Mike Gesicki has long been a tantalizing asset in fantasy football. Now in his seventh season in the NFL, the former second-round pick had a couple nice seasons with the Dolphins back in 2020 and 2021, eclipsing 700 receiving yards in both campaigns. However, Gesicki now finds himself in Cincinnati, his third organization in the past three years. Is the breakout finally coming? Is it ever coming?
Let’s start with Gesicki’s Week 2 performance against the Chiefs. The surface stat line looks phenomenal. Gesicki finished the hard-fought loss with seven catches and 91 yards on nine targets — and he could have easily wound up with over 100 yards if not for a back-breaking drop late in the fourth quarter on a crossing route. All told, through two games, Gesicki enters Monday’s action ranking fourth among all TEs in targets (13), fifth in receptions (10) and fifth in yards (109).
More impressively, Gesicki is far and away the leader among qualified tight ends in PPR fantasy points generated per snap played (0.44). However, a stat like that is a double-edged sword.
Therein lies the major red flag with Gesicki. He’s not an every down tight end. Due to a complete inability to contribute in the blocking game, he’s not even close. While Gesicki was on the field more often in Week 2 than he was in Week 1, his snap rate jumped from 35.3% to just 46.9%. Heck, while Gesicki did run a route on 91.3% of the passing snaps he played versus Kansas City, that only actually amounted to 21 routes. That means Gesicki was targeted on 42.9% of his routes. To put that in perspective, that’s a higher target rate than Tyreek Hill had last season to lead the NFL.
Is Mike Gesicki worth picking up?
This is all a long-winded way of saying Mike Gesicki’s production in Week 2 just isn’t sustainable, especially with Tee Higgins set to return from his injury absence at some point in the near future.
Yet, if Higgins is once again ruled out in Week 3, Gesicki is a perfectly fine steaming option against a Commanders defense that has looked awful through a pair of contests. Washington is surrendering 7.8 opponent yards per passing attempt — the fourth-highest mark in football.
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All views expressed are my own. I am an employee of DraftKings and am ineligible to play in public DFS or DKSB contests.
