoy (BUF)
I wanted no part of McCoy and it had nothing to do with his talent. McCoy is by no means done and if the Bills’ offense improves or McCoy is on a new team next year, he has a shot to be the rare 30+-year-old RB I’m willing to target. In 2018, I expected the Bills to contend for the first overall pick.

For much of the season, that was looking pretty good. The anemic nature of the Bills’ offense hamstrung McCoy all season. He rushed for over 100 yards just once and rarely did we get to see Shady.

2019 Outlook: I still think McCoy has gas left in the tank, but I will only be interested if he is on a new team or if the Bills make some serious improvements to the offense.

Dalvin Cook (MIN)
I’m taking the W on Cook because of the logic I used in advocating avoiding him. The problem with Cook heading into 2018 was that he bombed out at the combine and had a 3.5-game sample size of NFL production while coming off a torn ACL. How exactly could fantasy owners justify spending a top-15 pick on him? Sure enough, Cook wasn’t 100% when he returned and promptly reinjured himself, likely compensating for his knee. Ultimately, I do think Cook has a bright future, but his 2018 should remain fresh in fantasy owners’ minds when they consider whether to draft a player coming off a serious injury without ample time to recover.

2019 Outlook: Cook’s strong finish in 2018 will make gamers forget about his start and propel him back into the early rounds. He won’t go in the first round, but a more reasonable mid-to-late second round pick seems fair. In all likelihood, I’ll be content to pass on him in favor of a safer wide receiver.

Jay Ajayi (PHI)
You can check out my full Ajayi thoughts here, but I’ll just spoil the final line of my blurb: “Ajayi is a laughably bad pick in the fourth round.” While Ajayi’s season was derailed due to injury, it’s not like that wasn’t a risk coming into the season. Ajayi’s early season “start” was all smoke and mirrors. Before getting hurt, he never played more than 51% of the snaps. The Eagles backfield was the three-way timeshare I expected it to be.

2019 Outlook: Ajayi is just not a good football player and I really don’t care where he ends up — he will not be on my board.

Alex Collins (BAL)
I’ll direct you once again to the same article on Ajayi for how I felt about Collins. His athletic measurables were in direct conflict with his 2017 efficiency. Something had to give. I was on the side of not buying into one anomalous year of efficiency. I was correct. Collins struggled all season until eventually losing his job to UDFA Gus Edwards.

2019 Outlook: I do not expect Collins back with the Ravens next year, nor do I expect him to ever start on purpose again. He will likely be nothing more than a handcuff in 2019.

Rashaad Penny (SEA)
Is there anything “real life” dumber than spending a first round pick on a running back? Seattle is actually one of the most efficient rushing offenses in the league despite their leading rusher being a seventh-round sophomore. When Pete Carroll proclaimed Chris Carson as the starter in the preseason, I wholeheartedly believed that he did not care about Rashaad Penny’s talent or draft stock. Many pundits advocated drafting Penny with similar logic used to support 2017 Joe Mixon — we know he’s not starting, but the takeover is inevitable. That was never the case with Carroll and Carson has held the job the entire season, even after he got hurt and allowed Penny to shine.

2019 Outlook: This is Carson’s backfield and that will remain the case next season. I don’t know why a team with holes on the offensive line spent a first-round pick on a running back it had no intention of using, but Penny’s time will not come without an injury.

RB Misses

David Johnson (ARI)
I want to say this is easily my biggest fail of the 2018 season. I was a staunch advocate for selecting Johnson first overall and would have done so given the opportunity. Todd Gurley outscored Johnson by over 10 points per game, and I was prepared to select DJ over Gurley. In retrospect, it worked out because I drafted from the two slot twice and took DJ over Le’Veon Bell (remember him?). All things considered, DJ wasn’t the type of pick that completely derailed your season.

He still finished as the RB11. He just wasn’t the dominant fantasy asset we saw in 2016 (through no fault of his own). Be on the lookout for a future article from me explaining the main lessons I learned from the 2018 season because DJ’s underperformance was the catalyst behind a very important change I intend to make in how I approach drafts.

2019 Outlook: Not a single person doubts that DJ can be an elite RB1. His ADP will fall into the mid-to-late second round and he will either be a screaming value a la Todd Gurley in 2017 or a high-floor, low-ceiling safety net. It will all depend on who the Cardinals hire to replace Steve Wilks, the quality of their offense, and Josh Rosen’s development.

