Another NFL season has come and gone, and while the research and preparation never stop, 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 DaeSean Hamilton 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 Hamilton 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 Travis Kelce this year, which was great. However, getting Kelce 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 Kelce correct, all I did was simply not fail.

We’re not here to look at the Travis Kelces or the DaeSean Hamiltons of the fantasy world. I am going to go through the players I had the strongest opinions on and, in 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

This year I had a split strategy depending on where you picked. In the top half, it was prioritizing the elite running back. In the back half, it was getting two of the “big 7” wide receivers. A tenet of both strategies was the reemergence of the third and fourth rounds with bountiful assets. Over the past few years, these rounds have largely been a wasteland with the caliber of player no better or worse than someone you could draft several rounds later. This year, I correctly identified the substantial amount of value to be had in the third and fourth rounds. That ended up paying huge dividends as both the “target elite running backs early” approach and the “big seven wide receivers” failed pretty spectacularly. I’ll expand on that when we get to actual players. Let’s do that now.

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

Quarterback Hits

Dak Prescott (DAL)
I was extremely vocal on my affinity for Kyler Murray, who was looking like a smash around Week 10. While he still finished as a QB1, he was ranked there by literally everyone with a clue, so I can’t call that a hit based on where his ADP ended up. As for Dak Prescott, this one seemed quite obvious. Entering 2019, we had seen three consecutive seasons of Prescott putting up QB1 numbers and multiple stretches of him being an elite QB1. With the Cowboys having a full offseason to integrate Amari Cooper as the centerpiece of their passing attack, Prescott leaned on Cooper en route to an overall QB4 finish. Most impressively, he did it without really rushing the ball. Prescott posted career lows in rushing attempts, yards, and touchdowns. It didn’t matter. Prescott displayed how talented of a passer he is. If he can just stop having these random dud games, he can truly become an every-week, matchup-proof option.

2020 Outlook: After the spectacular failure of “early round QB” in 2019, Prescott won’t sniff the first six rounds, along with most of the other quarterbacks, but he should still be one of the first six quarterbacks off the board.

Philip Rivers (LAC)
For the second year in a row, Philip Rivers is a hit for me and for the same exact reason. It has now been six years since Rivers finished as a QB1, and he has always been a low-end QB1. Why fantasy owners continue to draft him is something I will never understand. Rivers is now 38 years old. His ceiling, one that already didn’t really exist, is completely gone. You very easily could have streamed a quarterback significantly better than Rivers.

2020 Outlook: After finishing as the overall QB22 this season, Rivers will go universally undrafted next season.

Quarterback

Misses

Baker Mayfield (CLE)
I am certainly not the only one who missed on Baker Mayfield, but I’m here to take my lumps. The irony is that I was extremely confident the Browns would miss the playoffs, yet I was also confident in Mayfield becoming an elite fantasy quarterback. There are some misses that mandate a reevaluation of the process. I’m sure at least a couple will appear later on. With Mayfield, however, the process was correct. He was an elite prospect. He had a fantastic rookie season. The team added Odell Beckham, who, at the time, we all believed was still good at football (I no longer believe this to be true). If you told me in August that Mayfield would finish as low as the overall QB27, I probably would have laughed in your face, told you to quit fantasy, and publicly humiliated you on twitter. Fortunately, no one thought Mayfield would be so bad that he wouldn’t even be a QB2. Kyle Allen was a better fantasy quarterback than Mayfield, and he is one of the worst quarterbacks I have ever seen…ever. Things just never clicked in Cleveland, and I will chalk this up to a cosmic anomaly.

2020 Outlook: I have no idea if the Browns will figure things out. I don’t expect Beckham to remain in Cleveland. That’s probably a good thing. Mayfield genuinely played bad football this season, but he’s just too talented for me to believe he is not going to turn it around. His fantasy draft stock will fall into the abyss of a late-round dart throw, and he will be very much worth a dart.

