Fantasy Football's Most Underrated Players at Each Position

Tight End: Antonio Gates

Antonio Gates has played in the NFL for a long, long time, so let's just focus on his last five years of production.

He's missed nine games over this time span -- four due to a suspension -- but has scored 35 touchdowns in 71 games. That's nearly half a touchdown per game or, across a 16-game season, you're looking at 8 scores. Over the last decade, the lowest-ranked tight end who has scored 8 times in a season ranked 11th at the position in PPR formats.

The worry with Gates, of course, is his health. But here's the beauty of it all: he doesn't have to play a full season to work out at his current cost, which is TE13 in PPR leagues.

Gates played 11 contests last year, 10 if you remove the fantasy irrelevant Week 17. That means he played two-thirds of the fantasy football season.

Despite this, he finished as a weekly top-12 (actually, it was top-10 in his case) tight end -- TE1 status -- six times. Only eight tight ends had more.

Entering 2016, he's on a Chargers team that no longer has Ladarius Green fighting for tight end targets, while Gates has a firm grasp as the team's go-to red zone target.

Essentially, a fully healthy Gates over 16 games means he'll more than likely end up as a top-seven or -eight tight end given his historical touchdown rates and body of work. That means he's leaving draft boards about three rounds later than he should be.