Jordan Howard (CHI)
I absolutely nailed the rise of the Bears offense under Matt Nagy and Mitch Trubisky’s second year starting. Unfortunately, it didn’t involve Howard. With the Bears utilizing more shotgun and air raid concepts, it made little sense for Howard to see the field ahead of Tarik Cohen. That is exactly what happened. Howard easily could have had a 2015 Jeremy Hill-type season where he fell into the end zone enough times to be an RB1. That would’ve been lucky, though, because Howard was simply never that good.

His yards per carry have dropped each year since his rookie season, and despite his commitment to improving as a receiver, he was a non-factor in the passing game, catching just 19 balls all season. The Bears improvements on offense did not lead to a 10-12 touchdown season from Howard, which is what he would have needed to be worth a third-round pick.

2019 Outlook: This is Tarik Cohen’s backfield. Howard will fall into the RB abyss that is the mid to late single-digit rounds and will not be on my radar.

Royce Freeman (DEN)
Freeman did not cost a first round pick, but is yet another tally in the column of “stop spending high draft picks on running backs” for NFL teams. Phillip Lindsay went undrafted (which is a crime in and of itself), yet managed to impress so much in the preseason and practice that he usurped the starting role from both Devontae Booker and Freeman. I like Freeman as a runner, but he’s viewed and used more like Howard than, say, Steven Jackson (who is his best comparable player on PlayerProfiler.com). Lindsay turned out to be more dynamic and surprisingly durable, leaving Freeman to mostly watch from the sidelines.

2019 Outlook: Lindsay will enter next year as the lead back with Freeman as the backup. Freeman has the talent to produce if he gets the volume and will be a nice upside stash in the double-digit rounds in the event Lindsay gets hurt.

Corey Clement (PHI)
When you hate Jay Ajayi, you have to like someone running behind a super bowl winning offensive line. For me, that was Clement. For a few weeks, this looked pretty good as Ajayi was terrible and Clement looked to be ready to take over. It just never stuck. The reality is Clement just wasn’t all that talented of a player. This wasn’t a huge miss because Clement was just a later round stash that ended up having a couple good weeks, but it was a valuable lesson in not overvaluing backup RBs just because you know the starter is terrible.

2019 Outlook: Clement will not be drafted or fantasy relevant in 2019.

WR Hits

Tyreek Hill (KC)
I admit that I became completely insufferable when discussing Hill this offseason. To be fair, it was with good reason. I have never seen so many highly respected analysts be so wrong. And I don’t mean wrong in the sense that they were justified in their position and it didn’t work out. We know that happens.

The people proclaiming Hill would be a bust were objectively using bad process, which is indefensible. From the comparisons to Tavon Austin to the horrendous logic used to somehow suggest that Alex Smith’s deep ball completion percentage meant that Patrick Mahomes couldn’t possibly be an upgrade, I couldn’t help but wonder if there was some sort of conspiracy to hate on Hill.

The worst argument of all was that Hill was being drafted at his ceiling. This one infuriated me because it was objectively wrong. Hill finished as the WR6 or 7 in 2017 and was being drafted around the WR12-14 in 2018. How can anyone tell me, with a straight face, that Hill is being drafted at his ceiling when he literally just proved the year before that he wasn’t?

There has never been a player in NFL history like Hill, which is how I knew that conventional wisdom could not be applied to him. The sad part about all of this is I saw it coming at this exact point after the 2017 season. I had Hill ranked as my WR5 entering this season and that is exactly where he finished.

2019 Outlook: The hatred is finally over and Hill will get the respect he deserves as the player with the single-highest ceiling in all of fantasy football. He will go early to mid-second round, which is exactly where he belongs.

Adam Thielen (MIN)
I was very much in the camp of Thielen is better than Stefon Diggs. I believe that to be the case both in fantasy and in real life. Thielen never should’ve even been in a position to be a “hit” for this season after what he did last year. It’s very interesting to study what players fantasy analysts choose to respect after just one good year and which ones they choose to dismiss. Thielen’s athletic profile suggested that he broke out late because his team was too blind to see what they had.

He gave very little reason to doubt him. If anything, his 2017 performance should have been a huge green flag for 2018 given how few touchdowns he scored relative to his yardage total. I saw the disrespect for Thielen coming as well in the same link you can find in the Hill section.

2019 Outlook: Thielen finished the season a bit slow, which will be fresh in fantasy owners’ minds and depress his value a bit, but he will be where he belongs in the mid to late second round.

