Dynasty Fantasy Football Mailbag: The Value of Two Elite Tight Ends
Welcome back to the DLF Mailbag, the preeminent mailbag in all the dynasty fantasy football land. As a reminder, there are multiple ways to pose your burning questions! I’ll be soliciting weekly feedback via X/Twitter (look for a new pinned tweet each Monday), and you can also reach out using our Discord channel, or the old-fashioned way (via our online webform).
Upon my return from a lovely beach vacation, I’m obviously worried about ruining my computer as bits of sand undoubtedly lodge under my keys with each stroke. Given that certainly legitimate and not at all fantastical concern, I’ll instead just refer you to the DLF home page, where lots of great training camp nuggets are available on DLF’s Player news feed! You won’t find any better summation of news that also provides a fine dynasty worldview.
Let’s get to it!
From the Old-School Webform…
Tight Beginnings
My league allows for us to pick up a keeper if he’s remained on your team the entire previous year and was drafted in the sixth round or later. I was lucky enough to take Sam LaPorta in the 14th round, and I will obviously keep him. I play in a 10-team league, and I am not sure which pick I have yet, but in my mock drafts my favorite outcomes are when I take another top-tier tight end in rounds four to six. Would it be stupid to take Mark Andrews or Travis Kelce for good value in that range and play one at flex, or have the option to play matchups with tight ends? I don’t love many of the running backs in that range, and I think there could be value in having two elite tight ends. – Nicholas in New Jersey
The tight end position is, in my opinion, the most unique in fantasy football. First and foremost, compared to depth at receiver and running back, it just isn’t there. I’ve used a lot of terms in this space (fantasy hell-scape, barren void, positional equivalent to a dumpster fire floating away), and have only done so with a relatively small tongue in a fairly large cheek – the operative point is there are a couple of studs, and a lot of duds.
But with every struggle is hidden an opportunity. And to me, here again enters the uniqueness of the position – choosing to adopt a “robust tight end” draft strategy effectively allows you to play both offense and defense with a single selection. To help illustrate my point, let’s consider the top 24 half-PPR fantasy tight ends from last season.
Statistics courtesy of FFToday.
While this was admittedly something of a down year for the position, the half-PPR TE1 LaPorta was over a full game better than TE2 Evan Engram. This becomes even more pronounced in the back half of the TE1 range, where TE10 Dalton Schultz scored almost exactly 64% of LaPorta’s output. When we reach TE19 Cade Otton, he scored exactly half of LaPorta’s points.
In previous years, particularly with Kelce, Andrews, and the occasional Darren Waller blow-up, these distances were even more pronounced between the TE1/2 and the rest of the pack. In 2022, Kelce doubled the points of the TE6 Hill. In 2021, Andrews doubled the points of the TE13 Pat Freiermuth. In 2020, Kelce doubled TE8 Rob Gronkowski. You get the idea. Whether it’s one of the veterans, or an improving youngster like LaPorta, those elite points at the position matter.
What this does is effectively highlight the “zero sum nature” of the tight end game. If you get the fantasy TE1’s points, you’ve received an advantage. If you double down on top of already having LaPorta, you’ve removed a large quantity of points from a competitor’s lineup, forcing them into the TE2 range where it’s been established above lacks any semblance of upside.
But is the juice worth the squeeze?
At running back, if you don’t have a shot at Christian McCaffrey (which you don’t if you’re not picking at 1.01), the drop-off might not be as intense given the quantity. Here again we can’t focus on the sheer magnitude of the points being scored, but rather the availability of the options. To put this into perspective, RB28 Chuba Hubbard scored within 100 points of RB2 Raheem Mostert. RB16 was within 70 points of Mostert, and RB12 Saquon Barkley was within nearly 50 points.
In all these cases Mostert was clearly the superior option. However, the point is if you throw more darts at the position, you’re likely going to be able to find quality depth and/or play weekly matchups to at least somewhat approach Mostert’s viability. This is particularly true in a 10-team league with fairly standard starting requirements. At tight end though? The horses simply aren’t there.
Looking at receiver, from there was a clear hierarchy at WR1/2 with CeeDee Lamb and Tyreek Hill, followed by a small gap to Amon-Ra St. Brown, and then another gap to the rest of the field. But from WR4 Puka Nacua, you could go all the way down to WR36 Romeo Doubs before you hit a 100-point gap. With only needing to start two to three players at the position, here again the depth is relatively massive.
We should of course note this assumes we’re doing the fairly simple fantasy act of, you know, picking the right players! A keeper league with a smaller number of conditional keepers is a bit closer to redraft, which overlaps with a dynasty setting but is going to be a lot less forward-thinking. And the DLF ADP assumes a PPR setting, as opposed to your league’s half-PPR format. But I think alongside quarterback, the tight end position in a dynasty setting provides a bit of a closer direct redraft “points scoring season” look. So let’s square peg/round hole it.
Shown above are the top 20 dynasty tight ends from August 2023, just before points were being scored. And as can be gleaned, there were some hits and misses. Kelce, George Kittle, and Dalton Kincaid closely aligned their respective ADPs to last season’s fantasy finishes. Andrews and TJ Hockenson were on their way before getting hurt. LaPorta obviously overperformed but was still viewed as a TE1, with Engram just behind. Dallas Goedert modestly underperformed, and Kyle Pitts, Darren Waller and Freiermuth massively underperformed.
But apart from Dallas’ Jake Ferguson and maybe Chicago’s Cole Kmet, were there any huge surprises? Various rational minds may return various rational responses, but it does seem as though the final rankings were fairly sticky with pre-season projections. This means it could be inferred that the tight end position is a bit more predictable, meaning you could leverage your proposed plan into a higher likelihood of paying off.
But here again positional requirements are important. As noted before, there is greater drop-off at the tight end position, but this matters most at the actual tight end roster slot in your lineup. While true stud efforts transcend positionality, it’s more likely that a lower-tier player at another position would wind up being a better weekly flex play. This would mean you could be wasting an early-round draft pick on a bench player. This other side of that coin is you already have LaPorta for the cost of free, you’ve really only used a single pick – but here then perhaps you’re robbing yourself of the ability to take a better RB1/2 or WR1/2. But it’s also possible such a pick could be more volatile with payoff less certain.
Given this, my overall two cents would be as follows – I don’t hate the idea, and fortune favors the bold. But I do think you want to possess the belief that you’d be starting both tight ends on a weekly basis, for at least a large proportion of the season. Playing defense when drafting is underrated, but it shouldn’t be the predominant reason for your strategy. Regardless, your shrewd LaPorta pick is offering you an opportunity not held by the rest of your league mates – leaning into it could provide you with a unique and winning advantage.
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