Running Back Hits

This was such a down year for running backs that it’s hard to identify any big hits. Only Christian McCaffrey and Dalvin Cook really provided a significant edge at the position, with McCaffrey posting the biggest disparity between the overall RB1 and RB2 in the history of fantasy football (at least since 2000). McCaffrey averaged a whopping nine more fantasy points per game than Cook. I know what you’re doing right now. You’ve stopped reading, and you’re looking up fantasy scoring from the LaDainian Tomlinson and Priest Holmes years. Go ahead. It’s not even close. McCaffrey just posted the most dominant fantasy season at running back ever. This season, just two running backs averaged over 20.0 fantasy points per game (three if you count Aaron Jones’ 19.9). For context, in 2018, eight running backs averaged over 20.0 fantasy points per game. However, it wasn’t like wide receiver was much better. That’s what made 2019 such an interesting fantasy season. There was really no guaranteed edge outside of a few select guys. That resulted in a lot more randomness and volatility in fantasy team scoring from week to week because everyone had good, not great players capable of popping, and success came down to timing and matchups. I’ve digressed long enough. Here are some players that hit relative to the 2019 season.

Leonard Fournette (JAC)
After being labeled injury-prone and having a terrible 2018, many wrote off Leonard Fournette. I was full of rage at the end of 2018 after drafting him ahead of Alvin Kamara in my most important league and missing the playoffs by one game. I am quite confident I would have gotten in had I not made that blunder. I swore off Fournette forever. Fortunately, as time passed and my rage wore off, I was able to evaluate the 2019 season without the cloud of 2018 hanging over me. The process suggested Fournette was a screaming value. Here’s a guy that was one of the best prospects in recent history just a year removed from a 1,300-yard rookie season in just 13 games, and we’re writing him off after one down year due almost entirely to injury? Fournette was one of the very few running backs locked into elite volume as both a runner and a receiver. The only concerns with Fournette were his history of lower-body injuries and him being a Jaguar. However, those concerns were mitigated by the fact that this former first-round fantasy pick was going in the late second/early third round. All of a sudden, the risk was nowhere near as high. I targeted Fournette in every league and got him where I could. He finished as the overall RB9, but he was even better because, unlike a couple of guys ahead of him, Fournette not only played every game and never even appeared on the injury report.

2020 Outlook: Due to the overall down year from running backs and the fact that Fournette was very good rather than elite, he won’t find himself back in the first round. He still has that first-round upside, though, so if the Jaguars can improve their offensive line and offense in general, he is someone to target once again with what I anticipate will be a similar ADP.

David Montgomery (CHI)
I was mostly out on this year’s rookie running backs, but none more so than David Montgomery. It was just unfathomable to me that anyone thought he would be a useful fantasy asset. Heading into the season, the Bears had just signed Mike Davis, and they already had Tarik Cohen. We had every reason to think this might be a three-headed timeshare, which it was for the first week or two. Eventually, Montgomery and Cohen pushed Davis to the bench and, ultimately, another team. But that was Montgomery’s touch ceiling — a split with Cohen. His ceiling was always capped by the presence of Cohen. Additionally, there’s the fact that he was simply an awful running back prospect. His supporters loved to highlight his ability to cut and make defenders miss. It’s true. He’s excellent at that, as evidenced by his 27.4% juke rate. The problem is that he’s so incredibly slow that when he makes defenders miss, his 10th percentile burst score prevents him from capitalizing. He’s too slow to hit holes against NFL linebackers and has merely average straight-line speed and lateral agility. His best ability is his passing game acumen. Montgomery is a good receiver. But he’s on a team with Tarik Cohen. As good as Montgomery may be at catching the football, he is not even close to Cohen’s level. This came to fruition as Montgomery saw just 35 targets. Taking Montgomery in the fourth round was the epitome of bad process. If you fell into the rookie hype trap, don’t kick yourself for doing so, but understand why you were fooled and prevent it from happening again.

2020 Outlook: As I stated, I don’t think Montgomery is particularly good at football. Tarik Cohen is not going anywhere, and the Bears are not exactly an explosive offense. He will be worth a shot if his ADP falls low enough, but I don’t foresee it getting late enough to where I’d be willing to gamble.

