It’s that time of year once again! Football Absurdity will bring you a breakdown of every notable fantasy football-relevant player throughout June, July, and August. We continue with the wide receivers. Today, we take a look at the most polarizing player in fantasy football, Gabriel Davis. At this point, we need to know your loyalty. Where do you stand in the Great Gabriel Davis Wars?! Well, whether you agree with me or not, let’s find out what we can get from Gabriel Davis in 2022 fantasy football.
Gabriel Davis ADP and AAV:
Average Draft Position: WR28, 66 overall
Average Auction Value: $2.8
Gabriel Davis Statistics:
| Year | G | GS | Tgt | Rec | Yards | TD | Tgt/G | Rec/G | Rec% | Yds/Tgt | Yds/Rec |
| 2021 | 16 | 4 | 63 | 35 | 549 | 6 | 15.75 | 2.19 | 55.6% | 8.71 | 15.69 |
| 2020 | 16 | 11 | 62 | 35 | 599 | 7 | 5.64 | 2.19 | 56.5% | 9.66 | 17.11 |
| Year | Std Pts | HPPR Pts | PPR Pts | Pts/G | HPPR Pts/G | PPR Pts/G | Pts/Tgt | HPPR Pts/Tgt | PPR Pts/Tgt |
| 2021 | 90.9 | 108.4 | 125.9 | 5.7 | 6.8 | 7.9 | 1.44 | 1.72 | 2.00 |
| 2020 | 101.9 | 119.4 | 136.9 | 6.4 | 7.5 | 8.6 | 1.64 | 1.93 | 2.21 |
| Year | Air Yards | aDOT | YAC | YAC/Tgt | YAC/Rec | AYMS | Tgt MS |
| 2021 | 838 | 13.3 | 140 | 2.22 | 4.00 | 17% | 11% |
| 2020 | 945 | 15.2 | 131 | 2.11 | 3.74 | 20% | 11% |
2022 Gabriel Davis Fantasy Football Overview:
The last time we saw Gabriel Davis, he was catching eight-of-ten targets for 201 yards and four touchdowns in the AFC Divisional Round. He scorched the Kansas City secondary on 83% of snaps. While that was a nice topper to his season, Gabriel Davis was headed in the right direction prior to that game. He topped 55% of snaps in each of his last four games of the 2021 regular season, averaging 4 catches for 52 yards per game, and scoring three touchdowns in four games. That’s when he took over from Emmanuel Sanders on a regular basis, as prior to that point, he played over 45% of snaps just twice (though he had 105 yards in one of these games).
So, all we really have to work with here is projections and proration, what about his per-target statistics? Do they point to some sort of 2022 breakout? Well, he had the eighth-highest target distance, the tenth-highest contested catch rate and ranked in the top-20 in fantasy points per target last season (all according to PlayerProfiler.com). A lot of that has to do with very few targets (63) but ranking inside the top-20 in touchdowns (six).
If all of this feels like there isn’t a whole lot to go on here, and anyone definitively saying one way or the other that Gabriel Davis will be amazing or a bust is going out on a limb without a lot of substance behind it… your feeling is correct. People are taking partial seasons and going full Rorschach Test on it. But, instead of seeing my parents fighting in a Georgia O’Keefe painting (whatever that might mean), we see a Gabriel Davis 2022 season. Both sides are intensely secure in how they feel about the player, and neither side really has the ground to stand on to puff out their chest as much as they do about Gabe Davis.
2022 Gabriel Davis Fantasy Football Draft Strategy:
Gabriel Davis Salary Cap Value: $2
Draft Ranking: Find out for your league settings in a Beersheet!
I like Gabriel Davis, I do. I think that he’s a good football player and downfield threat. That having been said, his WR28 (pick 66 overall) ADP is pretty nutty, to me. Even nuttier is that he is currently WR20 and pick 41 on Underdog, going ahead of Diontae Johnson, who is WR21. This is complete lunacy but is also driving his overall ADP. Outside of Underdog, his ADP is ten picks later, going at 76.2 on average. In a twelve-team league, that’s the middle of round seven. That’s a completely palpable draft price for him. If you strip out FFPC and BB10s, which are both best ball or big money, big field leagues, his ADP gets even more palatable: 87.7, or the middle of round eight.
So, if you like Gabriel Davis as I do, I suppose it depends on where you draft whether or not you should end up with him. There’s not a chance in any universe that I take him at his pick 41 draft price, but on Yahoo! he is pick 86, so why not there, right? He has a ton of upside so it basically comes down to weighing his upside, downside, and draft price. On Underdog? No thanks. On Yahoo!? Sure.
In salary cap drafts, Gabe Davis is a screaming value, going for less than $3, on average. If you want me to talk some smack, there’s a very real reason for this: the self-professed sharps are scared of salary cap drafts. They take too much direct involvement and there isn’t clear and precise free ADP data to exploit (except ours, of course). So, they shy away from the Gabriel Davis Discourse in salary cap drafts. And, as we’ve established, they’re the ones breaking it in the first place. You don’t have to worry about this nonsense in your home draft, and you can take him at or near his Yahoo! ADP. And if someone reaches up to his composite ADP, then let them have him.
Best Case Scenario:
Fantasy Football Twitter is right, and Gabriel Davis is barely a top-fifteen wide receiver.
Worst Case Scenario:
Fantasy Football Twitter is right, and Gabriel Davis is barely a top-fifty wide receiver.
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[Statistics are sourced from pro-football-reference.com, airyards.com, and ftnfantasy.com]
[Image Source: Gabriel Davis on Twitter]