Robert Woods (LAR)
Perhaps the most perplexing ADP of 2018 was that of Woods, who was somehow going as late as the eighth or ninth round based on…what exactly? Woods operated as the Rams WR1 in 2017 and the addition of Brandin Cooks, who plays a complete different game than Woods, merely moved Woods to WR2. We knew the Rams had an elite offense so why was Woods being pushed all the way down to the late single-digit rounds while Cooper Kupp was a sixth-round pick?

Kupp played behind Woods last year. As it turned out, this offense was able to support three very fantasy viable WRs. The price on Kupp was ultimately correct, but the hate for Woods was unjustifiable and went too far. Woods was my WR22 and he finished as the WR14.

2019 Outlook: The Rams will be the Rams and Woods will be a very safe selection in the fourth or fifth round.

Demaryius Thomas (HOU)
Is this even a hit? I had Demaryius Thomas as my WR31 entering 2018 drafts, which was way too high. Thomas finished well outside the top 40 because the reality is he was never all that good of a football player. Thomas continued his targets, receptions, yards, and touchdowns decreasing every year since Peyton Manning (okay, his touchdowns actually remained at five from last season). Case Keenum was never going to bring DT back to the days when he was actually challenging Calvin Johnson as the best fantasy receiver.

2019 Outlook: Thomas sadly tore his Achilles very late in the season. While his career isn’t over, it may be de facto over as he is on the wrong side of 30, has been trending downward for years, and may not be healthy to start the season.

WR Misses

Larry Fitzgerald (ARI)
This goes hand in hand with the DJ miss — I just completely misevaluated what this Cardinals offense would look like in the post-Carson Palmer/Bruce Arians era. Given that the team managed eight wins last season with DJ on the shelf and some combination of Drew Stanton and Blaine Gabbert at quarterback, how could they be as bad as everyone thought they’d be in 2018? I was very, very wrong.

This Cardinals offense, while obviously not the worst in NFL history from a productivity standpoint, was still one of the worst in NFL history. The lack of creativity combined with the lack of talent completed muted the great Larry Fitzgerald, who I do not believe is done. I had Fitz has a high WR2. He finished as a high WR4. It is difficult to be more wrong than that, but this next guy managed to pull it off.

2019 Outlook: There are a lot of variables for the Cardinals in 2019. If the offense can get back on track, I still think Fitz can perform at a high level. We need to be mindful of who replaces Steve Wilks, whether they retain Byron Leftwich at OC, and Josh Rosen’s development.

Chris Hogan (NE)
Here is the man who has to be the biggest bust of 2018. When you remove guys like Le’Veon Bell, who simply didn’t play, and Marquise Goodwin, who was victimized by injuries to not only himself, but his entire offense, you hone in on healthy players that played a full season and could not produce. I had Hogan as a low WR2. He barely finished inside the top 100. Yes, you read that correctly.

A guy typically going in the fourth round who played 16 games on a Tom Brady offense was barely a top 100 fantasy wide receiver. This is as wrong as it gets. I wish there was a great lesson to be learned from this, but Hogan was productive last season before he got hurt and the team did not replace Brandin Cooks, which left Hogan as the de facto WR1 until Julian Edelman returned. Edelman or not, Hogan was invisible. Chalk this one up as a random occurrence that happens in football.

2019 Outlook: Hogan will go undrafted in even the deepest of leagues, which is exactly what should happen.

JuJu Smith-Schuster (PIT)
I like to consider myself a pretty objective person. I’ve sent you numerous links to some of my best preseason takes. It is only fair to send you one of my worst. I’ve always been a fan of Smith-Schuster as a player.

The Steelers’ ability to chain great wide receivers is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Hines Ward – Plaxico Burress –  Santonio Holmes – Mike Wallace – Antonio Brown – JuJu Smith-Schuster. An impressive group. I just didn’t get it. We knew the efficiency had to drop (and it did). So where were the targets coming from? The answer, it turns out, was that Ben Roethlisberger was going to lead the NFL in pass attempts, completions, and yardage.

Roethlisberger attempted 69 more throws than he did last season, which helped propel Smith-Schuster to 156 targets, while not taking any away from Antonio Brown, who saw 168 targets, five more than last season. I also didn’t anticipate Le’Veon Bell sitting out the entire season, which, as history has shown, results in a more pass-heavy approach for the Steelers. There is something to be learned here, though, and it’s that betting on talent, especially talent in a great offense, is a winning proposition.

