Battleship Tight End 1

Battleship Tight End

By Derek Dennington

What is this? It must be Battleship, a crossword, sudoku, a new super tough form of wordle. No, the answer is none of the above. This chart shows the consistency of tight end weekly finishes over the course of the 2021 fantasy football season.

In fantasy football there is often an oh my gosh what do I do moment when it comes to tight ends. Many managers decide to spend a premium high pick in their fantasy drafts on tight ends. More managers try to chase the run on tight ends thinking they need to get the guy for their team.

Tight ends are a fickle bunch when it comes to fantasy football. It is a position that some managers put a lot of faith and stock in when it comes to drafting the position. These managers will part with a first, second or third round draft pick to get their guy hoping that this tight end returns value on their draft capital.

2021 Tight End Stats

In 2021, there were 56 different tight ends that had a weekly finish as a tight end one (top 12 at the position). There were 11 different tight ends that had the number one overall finish at the position for a week. Only five tight ends had the consistency of 50% of the games between week 1 and championship week in week 17. That means only five guys (not a sponsor) had 8 or more games where they finished inside the top 12 on a weekly basis.

Some of you are asking the question why top 12, that seems arbitrary. The reason behind top 12 finish is that in a 12 team league where you are starting one tight end, if the tight end you ran out there at the position finishes the week worse than 12 there were points left on the table and likely on your waiver wire.

The tight end I draft will give me a positional advantage. I can get behind this concept to a point if you are drafting the number one or number two finishing tight end every year. In 2021 drafts the highest drafted TE in .5ppr was Travis Kelce with average draft position (adp) of 12, the back of the first round draft pick. Travis Kelce finished as the TE2 on the season, second overall at the position. There were seven wide receivers drafted after Kelce that scored more fantasy points than him, five running backs that put up more points that were drafted after, and one tight end drafted later. There is an argument that could be made here that a roster with players that score more points could be better constructed, but there is still a positional advantage having drafted him with him scoring more than 3.5 points per game more than the tight end that finished number three overall at the position last year, Dalton Schultz. Dalton Schultz by the way had an adp of TE42 or 344 overall, which is a nice way of saying undrafted in fantasy leagues last year.

Let’s look at George Kittle who finished as the tight end four on the season and was drafted as the tight end three surely returned value on that pick (26th overall pick in 2021), had consistency (8 games out the 16 finished inside top 12 at the position), and saw volume (94 targets). George Kittle’s 162.5 total fantasy points in .5ppr scoring would have made him the 29th overall wide receiver in points and 24th overall running back at those positions. What is that you say but George Kittle would have finished higher if he didn’t miss some games due to injury? You are correct Kittle would have likely finished higher barring missing time for injury.

That brings us to the next point, with Kittle out you had to fall back and likely stream the position in week 5 through week 8, that’s four games roughly a third of your fantasy football regular season. In streaming those games you likely found gems off the waiver wire such as David Njoku (TE2 in week 5), Ricky Seals-Jones (TE6 in week 6), CJ Uzomah (TE1 in week 7), Brevin Jordan (TE3 in week 8) to get you through the Kittle injury. There is a high chance that these players in these weeks would have given you a positional advantage as well for the week. There is a world in which if you played the streaming game right you would have had more points out of the tight end position by the end of week 13 than Kelce had for the entire season.

Should I panic with my Fantasy Football Tight End?

There are a lot of managers right now that feel like they have to scramble because they don’t have a premium tight end. Unless you have the tight end that finishes TE1 or TE2 overall in total points for the season there isn’t a positional advantage there. No, there is no reason to panic just because you didn’t get a premium tight end in your fantasy football draft. The real reason you draft Mark Andrews, Travis Kelce, Kyle Pitts, Darren Waller, George Kittle is you want a set it forget tight end. It’s ok to play this way and it’s nice to have a position on your fantasy roster that is set on your lineup. However, for the managers that decided to punt the position and take a walk on the wild side you can stream the position and if you stream it right you can get more points than having spent a second round pick on a premium tight end. This road will not be an easy one nor is it for the faint of heart. Who knows you just might pick out the diamond in the rough, in each of the last three seasons the TE3 overall finish came from a guy that was largely undrafted in fantasy leagues that year with Darren Waller in 2019, Robert Tonyan in 2020, and Dalton Schultz in 2021.

Streaming TE, how do I do it?

How do I stream a tight end? That’s a great question and I’m glad you asked it. Streaming TEs is more of an art than it is a science but we can look at several things to help us decide. The first actionable item is streaming a tight end is to do research. Ok, that’s great advice Capt. Obvious but what do I research. Another astute question. What you what to research are current trends with TEs who is on a hot streak? Dalton Schultz didn’t get to TE 3 overall last year off of one game in fact he put together some stretches over the course of the season to get there. The other bit of research you are going to be looking for is what defenses have played the position poorly this season? A couple of years ago streaming TE was no more than play the starting TE against the Arizona Cardinals. This isn’t the case every year or every week, but there is a convergence of a hot TE playing a team that allows more points than the average to the TE every years and often times multiple times a year. The last bit of research to look at is what tendencies does the quarterback have? Does the quarterback have a tendency to push the ball down the field and force feed a receiver or does the quarterback tend to check the ball down? A tight end can be a great security blanket and release value for the quarterbacks with the second tendency. You have done your research, you feel good about your tight end streaming candidate, that’s great now let’s ride a streaming tight end strategy to a championship this Fantasy Football season.