Running Back Misses

Mark Ingram (BAL)
Entering the 2019 season, I was all in on taking a shot on Lamar Jackson. I certainly didn’t expect this, but his skill set was one worth gambling on because the risk was small and the reward was massive. I was not willing to invest a third or fourth-round pick on Jackson’s running back, Mark Ingram. This one is a process fail and something I really need to work on. Ingram is 30 years old, but he was never really used as a true workhorse, so he was a young 30. The issue is I never understood how Ingram produced. Based on his athletic profile and watching him play, he shouldn’t be good. He doesn’t do anything impressive. He runs forward and gets what’s blocked while being a capable pass catcher. The reason this is a process fail is that Ingram has been in the NFL since 2011. Even if he “shouldn’t be good,” we had eight seasons to suggest otherwise. I never thought Ingram was bad or anywhere near the point where he couldn’t produce in favorable conditions. He spent eight years proving he could. Therefore, if the conditions were favorable in Baltimore, it stood to reason Ingram would do well. History tells us that rushing quarterbacks benefit running games. There was every reason to believe that even if Jackson was a bad passer, his rushing ability would be enough to keep Ingram useful. And if Jackson ended up taking a step forward as a passer, then Ingram’s touchdown ceiling would skyrocket. I faded Ingram hard and passed on him in situations where I should not have. It was an error in my process, and it’s one I want to stop all of you fine readers from making as well. Learn from my mistake — I know I will.

2020 Outlook: Ending the 2019 season with a calf injury while entering his age 31 season will likely have me questioning him again. I’d always rather be out too soon than too late on a player. The Ravens have the capable Gus Edwards and the explosive Justice Hill, who you figure will be a more integral part of the offense next season. I certainly won’t be out on Ingram again, but I will be paying very close attention to preseason reports about how the Ravens plan to deploy their backfield before I jump fully in on Ingram.

David Johnson (ARI)
For a while, this was looking like a massive hit. David Johnson started the season as one of those rare few elite players you could rely on. Then he hurt his back and his ankle, and it all went to crap. Over the first six weeks, DJ was an RB1 five times. After Week 6, he was literally unusable. This goes down as a miss, but there’s not much to glean here. The process behind targeting DJ was sound, and it’s actually something fantasy gamers can apply in the future. Target elite running backs coming off seasons where they saw huge volume but couldn’t produce due to a horrible supporting cast. The poor productivity typically depresses value, as it did with Johnson (although the fantasy universe seemed to catch on by late August), and creates a buying opportunity. Joe Mixon is a prime example of a potential league-winning pick if the Bengals’ offensive situation improves next season.

2020 Outlook: I don’t think David Johnson will be a Cardinal next year. We hope for a DeMarco Murray-like career renaissance with a new team, but providing an outlook on DJ is useless without knowing where he will be playing and what his role will be. For what it’s worth, I do think DJ’s struggles in 2019 were due to injury. I do not think he’s done.

Wide Receiver Hits

Allen Robinson (CHI)
Poor Allen Robinson. He doesn’t get viewed like this mega elite wide receiver, but I’d be hard-pressed to keep him out of my real-life top 10. He’s that talented. Look no further than what he’s done with the caliber of quarterback not seen by an elite receiver since post-Kurt Warner/pre-Carson Palmer Larry Fitzgerald. Robinson has had to deal with Blake Bortles and Mitch Trubisky while sprinkling in a bit of Chase Daniel and a torn ACL. ARob has been dominant this season despite his circumstances, as he reached double-digit fantasy points in all but three games. He had a remarkably high floor. He just lacked a ceiling due to his offense and his quarterback. As a fifth or sixth-round pick, though, Robinson was a fantastic process play. We know that wide receivers tend to struggle a bit their first year back from a serious injury like a torn ACL or torn Achilles. Robinson was entering his second year following his ACL tear and was locked into elite volume (he posted the 10th highest target share this season). Since Week 4, Robinson finished lower than a WR2 just twice. He was the ideal fantasy WR2 that you could have drafted as your WR3.

