Breakout or Fakeout: Noah Fant

In the ‘Breakout or Fakeout‘ series, we identify unproven players whose values are more reliant upon their potential than their production. Will they step up and become must-start fantasy assets? Or are they players to avoid? Read on to find out…

Noah Fant finished as the TE16 in his 2019 rookie season, which is one spot higher than 2019 breakout tight end Mark Andrews finished during his 2018 rookie season. Is Fant the next second-year tight end to make the leap? Let’s take a look.

I’m going to throw some tables of the top six scoring tight ends at you to see if we can spot any commonalities. Why just the top six? I’ll admit it’s an arbitrary cutoff, but on a week-to-week basis, a tight end doesn’t need to do much more than catch a touchdown to finish as a back end TE1. To qualify as a breakout by my definition, I think Fant is going to need to be a difference-maker and to do that he’s going to need to at least finish in the top six.

2019

2018

2017

2016

Table data is from Fantasypros.com.

First of all, can we marvel at the utter domination Travis Kelce has put on the position over the last four seasons? Four straight TE1 seasons and only one missed game over that span.

Anyway, my hypothesis going into this was that to be a top-six tight end, the player would need to be the first or second option in their team’s passing game. After looking at the finishes from the past four seasons this seems to mostly bear out.

In 2019, the top five all led their team in targets and Austin Hooper was second. In 2018, once again, all but Hooper led their team in targets. Hooper was actually fourth in targets for the Falcons in 2018. In 2017, Kelce, Engram, and Walker led their team. Gronkowski, Ertz, and Graham were second. In 2016, Kelce, Rudolph, and Olsen finished first. Graham, Walker, and Ertz all finished second. Only Hooper was able to produce in the top-six (twice) with a target share below 17.5%.

To summarize, In each of the last four NFL seasons, there has only been one occasion when a tight end has finished as a top-six fantasy tight end without receiving the most or the second-most targets on his team. Put another way, out of 24 total opportunities to finish as a top-six tight end over the last four seasons, 67% (16) led their team in targets, 29% (7) were second, and just 4% (1) were outside of the top two in targets for their teams.

There’s always going to be an outlier like Hooper in 2018, but in general, it seems like if you are looking for a breakout tight end who will finish in the top six, you need to find one who is going to be a focal point of their offense.

Now that we’ve established our criteria and some supporting data, let’s take a look at Noah Fant. As previously mentioned, Fant finished as the TE16 in his rookie season. He also finished second on the team in targets. Both of those things are promising. Rookie tight ends often struggle to be productive in year one and as we just learned, finishing first or second in targets is important if you want to finish as a top-six tight end.

These are things that happened in the past though. 2020 and beyond looks quite a bit different.

The Broncos drafted Jerry Jeudy with the 15th overall pick in the first round of the 2020 NFL draft. Pairing Jeudy with Courtland Sutton gives the Broncos two young and extremely talented wide receivers who are likely to dominate targets for seasons to come. In 2019 Sutton out-targeted Fant 124-66. With Emmanuel Sanders gone and DaeSean Hamilton fading into oblivion, you might think there will still be plenty of targets to go around for Fant, but the team also added KJ Hamler and Albert Okwuegbunam in the draft.

It might seem a bit silly (and it probably is) but Okwuegbunam played with Drew Lock at Missouri in 2017 and 2018. and the two connected for 17 touchdowns those two seasons. Fant scored three times in 2019 and it seems difficult to project him for a big number, which is the thing that could vault him into the top-six if receiving the second most targets is out of reach. He had a 13.7% target share in 2019 and given the weapons Denver added this off-season, it’s difficult to see the percentage of his targets jump five points, which is likely what would need to happen to comfortably project him for a top-six season in 2020.

ESPN’s Mike Clay has the Broncos projected for 501 total passing targets and Fant getting 80 of those. That gives him a 16% target share which is not in that comfortable range, but certainly gives him a fighting chance to get to that top-half TE1 season.

Another negative I’ll mention is Lock himself. He showed some promise in his rookie season but it’s a lot to ask from a second-year quarterback with five career starts to support three viable fantasy options. We have to consider the lack of a full off-season of development as well. Because of Covid-19, Lock is missing out on his first opportunity to receive all of the first-team snaps. With all the weapons Denver has surrounded their young quarterback, it’s difficult to see him fail, but that doesn’t mean he can produce two top 24-36 receivers and a top-six tight end in what essentially will be an extension of his rookie season.

We haven’t looked at the cost to acquire yet so let’s check out the most recent ADP data.

As of this writing, Fant is going off the board as TE7 and 86th overall. This is dynasty so there’s a lot more that goes into ADP than just projected current season production but there doesn’t seem to be much upside based on that price for the next several seasons. If I’m paying a top-seven price, I’m going to want top-seven production at some point in the near future.

Between the talent at wide receiver, the questionable quarterback situation, and the cost to acquire, it just feels like the odds are against a Noah Fant breakout in 2020. For the purposes of this article series, I think we have to put Fant squarely in the Fakeout category.

Verdict: Fakeout

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Matt Price

Contributor at Dynasty League Football

Senior writer and co-host of the DLF Dynasty podcast, the longest running dynasty focused podcast on the planet

Creator and Co-host of Dynasty Game night, the fantasy football game show.

Creator and host of the Zookeeper Stories podcast.

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