Welcome back to the Get Better at Dynasty Rookie Drafts series. While last week we covered what to look for when drafting quarterbacks, today we’re going to talk about strategies for drafting tight ends. 

The tight end position might be the most volatile to draft in all of fantasy football, with first round tight end prospects frequently busting in resounding fashion. Unless Brock Bowers has a twin brother coming up sometime soon, I would argue neither the NFL nor dynasty owners, myself included, have any semblance of reliability projecting this position to NFL stardom. 

Much like with my breakdown of the quarterback position, it's helpful to take a step back and think through a big-picture, systematic approach to making investments at the tight end position, rather than getting fixated on individual player analysis. Let’s get started.

Draft Capital

The most important thing to understand about drafting tight ends is that the real-life tight end role is the least correlated to fantasy football scoring of all the skill positions. Tight end is the one position where I will essentially never fault you for “reaching” on a prospect you like more, regardless of draft capital.

When a dynasty owner thinks about the best case scenario for a draft prospect, they imagine a target-earner who racks up PPR stats. When NFL coaches pound the table to take a tight end in the first round, it’s because they see a player who is strategically valuable, but in ways that don’t necessarily translate to fantasy production. 

While your dream scenario for Colston Loveland is for some sort of downfield target-earner, Ben Johnson’s is for a player whose presence on the field gives nothing away about run-pass tendencies, all while causing problems for the defense regardless of whether they choose to go with a nickel or base defense. 

While this type of value is at least correlated to fantasy football success, Ben Johnson’s idea for whether the Colston Loveland draft pick is going well isn’t about whether Loveland is the second-highest target earner on the Bears.

Instead, it’s about whether defenses feel forced to deploy slot corners in situations where Ben Johnson would like to run the ball, or whether they feel constrained to play heavier packages that open up passing opportunities. Once that is accomplished, whether or not Loveland racks up receiving yards is secondary to Johnson. 

In general, all but the most special tight ends have trouble out-earning legit pasing game weapons for targets, and most tight ends are less efficient per-target than receivers, both because they tend to win less in the high value areas of the field and because they tend not to be great after the catch. 

For this reason, NFL coaches have little incentive to funnel targets to non-exceptional tight ends, and they can still be satisfied with that tight end’s role on the team for reasons completely unrelated to fantasy production. 

Our takeaway as dynasty owners is that we should be focusing heavily on those indicators that create a pathway to exceptional fantasy football production, and if those are missing, we need to adjust our expectations accordingly when deciding whether to draft a lunch pail guy or just go with another position entirely. 

Ceiling Catalysts

Athleticism 

When trying to find an exceptional fantasy producer at tight end, athleticism is critically important. And not just above average athleticism, but specifically rare, elite movement ability. Consider this piece from Ryan Heath, where he finds that a whopping 24.4% of tight ends in the 90th percentile or higher in SPORQ have gone on to post a TE1 season within their first three years, which drops all the way to 8% for tight ends between the 75th and 90th percentiles.

These are still above average athletes, but that's all it takes for the hit rate to become abysmal. More importantly, Heath finds that combine performance adds predictive power to NFL draft capital, which is not a guarantee, since that implies NFL teams are not yet fully incorporating athleticism when they draft.

Compare that to the wide receiver position, where folding combine results into our draft analysis threatens to make us less accurate when accounting for draft capital.

For this reason, Terrance Ferguson is a high-upside swing who is a value in the back half of the second round. However, trying to extend this point to Elijah Arroyo, Tyler Warren, and Colston Loveland, for whom we don’t have athletic testing, presents a new challenge for dynasty drafters.

We know athleticism is critically important, but what do we do with the high first rounders who sit out the combine to insulate their draft stock? There isn’t an easy answer to this, and it might remain an unsolved problem. Somebody like Brock Bowers clearly just moved differently in his college tape, but nobody in the current tight end crop rose quite to that level.

You could make an argument for Colston Loveland, but I’m not convinced based on what I saw him do as a runner with the ball in his hands. I would argue you balance this by watching out for players who are clearly special movers, and go ahead and assume the others aren’t likely to break into that 90th percentile of athleticism.

