Spare me your think piece about why we should remove tight ends from fantasy football. If you’re so scared of the top two or three – draft one!
I say that half-jokingly. Is Travis Kelce my 1.01 this year? No. And he wasn’t last year. But there were really only a small handful of players more valuable than he was in 2022. The TE is a gloriously unpredictable wrinkle in this game of ours.
Let’s take a look at what we got wrong about tight ends in 2022 and how we can use it to inform our perspective ahead of our 2023 redraft leagues.
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What We Got Wrong About Tight Ends
Here are some things we got wrong about tight ends in 2022 and what it means for 2023.
Mark Andrews as TE1
Per 2022 ECR, Mark Andrews was ranked three spots ahead of Travis Kelce. Oh, how that minuscule difference proved to be incredibly regretful. Kelce averaged nearly 19 PPR points per game, more than five points PER GAME higher than the next TE.
This year, it seems as though the fantasy community has adjusted accordingly. Kelce and Andrews rarely touched first rounds last season, now, I’ve even seen some rank one of the two as #1 overall. Between their being the focal point of their respective offenses and the positional advantage an elite TE can give you, I’m not against anyone for ranking Kelce and Andrews as first-round picks in redraft leagues.
Kyle Pitts as TE3
Pitts played 10 games last season and finished as the TE33. Even before the injury, he was averaging merely 7.6 points per game. Now, his ECR is nearly 30 slots after where it was in 2022 (pick 28, pick 54). Pitts was a physical unicorn coming off a rookie season where he led his team in targets and was again in line to do it again. His ranking last season still makes sense. However, I don’t think anyone could have predicted how frustratingly inept the Falcons’ offense looked at times in 2022. They went from 16th in total passing yards in 2021 to 31st in 2022.
Our lesson here is to once again fade potentially lackluster passing attacks. To me, that looks like taking a long hard look at Cole Kmet, Dalton Schultz and Mike Gesicki. Basically, before you draft a TE in the first half of your draft, think “What are the chances this guy’s team is a bottom-five passing team?”
T.J. Hockenson as TE8
Hockenson put up solid numbers with two different teams in the same season. His yards per game went down by five (56, 51) when he went to Minnesota but I wouldn’t worry too much about that this season given Adam Thielen‘s departure.
This is a shining example of a tight end showing why he was drafted in the first round. Hockenson had a good sophomore season in 2020 but missed five games in 2021 and couldn’t continue the momentum.
I’ll gladly draft a TE taken in the first or second round if they fall to me and bank on the pass-catching potential, assuming they’re in a decent situation. Here are some former first or second-round picks in what I consider to be fine situations:
- Pat Freiermuth (TE9)
- David Njoku (TE10)
- Noah Fant (TE22)
- Irv Smith (TE25)
- Drew Sample (TE84)
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