As we are preparing for our 2023 fantasy drafts, we are going to dive into the recent history of average draft positions to pull away any ongoing trends or pitfalls.
Every year, we have nearly eight full months to prepare for the draft, but just how good are we at setting the market for the season?
Today we are looking at running backs. We have already covered the quarterback, running back, and wide receiver positions.
Tight End Fantasy Related Articles:
- Tight End Tiers
- Tight End Rankings
- Tight End Trends
- Red Zone Points vs Expectations: Tight End
- Stats That Matter: Tight Ends
Highlights:
- 61.9% of all top-12 scorers since 2010 have also been selected as top-12 options in fantasy drafts that season.
- The three highest seasons since 2010 for correlation between final scoring standings and the market have come in each of the past three years.
- Since 2010, tight ends selected in the opening five rounds have produced a TE1 scoring season at a 71.7% clip with a top-six campaign 52.8% of the time.
TE ADP vs. Points Scored since 2010:
Reaching our final position in the series, the tight end position holds the weakest correlation between ADP and points per game outside of quarterback for fantasy from a top-down stance.
When you combine that with the position also scoring the fewest points compared to every other position, you can see how frustrating and lopsided this position can be for gamers.
This is why you see unique elements and caveats incorporated into scoring for the position in some formats.
I would argue that the majority of those are half-baked measure that does not achieve the intended results, but that is for another time.
Just two tight ends in our sample have averaged over 20 PPR points per game in a season. One of those (Rob Gronkowski in 2011) was a value pick (TE9 in ADP that season), but the tight end position carries similar traits as the other positions we have covered.
If you have been following this series this week, we have hammered down that genuine season-long weekly winners just do not come from the bottom of drafts often. The tight end position is no different.
Even if we lower our arbitrary high-scoring bucket down to 15 or more points per game, 84.6% of the tight ends to achieve that mark were also selected as TE1 (top-12) that summer.
Even more wild is that 69.2% of those tight ends were selected as top-five picks that offseason with 61.2% chosen in the top three.
This has a lot to do with largely just Travis Kelce and Gronk being the only players to reliably string together multiple elite seasons while other top performers at the position have had more volatility.
When looking at the highest scorer at the position each season, all of them have been selected inside of the top 10 of the position, with 10-of-13 selected within the top three that season. Kelce and Gronk make up nine of those seasons.
61.9% of all top-12 scorers over this period have also been selected as top-12 options that season.
Just as we did with each position, here is the yearly breakdown.
Top-24 TE in ADP and Correlation to PPR Points per Game Since 2010:
| Year | R2 |
|---|---|
| 2022 | 0.4352 |
| 2021 | 0.5662 |
| 2020 | 0.4611 |
| 2019 | 0.2061 |
| 2018 | 0.2937 |
| 2017 | 0.2829 |
| 2016 | 0.3013 |
| 2015 | 0.0963 |
| 2014 | 0.0852 |
| 2013 | 0.4326 |
| 2012 | 0.3163 |
| 2011 | 0.2461 |
| 2010 | 0.2865 |
If you have been keeping score at home throughout this series, then you also notice another ongoing trend here in that we have been good at setting the market at tight end compared to a decade ago. That has been consistent throughout this week with a minor exception to wide receiver (although we have been strong at setting the top of that position for multiple seasons).
Fantasy gamers are collectively the sharpest they have been in recent seasons. With the amount of analysis, detailed data, and resources poured into things now, it is hard to say that is only a coincidence.
The three highest seasons in this sample for correlation to the market have come in each of the past three years.
I wrote about this when looking at the positional trends, but the tight end position was better than you may believe last season, and tight ends were used far more than in recent seasons due to the defensive changes across the league. The position was just ravaged by injuries to top players.
Eight tight ends averaged double-digit points per game in PPR formats last season.
Evan Engram was the only one of those players that was selected outside of the top 10 in ADP.
Of the top-12 scorers on a per-game basis last season, only Engram, David Njoku, and the erroneous Taysom Hill were not selected as TE1 options. But of that group, Travis Kelce, T.J. Hockenson, and Engram were the only tight ends that played a full season.