2019 Outlook: Now that I know the opportunity is there along with the situation and talent, I am all in on him at what I expect will be a late second/early third-round price tag.

Cooper Kupp (LAR)
With the Rams being a Todd Gurley-centric offense and using Cooper Kupp the clear WR3 behind Brandin Cooks and Robert Woods, of course, I had Kupp ranked as my WR60. How could this offense support three top-24 wide receivers? Well, apparently it can, and it did. Although Kupp did end up getting hurt, derailing his impressive sophomore campaign, he would have been the WR16 had he continued producing at his pre-injury pace.

The Rams run a complex offense, but yet, it’s so simple. They have four key playmakers and those guys touch the ball nearly 100% of the time. The Rams almost exclusively ran 11 personnel when Kupp was healthy. His targets extrapolated for a full season would be 103, an increase from the 94 he saw last year, something I did not think was possible. Woods saw 127 targets and Cooks saw 108 targets.

Kupp was undoubtedly behind Cooks and Woods in the pecking order — it just didn’t matter. The WR3 in an elite offense can be better than the WR1 or WR2 in lesser offenses.

2019 Outlook: I actually do buy into the narrative that the Rams offense suffered without Kupp. He matters and as long as he can return healthy in 2019, I will be in on him at what is hopefully an injury discount.

TE Hits and Misses

I am choosing to combine this into one segment because of how dreadful the TE position was in 2018. I don’t want to give myself credit for saying to avoid Rob Gronkowski or Kyle Rudolph or David Njoku because if you didn’t have Travis Kelce, Zach Ertz, or George Kittle, your TE was pretty much terrible.

My biggest TE miss this season has to be Evan Engram, who I touted as the next elite TE, only to watch the Giants brilliant coaching staff completely misuse the athletic freak and fail to exploit his mismatch against literally anyone on the defense. I had Engram as my TE4 and he finished as the TE8. Is that really that bad? I don’t think so. In the weeks he missed, you could just stream the position and get similar production.

Meanwhile, I had Kyle Rudolph ranked outside my top 12 when many people had him as high as in the five-to-seven range. Rudolph somehow managed to finish as the TE12 and less than a point per game below the TE7, Gronk.

2019 Outlook: If you had Kelce, Ertz, or Kittle this year, good for you. Next year, I do not expect a full resurgence of the TE position, but all three of those guys should be great again, while we will get back Hunter Henry, O.J. Howard, and perhaps the Giants will allow Engram to thrive. The TE position can’t possibly be worse in 2019, but I still think around half of leagues will mostly stream the position.

The “I’m Not Really Sure” Guys

Derrick Henry (TEN)
I had Henry ranked as my RB26, which isn’t that low, but he was firmly on my “do not draft” list. I wanted no part of him. I was correct, wasn’t I? Henry scored 95.5 fantasy points over his first 12 games, good for an average of 8.0 PPG. A running back that terrible belongs on waiver wires.

Then, out of nowhere, Henry scored 94.2 fantasy points over his next three games, good for an average of 31.4 PPG. Are you kidding me? This guy was not just a league winner, but the single most valuable fantasy asset over the three most important weeks of the season. Am I supposed to take the L on this one? The headline says it all: I’m not really sure.

2019 Outlook: Either way, Henry’s late-season surge likely propelled him back into the third round of fantasy drafts, where I will once again be avoiding him, even at my own peril.

Amari Cooper (DAL)
While Henry’s uncertain status was completely random, Cooper’s place on this last is due to something unexpected: the rare midseason trade of a team’s WR1. I had Cooper ranked as my WR29, well below consensus. He finished just inside the top 24. Cooper averaged 9.5 PPG with Oakland, which doesn’t even do his poor performance justice. Cooper had two games over 20 fantasy points and four games below four fantasy points.

With Dallas, Cooper averaged 19.1 PPG with two-week winning performances and only three bust weeks over eight games. I think it’s fair to say that I was well on my way to being correct had Cooper remained with Oakland. The good news is the talent never left and he’s now back to being a reliable WR2 as the Cowboys WR1.

2019 Outlook: It all depends on cost. The next time Cooper finishes a season higher than his ADP will be the first. I like him more than I have since he was a rookie, but I am only interested if I think I am finally getting a positive return on my investment.

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Jason Katz is a featured writer at FantasyPros. For more from Jason, check out his archive or follow him @jasonkatz13.