I don't follow the pats closely, but I thought Edelman was suppose to fill that role. It is just a matter of getting healthy and getting some playing time with Brady. Edelman is stashed on my dynasty roster because he has the higher upside, Tate not so much.
Nah, Tate nailed down the 3rd WR role in camp. You can see in the Rotoworld old news
ESPN's Mike Reiss saying he won it in early August. He's also a better fit for outside WR than Edelman, although Edelman has good enough speed he could maybe fit that role eventually if they were desperate.Edelman got some hype earlier in the summer cause people assumed Welker would miss a few games to half the year, and that Edelman would have near term value. With Welker playing and looking well enough to fill his role, Edelman won't be useful anytime soon. He may be droppable in some shallow leagues if you want to gamble on Welker's knee staying stable.
Tate's value hinges on Moss a lot. No guarantee Moss leaves.
To dramatically simplify the equation, Edelman is more of a "Wes Welker type" while Tate is more of a "Randy Moss type". Which, of course, is a ridiculous simplification, because there's only one Randy Moss and there's only one Wes Welker and odds are neither young Pats receiver is even a reasonable facsimile thereof. But in terms of their role with the team, that's more or less how they fit.
Even ignoring semantics of how they're used, to me it just comes down to talent. A lot of people got really excited about Edelman because Welker got hurt last year and Edelman immediately stepped in and caught an absurd number of balls (8 catches for 98 yards, to be exact). What people missed, in my mind, is that while he played the "Welker role", he didn't do it with anywhere near Welker's level of efficiency. Personally, I just don't believe in Edelman's talent, long-term. I don't care what role he fills, ultimately if he's not that good, he's not going to stick around, and I've never seen anything from Edelman to convince me he's that good. I think Brandon Tate could definitely be good enough to stick around, and I'm encouraged by the fact that he secured the #3 job pretty easily. I think he could very easily be next year's Mike Wallace- a guy who performs well in a limited role and then finds himself thrust into the perfect opportunity.
As I said, it also doesn't hurt that most of my leagues have small but noticeable rewards for return prowess. In the most extreme of such leagues, he finished last week as WR4 behind only Ocho, Nicks, and Austin, thanks to that kickoff return TD.