That doesn’t mean to write them off, but I would be wary of assuming Tyler Warren or Colston Loveland would fall into that range, and so wouldn’t give them that kind of credit when ranking them against prospects at other positions. 

Run After Catch

While highly correlated to athleticism, run-after-catch ability deserves a special space in our draft evaluation. This is because run-after-catch production requires a specific form of athletic ability that shows up on a football feld a lot more reliably than during combine events. 

Too many tight ends in the NFL are compilers who need unattainbly high receptions totals in order to give you a spike week. Not only do compilers struggle to earn passing game roles beyond being safety blankets, but they also rack up fantasy points too slowly to be week-winners for you.

I mentioned previously that tight ends have trouble out-earning legit target competition, and one way for them to tip the scales in their favor is to earn run-after-catch opportunities.  

Players like George Kittle, Brock Bowers, and recently Tucker Kraft, who can break big plays after the catch, not only provide you more fantasy points, but they reward their coaches for getting them out on routes, calling screens, and designing targets on crossers for them. 

Show me an exceptional fantasy tight end, and nine out of ten times I’ll show you exceptional run-after-catch ability on their college and NFL tape. 

Passing Game Preeminence

You should avoid paying a premium for tight ends who aren’t top-two target earners in their offense. However for rookie picks, it’s a bit harder to pin down how prominent a role a given player can potentially earn if they’re just more talented than we expected.

Sure Colston Loveland looks unlikely on the surface to be a top-two option in the Bears’ offense, considering the highly regarded pass catchers he’s dealing with, but a player’s prominence and priority in a passing attack is a result of performance, not planning. So if Loveland is really good, the prominence in his offense will take care of itself.

When making decisions with your roster, just keep in mind that it’s very hard to get consistent production from a tight end who is behind two or three established skill players in his own offense. You should be willing to part with this caliber of player, and extremely unwilling to part with that rare tier of tight end that is an alpha in his own offense. 

Traps

Blocking Competition

Previously I mentioned that NFL coaches care less about their tight end racking up counting stats and more about the strategic benefit of a tight end’s presence on the field. For this reason, your prized receiving tight end can actually be fool’s gold if their coach considers them strategically limiting. 

The best current example of this is Dalton Kincaid, who earns targets at a fine clip per-route, but who loses enough snaps to Dawson Knox that Kincaid owners are eyeballing the exit. Nobody in the Bills organization thinks that Dawson Knox is a more talented receiver than Kincaid, but Joe Brady’s job isn’t to make Kincaid a TE1 fantasy scorer.

It’s to score real-life points in the NFL, and Kincaid’s continued struggles as a blocker are strategically limiting to Joe Brady’s offensive game plan.  For this reason, I’m always weary of tight ends who go to teams with a superior blocker on the roster who is no slouch catching the ball.

Yes, Colston Loveland is a more talented pass catcher than Cole Kmet, but there is at least a world where Kmet get enough snaps to be extremely annoying to Loveland’s dynasty owners. 

Elijah Arroyo is somebody else who I think will get a lower snap share than owners are hoping for, based off of the extremely sheltered blocking role he received on tape at Miami. 

Running Receiver Routes

Dynasty owners tend to get excited when they see tight end prospects who are min-maxed way towards the receiving end of the spectrum. The hype train really takes off when we hear that a tight end prospect is going to run routes outside. 

While it’s great if a coach is excited about a tight end’s receiving potential, this form of praise is a double-edged sword. First off, it can imply the coach in question plans to outsource in-line usage to a different tight end. More importantly, tight ends are less impactful when lined up against outside corners.

The value proposition for getting a tight end out on a route is that they can be matched up with linebackers, who tend not to cover the position well. Officials also give significantly more leeway to physicality in a route if a tight end initiates it against a bigger defender, closer to the line of scrimmage, and in a crowded area.

