Greg Olsen - Fantasy Football Eulogy

March 6, 2021

Tight end Greg Olsen is retiring from the NFL after a prolific career. Rishi Patel remembers his fantasy football career with the Carolina Panthers and Chicago Bears.

Fantasy football managers and fans everywhere, we are here to remember the stellar career of tight end Greg Olsen, who retired from the NFL on January 24^th.

Olsen will no longer be valuable on the field, but he certainly will be in the booth, as he will join FOX Sports and their broadcasting team to provide insight into the game beginning in 2021.

Olsen played a fantastic 14 seasons in the league with the Chicago Bears, Carolina Panthers, and Seattle Seahawks after being drafted in the first round out of University of Miami (FL) by Chicago in 2007. Today, we will go over the highlights from his renowned career.

Remembering Greg Olsen

Olsen wasn't an overly prolific receiver in college, but in three seasons at The U, he amassed 1,215 yards and six touchdowns. He followed the legacy of players like Jeremy Shockey and Bubba Franks (let's forget about Kellen Winslow) and continued to pave the way for future pros like Jimmy Graham, David Njoku, and Chris Herndon at what became known as Tight End U.

Greg Olsen started his NFL career with the Bears, playing with Chicago from 2007-2010. It was during this time that he was getting acclimated to the NFL and was only beginning to show his potential as a TE.

We can look back at his breakout 2009 season with the Bears where he finished with 60 receptions for 612 yards and eight touchdowns on 108 targets. Nevertheless, this was only scratching the surface of the true potential for Olsen, whose prime years would come in Carolina with QB Cam Newton.

Fantasy managers and football fans, we can most fondly remember Greg Olsen for his stellar tenure with Carolina from 2011-2019. This especially includes the 2014-2016 seasons at the peak of the TE’s career where he had three straight 1,000-yard seasons.

In 2014, the TE recorded 84 receptions for 1,008 yards and six touchdowns on 122 targets. In 2015, arguably the best year of his career, Olsen finished with 77 receptions for 1,104 yards and seven touchdowns on 123 targets. Finally, in 2016, the back-end of his prime, the Miami product recorded 80 receptions for 1,073 yards and three touchdowns on 127 targets. This three-year stretch was the best version of Greg Olsen for fantasy owners as he finished fourth among tight ends in 2014, tied for fourth in 2015, and second in 2016.

Olsen finished tied for first in receiving yards on the Panthers in 2014 and first in receptions, targets, and yards on the 2015 Super Bowl team and in 2016.

It was after 2016 that Olsen never fully became a valuable fantasy option again, as he didn’t record more than 52 receptions, 597 yards, and 82 targets in any of his last four seasons due to frequent injuries to his foot, in particular.

Overall, Greg Olsen was one of the most durable and reliable players to step on the field, as he appeared in all 16 games in a staggering nine of 14 seasons. He’s also only played single-digit games in two seasons total. The TE averaged a stellar 11.7 yards per catch during his career.

Conclusion

Though he never got a coveted Super Bowl ring, he left his mark on and off the field. From playing with Jay Cutler on the Bears to being an integral cog for Cam Newton and the 2015 Panthers team that took the league by storm to closing out his career with Russell Wilson, Olsen’s career was filled with many highlights.

He notably recorded the third-most yards in Panthers history with 6,463 and his prime and best years came with Carolina in his late-20s and early-30s. We can only fondly remember all the times Greg Olsen supplied fantasy managers with fantastic performances back in the day.

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