We have built up a bit of a baseline for this season with our player tiers, positional rankings, and all of the 2023 off-season content you can find in one place on the site in the full Draft Kit.
With that content in place to aid your knowledge in how to play the game of fantasy football, I also know some of you are here because you want to know how I am playing drafts out myself this summer.
I want to dive into how I am personally approaching drafts this year at the tight end position.
How to Draft:
I will also update this throughout the remaining time in the offseason if we get any significant news that impacts draft approaches.
While even those of you with the draft kit may not have read every word written this offseason, at this stage of the offseason I am operating under the assumption you have at minimum checked out the player rankings page and the individual player writeups in the positional tiers posts.
With that in mind, these pieces will not be as player specific or fully into the weeds on the pros or cons of each player. Instead, they will be more focused on the approach to drafting each position.
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
- What We Can Learn From ADP: Tight End
Top-Down Thoughts
While there is the leverage you can gain at the position by selecting an early-round tight end, it also comes from a lower scorer than a front-end running back or wideout and is paired with a significant opportunity cost by not getting in on those positions since the baseline at tight end is so much lower than those positions that require massive roster allocation.
This is especially true this season with wide receivers being drafted higher than ever while we appear to have one of the shallower pools of front-end running backs in recent years.
When we are talking about using our most premium draft capital on the position, we are still largely talking about Travis Kelce.
Kelce has now outright led all tight ends in scoring in six of the past seven seasons. The one time that he did not (2021) he was second.
While Kelce is a draft pick that you won’t go broke with, there are some pulling factors here that suggest he won’t completely return the maximum value. At least not to the degree of 2022.
I wrote about this in the top-down look at tight ends and how the position is being used, but let’s revisit it here.
Last year, the overall TE2 (T.J. Hockenson) only produced 68.1% of Kelce’s PPR output.
That was the lowest rate of production by the TE2 overall compared to the top scorer over the past 30 years.
On average, the TE2 overall has produced 85.7% of the TE1 points over that span.
Even in previous seasons when Kelce has led the position in scoring, the rest of the position has not been as bad as they were in 2022. In Kelce’s other seasons pacing the position, the TE2 in those seasons was able to match 93.7%, 97.4%, 95.2%, 87.5%, and 89.1% of his output.
The bull case can also be made for Kelce as always, but there is value in betting that the field of the tight end position will combat his production in a better fashion than a year ago.
We can also pair that with the way offenses are calibrating themselves around the current defensive meta, tight ends as a position were used more a year ago than over the past several seasons.
With just a better run of health for the top of the position, we have the foundation in place that we have multiple options that can shave off the massive leverage that Kelce provided a year ago.
As noted earlier, there is also an increased opportunity cost this season when selecting Kelce in the first round.
Just by looking at draft cost, we have a limited number of running backs that we have faith in delivering apex outcomes this season. You still want the potential of landing one of those backs.
We then have the increase in the cost of wide receivers as a whole and, as a byproduct, the elite tiers of wide receivers pushed up the draft board. You still want an elite wide receiver.
The selection of Kelce not only removes your opportunity to land one of those but forces you to play catch-up at one of those spots.
Tack on the potential that you also take one of the quarterbacks that come attached to high-end draft capital (the selection of Kelce and Mark Andrews at cost always entices gamers to stack them with Patrick Mahomes or Lamar Jackson) and we are playing from behind at wide receiver this season.
This is why I believe that this season provides one of the toughest draft terrains for going early-round tight end.
When it comes to paying up for the “onesie” positions of a tight end or quarterback, I prefer the latter option this summer.
I have done Kelce builds and then teams with Andrews at a round lower cost, but in all of those drafts, I consistently feel weak throughout the remainder of the draft.
While my preferred approach has been selecting a tight end after Kelce or Andrews this summer, there are league-to-league factors that increase the viability of taking one of the power players at the tight end position early.
- TE Premium Scoring (base FFPC scoring)
- Auctions
- Leagues that require only two starting wide receivers (base FFPC requirement)
- Leagues without FLEX positions
If I do entertain Kelce, it is always from draft slots 7-12 and fit that preferred Anchor-RB approach we laid out in the running back post or the ability to also land one of the wide receivers that come attached to the draft capital that gives them the best odds at carrying my receiving unit.
When it comes to adding Andrews in the second round, both the running back and wide receiver positions need to be cleared of the elite options.
While Kelce and Andrews operate in their mini-tiers and have had cemented ADP all summer, the secondary tier of tight ends is nebulous.
We often do not see the TE3 be selected up to 25-30 picks after Andrews.
That is typically T.J. Hockenson, who I just outright do not like taking at cost for the reasons I laid out on the podcast with JJ Zachariason.
In this range, you see George Kittle, Darren Waller, Kyle Pitts, and Dallas Goedert all relatively tightly clustered.
I am not aggressively playing for Waller, but he is the first guy I am monitoring to see if he lands in the right area of cost. These are on rosters in which I already have 3-4 WRs in the pocket and we have yet to clear the running back “dead zone”.
All of Kittle, Pitts, and Goedert (and Hockenson for that matter if he drops back to this tier in the price point of your drafts) have a ceiling outcome, but none of them is the clear lead pass catcher on their team.