2020 Outlook: I believe ARob will be fairly priced entering 2020, and I will happily take him in the right spot. If Trubisky can take a step forward, Robinson’s high floor will add a high ceiling. He still has WR1 upside.

Sammy Watkins (KC)
My case for laughing at Sammy Watkins supporters was derailed ever so slightly by the DeVante Parker breakout. Parker was legitimately bad at football, and now he is all of a sudden very good at football. Parker is also the extreme-ist of outliers. Every year, without fail, there are people targeting Sammy Watkins because he was this great collegiate producer and great prospect playing with the league’s best quarterback. I get it. He should be an every-week WR2. Here’s the thing. Watkins was drafted in 2014. We now have four seasons on record of Watkins being a very, very bad wide receiver. In 2019, he took another step lower. Watkins exploded in Week 1, and everyone thought they had a league winner and proceeded to start Watkins for at least another month or so on the heels of what feels like his only useful game since he was a Bill. Watkins finished higher than a WR4 just once the rest of the season. Even as the primary target with an injured Tyreek Hill, Watkins was flat out useless.

2020 Outlook: Watkins does not belong anywhere near fantasy rosters. In a typical 12 or 14 team league, Watkins should go undrafted. There is no scenario where I will take him anywhere because at wide receiver, talent matters, and Watkins doesn’t have any of it.

Wide Receiver Misses

The “Big Seven”
I’m just going to lump the entire “Big Seven” wide receivers together because I’ve never been more wrong about anything in fantasy football (okay, I probably have, but you get the point). To refresh your memory, the Big 7 wide receivers were DeAndre Hopkins, Davante Adams, Tyreek Hill, Odell Beckham, Julio Jones,  JuJu Smith-Schuster, and Michael Thomas. I listed them in that order because that’s the order I ranked them in. As you can see, it was a disaster. Part of the back half draft strategy I mentioned previously was to obtain an edge by securing two of these seven receivers. The problem with that strategy was it was literally impossible based on ADP.

• Hopkins was largely the first receiver off the board, and if you took him, the only other receiver you could realistically end up with was JuJu, and we all know how that worked out.
• Adams got hurt and experienced serious touchdown regression.
• Hill got hurt and also cost fantasy owners two separate games by departing early with an injury.
• Beckham was an unmitigated disaster all season and, by far, the worst of this group because he played every game, so you kept starting him because of his name.
• Julio finished as the overall WR3, but he was wildly inconsistent, exploding 4-5 times while being a middling WR2/3 in his other games.
• JuJu lost his quarterback and then sustained multiple injuries while dealing with two of the worst backup quarterbacks the league has ever seen.

As for Can’t Guard Mike, I owe you a huge apology. I’m sorry Mike. I will never doubt you again. The reason I had Thomas ranked definitively seventh amongst this group was that Thomas is simply incapable of producing without significant volume. He doesn’t even know the meaning of splash play. He’s outside the top 12 in yards per target and outside the top 60 in yards per reception. What I failed to weigh adequately was the certainty of the volume. Thomas proved me correct — if he doesn’t get to 10 targets, he’s pretty well useless. Thomas fell short of 10 targets just three times this season. Those three games accounted for three of his four lowest fantasy point totals. The more important part is that he reached 10 targets in the other 12 games and established the highest floor among receivers. Thomas is already one of the best route runners of all time. He truly is uncoverable. He’s always open. That makes quarterback play less important. We saw him excel with Teddy Bridgewater just the same as with Drew Brees. Thomas may lack those truly explosive weeks, but he’s a near-lock for 20 points. With the overall improvement of offenses and teams spreading the ball around more, the days of the lock button fantasy stud are dwindling. In 2019, here are the players you could put in your lineup every week and know you were getting production: Christian McCaffrey, Dalvin Cook, Travis Kelce, Lamar Jackson, and Michael Thomas. That’s it.