When looking at the front of tight end rooms, 41.6% of all top three tight ends in drafts have produced a top-three scoring season at the position, which holds a lot of weight on its own.
Those picks have had extremely solid floors in the context of the position, with that group finishing as a top-six scorer nearly 62.9% of the time and a seasonal top-12 tight end 80% of the time.
Looking at things from an overall draft selection context since the tight position has a much more diverse ADP than any of the other positions, tight ends selected in the opening five rounds have produced a TE1 scoring season at a 71.7% clip with a top-six campaign 52.8% of the time.
Tight end has largely been a pay-to-play position for elite production, which as mentioned, is no different than any other spot.
With that in mind, this is also where opportunity cost once again pops up since we are also drafting running backs and wide receivers early under the same principles.
The gift and curse of early tight ends that hit is that they provide strong position leverage, but running backs and wide receivers not only score more points than tight ends.
Check out the high-scoring points per game marks at the top here compared to the other positions. This also applies to Kelce. But backs and receivers also require much more roster investment to account for starting lineups, injuries, and busts.
This is when you will have to decide if pursuing that front-end tight over a potential elite running back or wide receiver is worth the draft cost or not.
A front-end tight end season is a weekly hammer, but you can also win a league with pedestrian tight end output compared to the impact of getting lackluster output from a running back or a wide receiver.
After that front line at tight end is when things start to get murky with a massive drop off.
Among tight ends selected in the single-digit rounds after the fifth round, those tight ends have produced a TE1 scoring season just 42.5% of the time with a 16.8% rate in the top-six and a 10% rate as a top-three scorer. Every single one of those players was selected as a top-12 player at the position.
The tight end position has its own dead zone similar to running backs in the middle rounds of drafts.
One of the ways you can immediately tread with caution in drafts is if the tight end comes attached to an elite wide receiver.
79 tight ends in our sample above were also attached to a wide receiver being selected in the opening two rounds. Just 44.3% produced a top-12 season, 22.7% a top-six season, and 10.1% a top-three season. Kelce is the only tight end in that sample to be the TE1 in overall scoring over that span while having a wide receiver on his team going in the first two rounds of drafts.
This season, Dallas Goedert has two wideouts on his team being selected in the opening two rounds.
T.J. Hockenson was productive playing alongside Justin Jefferson last season, but he does carry some fragility in sustaining his volume from last season.
Those two are the only really expensive tight ends attached to strong wideouts.
Rookies Dalton Kincaid, Sam LaPorta, and Michael Mayer are being selected as TE2 options, but all are attached to wideouts that require front-end draft capital.
Calvin Ridley is surging in ADP to potentially put Evan Engram in the same bucket.
If looking for a way to hack the “dead zone” area of drafts, look for tight ends that are the first passer catcher on their teams to be selected in fantasy drafts.
Tight ends that are also the first pass catcher selected from their teams have hit for a top-12 season 61.2% of the time with a hit rate of 48.9% as a top-six scorer.
Kelce and Mark Andrews cost you a pretty penny, but Darren Waller and Dalton Schultz also fit those criteria.
It is harder to land complete success with a late-round tight end in the context of the field of players not selected as top-12 options since it is a larger bucket of players with depressed costs.
Tight ends selected TE13-24 have hit for a TE1 season at just a 30.1% rate, but from a silver lining perspective, that is still roughly four per year and nearly 25% of the TE1 pool per season.
Takeaways:
- Following suit with the other positions, we have collectively gotten sharp at setting the market at tight end in recent seasons. The three highest correlated seasons between ADP and points per game have come in each of the past three seasons.
- Like other positions, you have to “pay to play” to have the best odds at elite season-long production.
- If you miss out on that group, you have been better off waiting to take lower-end TE1 and TE2 options instead of the mid-range TEs that follow the expensive tight ends.
- It is harder to hit full-season TE1 production from a TE2 or later, but on average 25% of the TE1 field will be selected as a TE2 or later per season.
- Tight ends attached to expensive lead wide receivers have paid off at an extremely low rate. Target tight ends that are the first pass catcher selected from their teams if possible, even though few exist per season that are not expensive.
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