Coaches dictate this matchup by forcing defenses to pick their poison, since trying to deploy a corner in the box is uncomfortable for the corner and not tenable against the run game. 

Once you line up a tight end against an outside corner, you’re no longer forcing defenses to pick their poision; quite the opposite. Wide receivers are significantly more efficient running routes on the outside, compared to tight ends.

Against outside corners, tight ends have a physicality advantage that they can’t get away with abusing like they can closer to the box, and they have a massive speed/agility disadvantage against the corner. You’re essentially pigeonholing that matchup into either a contested catch or strategic offensive pass interference that you hope isn’t called. Ideally, your tight end lives inline and in the slot.

This year, Elijah Arroyo stands out as a tight end who raised eyebrows because the Seahawks' braintrust suggested that Arroyo could play X receiver for them. I’m really bearish on that actually happening, and bearish on the fantasy production if it comes to pass.

In the meantime, Colston Loveland’s “he can run routes like a receiver” hype is great in theory, but it’s much less impactful if it means he won’t get full time in-line usage, which likely won’t be the case early on. To me, Colston Loveland’s ceiling case is actually much more tied to his ability against zone coverage, which I really liked on tape. 

Typically, tight ends don’t earn targets by routing up defensive backs. It’s usually by having effective leverage against zone coverage and by using physicality at the top of their stem, followed by a single straightforward plant and cut. Loveland actually stands out in the former, and Tyler Warren stands out in the latter.

Another tight end I’m slightly bearish on for this reason is Mason Taylor, who I felt did not use physicality effectively in his routes, preferring to use his strong movement skills to run routes with more finesse. Unfortunately, even a tight end with good movement ability is not a match for a defensive back in terms of agility. Taylor at least has a clear path to being a top-two receiving option on his team, so there is your bull case for him. 

“12 Personnel!”

Every year like clockwork, somebody talks themselves into a messy tight end room by arguing that the team in question will spend a lot of time in 12-personnel, and it never, ever pays off. The motivation behind this argument is that a team will deploy many two tight end sets, which means there will be opportunities to go around. There are a few problems with this. 

Firstly, even the teams who lead the league in 12-personnel usage don’t actually use it that often. The highest rate in the NFL last year was the Raiders at only 35%, and Michael Mayer was still completely unusable. There's no way around it; you need to be the unquestioned top dog in nearly all situations to be an elite asset.

The Ravens, the team with the most viable tight end one-two punch in the league, still did not produce startable weeks for Isaiah Likely once Mark Andrews got back up to speed.

Secondly, teams are run-heavy out of 12-personnel, so your tight end can’t possibly earn a fantasy point on most plays run out of this package. 

The point is, you shouldn’t be afraid to cut your losses in a two-headed tight end room. Michael Mayer became dust the second Brock Bowers was drafted. Cole Kmet will be around enough to annoy Loveland owners, but his dynasty owners lost out big time on him.

Every now and then, NFL pundits say “well Team X is gonna be in 12-personnel a lot more this year” and all it’s ever done is encourage dynasty owners to make bad decisions. Your dynasty tight end needs to get the lion’s share of 11 personnel usage to be relevant. 

Main Takeaways

Tight end is a singularly hard position to project into the NFL, and perhaps even more so because the paths to value at the position are poorly understood and sometimes counterintuitive. 

When evaluating tight ends, we need to learn to filter out indicators that sound great in theory but that don’t result in impactful fantasy production in practice. To that end, we should seek out elite athleticism and run-after-catch production at the tight end position, while looking out for the synergistic effect of blocking while bringing those other abilities to the table.

Additionally, we need to remember that very, very few tight ends truly matter in fantasy, and to have one of those players, you need a player who has a path to being the first or second option in his team’s passing attack. If you're drafting somebody with the intent to be just a starter, but not one of those elite tight ends, you're better off paying up for a veteran, since these guys have abominable hit rates in the draft. 

There is it, you're ready to start drafting (and often not drafting) tight ends. By keeping our eye on the ball and avoiding the traps, we can increase our success rate when selecting tight ends in our dynasty rookie drafts.