Tight Ends I'm Taking A Stand On in Best Ball Tournaments
If you’ve been listening to me ramble about NFL Best Ball for the last couple months, first of all I appreciate that you’re a sicko like me. But also you know that I absolutely lean much more heavily on strategic edges and roster construction edges in these ball tournaments than I do on individual players. A huge percentage of the player pool probably serves a purpose in at least some sort of team you might draft, so I find the “What’s your favorite 7th round pick?” discussions typically rather unhelpful. However…
We do also have to ultimately pick players for our best ball teams, and you’ll usually find that even when you are naturally diverse through your draft strategy and team structure you are still probably going to develop a core of a few guys at each position that become “Your Guys”.
I’m almost halfway into my Underdog Best Ball Mania portfolio, so I thought it was a fitting time to start discussing “My Guys” at each position. I wrote last week about the stands I’m making at the WR position. Today I’m diving into the extremely polarizing TE position.
Travis Kelce
I know Kelce is a first round pick, but I promise this isn’t a lazy cop out making him someone to take a stand on. Clearly everyone understands how good Travis Kelce is… that’s why the market corrected the mistake of 2020 letting him fall to the 2nd round. But I’m not sure the field understands exactly how big of an advantage Kelce is on your opponents from a structural and strategic standpoint.
Kelce’s 2020 season was the 2nd best fantasy TE season of all time, behind only Rob Gronkowski in 2011. Gronk had 18 TDs that year, and Kelce nearly matched him despite only playing 15 games and “only” scoring 11 TDs. That’s hard to fathom.
Kelce is the best receiving TE in football, attached to the best offense in the league with the best QB in the league. He has shown no signs of slowing down, and the loss of Sammy Watkins could mean even more targets for Kelce with Tyreek occupying so much defensive attention on the outside.
He scored 4 more points per game than the 2nd highest scoring TE (Darren Waller) in both half point PPR and full point last year, and the extent to which he distanced himself from the field was the key to 2020 fantasy drafts. In PPR scoring, he averaged 20.9 points per game, while the 4th highest scoring TE averaged 12.6. You were gaining 4 points per week (on average) over even the 2nd highest scoring TE, and you were gaining 10+ points on most of your opponents just at that one position.
That kind of edge is nearly impossible to find in Best Ball, and it’s one we should be trying to give ourselves as much as we can. Even if Kelce regresses somewhat from his monster 2020, you’re STILL going to be gaining several points on your opponents at the TE position every single week with him on your roster. He also gives you the luxury of essentially not worrying about the TE position the rest of the draft (until you take your TE2 late), which in turn allows you to build up the rest of your roster with quantity in order to stack up more positions where you gain points on your opponents.
It’s really that simple in Best Ball… gain points on your opponents at as many positions as possible, and Kelce is by far the easiest way to set your team up to do just that.
Gerald Everett
Last season, Seahawks TEs combined for 108 targets, 75 catches, 715 yards and 6 TDs. None of them were as talented as newly signed Gerald Everett. Clearly I’m not projecting Everett to take all of that production, especially with Will Dissly still in town, but it goes to show what a bunch of ‘meh’ players at that position can do in this offense attached to Russell Wilson.
The production was similar in 2019, and Dissly actually racked up 4 TDs in just 6 games before injury, and I think Everett was brought in from the Rams to provide them with more explosiveness at a position this offense clearly utilizes. That 2020 total between the Seattle TEs would have been good for third in the league in TE fantasy scoring, so even though we can’t extrapolate every catch to Everett, he’s also a clearly more talented receiving option than those players. There are targets up for grabs after Tyler Lockett and DK Metcalf in this offense, and that dynamic duo can open things up over the middle for a player like Everett.
There aren’t many late round TEs attached to elite QBs like Russell Wilson, and I expect his ADP to continue to rise as we get more camp reports about his role in this offense. If Everett takes on even 70% of the TE receiving production on this team, we’re talking about a top 10 TE in fantasy currently going as the TE22 on Underdog. If they continue to #LetRussCook and we get a ceiling performance from the offense, there’s upside for even more. And that’s exactly what we want to be targeting at an ADP around 164.
Mo Alie-Cox
The former VCU basketball star is the exact kind of situation I want to be heavily invested in during best ball draft season. Clearly a talented athlete, Mo fits the exact bill for a breakout tight end late in drafts. We know that late round TEs have super low hit rates, but that doesn’t mean we don’t want to be targeting certain profiles that give us a path to unexpectedly rising up near the top of the TE ranks.
In limited action last year, Alie-Cox was 5th in the entire NFL in yards per route run amongst TEs with at least 25 targets, behind George Kittle, Travis Kelce, Darren Waller and Richard Rodgers. And at 2.09 yards/route run, he distanced himself from most of the league in a very clear top tier with the above 4 players and Mark Andrews. It’s a small sample, but it also shows you the type of company he can keep with his production on the field.
Trey Burton is now gone, and Jack Doyle is 31 years old and clearly wearing down. He fell to just 33 targets in 14 games last year and was almost at the bottom of the league in yards per route run. Rookie Kylen Granson has some promise, but we know the difficulty of rookie TEs getting up to speed quickly in the NFL. There’s no strong competition at TE in Indy, and even beyond TE, there are plenty of targets to be had in an offense without an elite alpha WR.
Coach Frank Reich has utilized his TEs heavily in both Philly and Indy, even somehow turning Eric Ebron into a pro bowler. So, we have a strong offense that leans heavily on the TE, no real competition of any note for playing time, a player who has proven to be extremely effective in his opportunities, and even paths to major target share in the offense given the uncertainty at WR. All that in a last round pick? Sign me up, and let’s head to the moon.