Drafting A Tight End Early In Fantasy Football Will Win You Your League This Year

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I've been playing fantasy football for over 20 years and never in my life have I ever been supportive of the idea to draft a Tight End early. It's basically a throw away position for fantasy with plenty of undrafted (fantasy) guys like Robert Tonyan or Logan Thomas to finish in the Top 10 for their position like they both did last year. You can find these guys, so why draft em' early?!

To be clear, I still believe that with two and only two exceptions. Those exceptions names are Travis Kelce and Darren Waller. You may be surprised I didn't say George Kittle, but I don't think he's in the other two's class as far as receiving, which is what gets you points in Fantasy. Kittle is the most complete player of the bunch. Blocks his tail off and is a beast with the ball in his hands. But he's also coming off a season in which he played eight games. He's only finished a full 16 games once in his four year career and he's got 14 total TDs in four seasons. That is not any type of production I'd want to Draft early in Fantasy. 

Now, Kelce and Waller - totally different beasts. Let's take a look at 0.5 PPR from 2020:

Kelce finished with 262.26 points. Had he had the label WR instead of TE, that would have been good for WR4 and just 5 points behind Stefon Diggs who had a career year. *Shoutout to me for pegging Kelce as the #5 overall player a 5+ weeks before NFL Network.

Waller finished with 229.10 points. Had he had the WR label instead of TE, he would have been good for WR8 and he finished 4 points behind a guy named DK Metcalf. Waller was only 5 points for the season behind the likes of Deandre Hopkins and Justin Jefferson. 

Now here's where it gets fun: TE3 in 2020 was Robert Tonyan. A cinderella story at the Tight End position who was in a high powered offense and capitalized in the red zone with 11 TDs which tied Kelce to lead all TEs. But despite that, he finished a whopping 78.5 points behind the TE2 in Waller and 111.6 points behind the TE1 in Kelce.

As a fantasy owner, your job is to maximize the potential output of your starting roster. If you can grab one of these two studs early (mid-late 1st round for Kelce, late 2nd for Waller), you'd be maximizing all your starting roster positions as the drop-off is so steep. The advantage you'll have over your opponent in points projection each week could be double digits which gives you room to be softer elsewhere.

Can guys like George Kittle, Mark Andrews, Kyle Pitts, or even Tonyan close that gap to the top two? Certainly, but early in drafts you need to not miss on a pick. These two top TEs carry a much lower risk than a lot of other RBs or WRs you'd get in those ranges.

We're seeing an average draft position (ADP) of lesser established TEs rise, despite unproven production. So for example, guys like Logan Thomas, who had two 100+ yard games last year go as TE7 at 69 overall/late 6th round. My philosophy for this year is if you don't nail down either Kelce or Waller early, you should punt til the late rounds. The position is just too volatile and unpredictable.

Comparing the positional drop-off to WRs, 2020's WR3 (Diggs) was only 29.8 points behind WR1 in 2020 (Davante Adams) in 0.5 point PPR. The Wide Receiver pool is just substantially deeper and the margins are razor thin! You can get guys like Tyler Lockett, who finished as WR8 last year in 0.5 PPR last year and is going at WR20/mid-4th round in his ADP. There are values out there! If you're going to draft a TE early, you just have to find them!

My whole thesis about these top two TEs this year is that if you can widen the gap between you and your opponent at the Tight End position because the drop-off between the top two and everyone else is so great, it'll make up for other deficiencies on your team at other positions and put you in the best possible position to consistently win.

Check out my Top 10 TEs going into the 2021 season.

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We also preview the upcoming Barstool Fantasy Football League Draft f/ The Dozen teams which will be tomorrow night at 6pm eastern.