NFL Best Ball Strategy: Roster Construction Part 3 - Tight End
Two weeks ago, I went a little deeper on how I arrived at my roster construction guidelines at quarterback. Now it is time to turn the magnifying glass on tight end.
Tight end, while still a “onesie” position, is a little less rigid than quarterback, due to the inclusion of tight ends in the Flex position, but there are still best practices that will put you in the best position to maximize your picks.
As a reminder, here are the guidelines that I provided in Part 1 of this roster construction miniseries:
TE (2-4):
When to Draft 2
• 1 Very Early, 1 Late/Very Late
• 2 Early/Mid
When to Draft 3
• 1 Early, 2 Late/Very Late
• 1 Early, 1 Mid, 1 Late/Very Late
• 2 Mid, 1 Late/Very Late
• 3 Late
When to Draft 4
• 1 Mid, 3 Late/Very Late
• 4 Late/Very Late
Let’s dive into the numbers behind those guidelines…
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Tight End Scoring: Raw Production
If you have been following this weekly strategy series, you know by now that I focus less on a player’s total points than I do on their actual contribution to starting lineups (Value Added) and their Win Rate, which factors in draft cost. Still, our picks generate value added and higher win rates by scoring fantasy points, so it’s not a bad place to start.
The chart below shows the average 0.5-PPR points scored by tight ends between weeks 1-16 in over the past three seasons, grouped by the round of the player’s ADP in a 12-team league. The sample includes all tight ends that were drafted in at least 10 percent of leagues that year. The size of the bubble represents the number of players in the sample (i.e. “18+” has a very large bubble because it included 25 tight ends, while the fourth-round bubble is very small because there are only two tight ends in that range).
There are a couple of takeaways from this chart: 1) the market has been pretty good at identifying the top tight ends, as illustrated by the downward slope, particularly on the left half of the chart, and 2) production has been relatively flat between rounds six and sixteen – meaning things have been much harder to predict after the top tier or two.
One actionable conclusion from this first look at TE production is that we probably do not want to fish for tight ends in the 17th round or later. I usually have the position filled by my 15th pick, saving the last few rounds for boom/bust wide receivers. The leveling off of scoring in the mid-to-late rounds also suggests that we are likely to get more bang for our buck targeting tight ends in rounds 10-12 than reaching for them in rounds 6-9.
Tight End Win Rates
We gained a little bit of information by looking at the distribution of total points, but not much. Is there more to gain by looking at win rates instead of points? I mentioned in July’s Win Rate article that there are not any distinct “pockets” of the draft with especially high or low win rates among tight ends. The chart below shows what I meant.
Most of the draft is hovering around the league average win rate. Here’s what it looks like if we group the tight ends into the Very Early (Rounds 1-4), Early (5-8), Mid (9-12), Late (13-16) and Very Late (17+) segments of the draft.
There still not much to take away after grouping the players more broadly. As I said in the win rate article, this lack of differentiation in win rate across the draft means I lean on our roster construction principles when deciding in which part of the draft to attack tight end.
Tight End Construction
What does it mean to lean on roster construction at tight end? To me, it means that I am not too concerned about where in the draft I select my first tight end, but once I have taken that first TE, I limit myself to certain parts of the draft for TE2 and (potentially) TE3. To build that roadmap, I have looked at the win rates contingent on when the teams selected their first tight end, and whether they drafted a total of two or three tight ends.
The column on the left lists the part of the draft in which the teams drafted their first tight end. There are two regions of the table that stand out to me (outlined in red). Teams that drafted their first tight end in rounds 5-8 (Early) were most successful when taking a second tight end in that same range, and stopping at two. The Mid/Mid cross-section also returned a strong win rate at 9 percent. On the three-tight end side, Early TE1 was still one of the strongest approaches, but it was more beneficial to wait until the Mid rounds for TE2, given that teams were also spending an additional pick on the position.
Regarding the “Very Early” group, the win rates looks pretty bad regardless of the approach, because they are heavily influenced by teams drafting a Rob Gronkowski who subsequently missed substantial time with injury. If spending a premium pick on Gronk, or Travis Kelce, injury will be be extremely damaging, just like it would be for a running back from those rounds. There typically is not a great way to hedge against tight end injuries, so when I decide to spend an early pick at TE, it is with the understanding that I need him to stay healthy in order for my team to win. And in that case, I think it is best not to spend more than a Late pick on tight end the rest of the way.
Conclusion
I have done my best to pull the useful information out of a very messy position at tight end. Given how unpredictable tight end scoring has been outside of the first couple of tiers, my approach to the position is to spread exposure between a relatively large number of players across all of my drafts. Ultimately, I do not expect my tight end picks to be the difference makers in my drafts – I just want to make sure I am not over or underspending at the position, by following the guidelines above, so that I put myself into the best position to win when the rest of my roster performs well.