2020 Outlook: For the first time in a few years, we have a quarterback, running back, and wide receiver that will be the first ones selected at their respective positions in 100% of leagues. Thomas is far and away the WR1 and will be legitimately worth considering as high as second overall. I pledge never to doubt you again, Mike.

Almost all the Mid-Round Guys
Rather than single out one or two wide receivers, I’ll just quickly touch a few of the misses and why.

I am counting Tyler Lockett as a miss despite his multiple quality weeks because he just busted way too many times. You can chalk it up to injury if you want, but the reality is everything the Lockett detractors were concerned about was correct. Pete Carroll is one of the most incompetent in-game coaches we’ve ever seen. He has no interest in letting Russell Wilson throw, which created a problem for projecting favorable matchups as any game the Seahawks were supposed to win, they’d just run. Volume is king, and Lockett is never getting it. I will not fall into the trap in 2020.

Curtis Samuel was a miss due to no fault of his own. Cam Newton got hurt, and Kyle Allen watched Samuel torch corner after corner while completely incapable of hitting him deep. There’s an alternate universe where Samuel has 500 more receiving yards and five more touchdowns. I will be all over Samuel again next season.

Christian Kirk was a miss because of a combination of things. Kirk battled an ankle injury for much of the season, which was secondary to Kyler Murray just experiencing rookie issues. I saw enough from Murray to be a believer long term. His issues are not skill-based — they are mental and experience-based. As Murray gets more comfortable with the speed of NFL defenders and more experience working with an NFL offense, the Cardinals will push the ball downfield more, and the offense will just be more productive. I am tentatively in on Kirk in 2020.

TE Hits and Misses

I am once again lumping this into one segment partially because this article is exceptionally long, but mostly because the tight end position is just a mess.

I used good process to pinpoint Zach Ertz as someone to avoid. His massive 2018 was due entirely to the lack of receiving options on the Eagles resulting from various injuries. In 2019, the Eagles had a healthy Alshon Jeffery, a returning DeSean Jackson, and drafted Miles Sanders. This ended up being a miss because, once again, everything collapsed around Ertz to create a target funnel. However, the process was sound, and I stand by it.

I used good process to target Evan Engram in the mid-rounds, but that ended up failing due to multiple injuries. At this point, it is fair to label Engram as injury-prone and someone to just avoid going forward.

My biggest hit was undoubtedly Darren Waller. I bought into the converted wide receiver turning his life and career around and was rewarded with an overall TE6 finish from a guy I drafted in the double-digit rounds or for $1 in auction drafts. This is an example of excellent process because there was literally no risk.

Another hit was T.J. Hockenson, who, by late August, had crept into the top-12 tight ends for reasons I cannot fathom. Rookie tight ends rarely produce, and Hockenson struck me as an overrated prospect anyway. Hockenson was a complete non-factor this season.

My biggest miss was Mark Andrews. There was some good process in concern over his snap count and overall usage. That proved to be true as Andrews averaged just a 43% snap share. However, when Andrews was on the field, he was there to run routes and catch passes. He led the league in hog rate and was fifth amongst tight ends in targets. Routes run and targets are more important than snaps. Andrews was a bit of an outlier, but ultimately fading the Ravens’ passing game turned out to be good process. Fading Andrews, however, was not.

Closing Thoughts

As we shut the proverbial door on the 2019 fantasy season, there are always many lessons to be learned that we can apply going forward. It is extremely important to use what happened in 2019 to try and predict what will happen in 2020, but it is imperative to avoid overreacting to one season. It’s cliche, but it’s true: process over results. Sometimes bad process produces good results and vice versa. When you understand why an outcome came to be, you can use that information to predict future outcomes better. We have a long break until Week 1 of 2020. Most of you won’t even think about fantasy football until at least June or July. Now is the time to set yourself up for the 2020 pre-draft process. Everything that happened this season is fresh. Do whatever it is you need to do to ensure you don’t forget the lessons you learned in 2019.

Enjoy the NFL playoffs, and someone, find me a fantasy XFL league!

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