As football fans, there’s reality and fantasy. In reality, we root for our teams to win at all costs — ignoring individual stats. In reality, the only stats that matter are wins and losses.

Then there’s fantasy.

Fantasy is strange for us fans. Most of us play fantasy football, and the end result is watching and rooting for players who — in reality — we don’t care much about. Be that as it may, their individual stats make or break our fantasy football teams, so we root for them with a passion that is somewhat different from that of which we root for our favorite teams with.

In reality, Patriots’ fans will be rooting for rookie wide receiver N’Keal Harry — New England’s first-round draft pick in 2019. Harry’s skill set and collegiate production have the Patriot-faithful extremely excited about his potential in Josh McDaniels’ offense.

In fantasy — especially dynasty leagues — most fantasy football owners will be jockeying for draft position to acquire Harry’s rights and services.

As of right now, FantasyPros.com has Harry rated as the No. 1 overall rookie in fantasy football heading into the 2019 season. Those ratings are an aggregate of 29 different fantasy writers and experts from dozens of premier outlets.

It should be noted that those ratings change frequently as experts modify their individual lists. That said, there’s not much — with the exception of injury — that could knock N’Keal Harry too far from that top spot.

Long story short: this is a low key, yet impressive honor for the new Patriot.

Essentially what the rating means is that — on average — N’Keal Harry should be the first rookie drafted in both rookie-only and traditional fantasy drafts, while also demanding the highest dollar-value of any rookie in auction drafts.

In terms of his overall rating with all NFL veterans, FantasyPros lists Harry as the 116th player overall in dynasty (keeper) leagues using a PPR (points per reception) format. He is rated as the No. 54 wide receiver overall in the same format.

Given that all 32 teams usually line up at least three receivers as “starters”, that’s not bad for a rookie — especially a New England rookie.

When I asked about what has experts so excited about N’Keal Harry’s fantasy potential in New England’s offense, renowned fantasy football writer Jody Smith of CBS Sports and FantasyPros had this to say:

“As far as landing spots, it couldn’t have gone any better for Harry, who not only gets to learn his craft with the league’s all-time greatest signal-caller, but also should step right in to a starting gig with a Patriots’ offense that lost Rob Gronkowski, Chris Hogan, and Cordarrelle Patterson. Those three combined to account for 155 targets last season. If Harry gets even half of those looks, he’ll be in an excellent position to make an instant impact, especially in the red zone.”

That should be music to the ears of Patriots’ fans who play fantasy football.

In recent years, most would argue that the only New England players worth owning in fantasy football were Tom Brady, Rob Gronkowski and Stephen Gostkowski. Now — especially if you play in a dynasty league — it looks like N’Keal Harry fills the void left by Rob Gronkowski’s retirement as a draftable Patriot in fantasy football.