Both Hockenson and Goedert also fall into a bucket that historically let down in fantasy, being attached to a wide receiver that is being selected as a WR1 in fantasy.
Pitts is the player I have the most trouble with since I still believe that he is a unicorn in terms of talent. He will only be 22 years old at the start of the season.
Once Pitts does have an apex outcome, he is going to end up being a first-round pick for a lengthy run like Kelce has.
Will that season be in 2023?
Or will we still have to watch him fight through a rough team climate to deliver a solid final line of counting stats that carry a weak weekly impact on rosters?
When it comes to selecting Hockenson, Pitts, Kittle, and Goedert, I need them to be luxury picks that fall below ADP.
Once we clear that grouping, I am sitting on my hands.
After those players clear, it is easy to force that next wave since the draft position of those players often synchs up with drop-offs in the excitement surrounding the backs and wideouts. But stay strong and keep waiting to hit your targets at the right price.
The player I monitoring the most from this group is Pat Freiermuth.
Last year, all of his counting stats and efficiency rose from his rookie season while primarily playing with a rookie quarterback.
The Steelers are a team we not only have pegged for positive touchdown regression but also more passing scores as part of that spike.
I believe Freiermuth could outright be in the mix with the previous tier if he runs hot while at worst he is a floor-based option at the position.
David Njoku is also good in this spot.
The only players I am largely avoiding in this sector of the position are Evan Engram and Dalton Schultz.
Engram had his breakout season and offers spike week potential, but it came surrounding hyper-volatility (11 games with 40 or fewer receiving yards last season) and the Jaguars added a major target threat to their roster.
There is a range of outcomes in which Engram is fourth on the team in targets. I see Engram as more of an arbitrage on George Kittle. A player that can give you week-winning upside, but while also taking on a plethora of weeks where he is just invisible.
If you have followed my work over the years, then you already know that I largely avoid skill players attached to rookie quarterbacks. Pairing that with Schultz not being a tight end that is built on talent over volume, I am content making him beat me.
At the point past the lower-TE1 tier of tight ends, we are well into upside swings.
We know that on average four TE1 scorers per season come from the TE2-plus range, so you have the opportunity to run into something, and if you fail on your breakout selection, only a small portion of your league is going to end up with premier scorers at the position anyways, so you can play the waivers and weekly game as you try to find production throughout the season.
This season, we have a lot of young players on the board.
This draft class was rich for tight ends, which was perfect for a league that was already incorporating the position as part of the approach in countering more zone coverage, decreased blitzing, and leaving the middle of the field open to prevent splash plays vertically.
Rookie tights have not popped for fantasy, but what if the talent of this draft class paired with how offenses are attempting to counter defenses creates an intersection where these players have earlier success than past tight ends during their inaugural season?
We already had rookies in Chig Okonkwo and Greg Dulcich have weekly relevancy last season when they were afforded opportunities.
Dalton Kincaid, Sam LaPorta, and Luke Musgrave all have had a consistent drumbeat this entire offseason and appear to be locked into focal-point roles immediately out of the gates.
Michael Mayer has dealt with injuries this camp and still has a low-end veteran to jump, but there is a path for him to be a part of the passing offense and ramp up during the season.
I do not love any of these tight ends as my solo TE1 option, but I do want to take bites here on them when going for a two-pronged, upside-based approach at the position.
I am still into drafting Okonkwo as part of that plan.
Okonkwo’s target ceiling may have been capped by the addition of DeAndre Hopkins, but the Titans are underdogs consistently early in the season while the injury to Treylon Burks offers a wider path to early-season involvement.
If I do end up completely shut out on everyone mentioned to this point and forced to roll the dice, Juwan Johnson and Tyler Conklin are my favorite tail-end options.
If we are playing in TE Premium formats, then this is when you can also take your swings on Trey McBride, Jake Ferguson, and Cade Otton as second-year players that should have roles.
Isaiah Likely should also be rostered in TE Premium formats. The median outcome is that he will be a touchdown-or-bust play with Mark Andrews operating at full capacity, but no tight end has contingency value as high as Likely.
Takeaways:
- Top tight ends provide positional leverage as great as top running backs but score fewer points.
- I am more aggressive on tight ends in auction formats as opposed to snake drafts because we can reduce the opportunity cost.
- Pursue Travis Kelce and Mark Andrews aggressively in TE Premium formats, but the draft landscape of 2023 (wide receivers being priced higher than ever paired with a thin pool of elite RB options) makes it harder to go all-in on the position with your highest draft capital than previous seasons.
- Darren Waller is my favorite option in the secondary tier.
- If reaching the back-end portion of the TE1 position, Pat Freiermuth and David Njoku are the targets.
- Past Freiermuth and Njoku, I want to build a 2TE upside stable out of Dalton Kincaid, Chig Okonkwo, Sam LaPorta, Luke Musgrave, Juwan Johnson, and Michael Mayer.
- Add Trey McBride, Cade Otton, and Jake Ferguson in TE Premium formats when you are taking 3 TEs.
- If forced to go into the depths of hell, Tyler Conklin is one of just 11 tight ends to have more than 500 receiving yards in each of the past two seasons.
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