Tyler Higbee Week 5 Outlook - Rams at Commanders

By Mike Tagliere (FantasyPros), Thu, Oct 8th 2020, 8:56am EDT

Through four weeks, Higbee ranks 26th among tight ends in routes run, just above Ryan Izzo. While we can't just remove big games from a tight end's sample size, where would he be without his three-touchdown game against the Eagles? Outside of that game, he's not topped three catches or 40 yards in a single game. That's a problem for his reliability as an every-week TE1. He's run fewer than 20 routes in each of the last three games. If you don't know how to quantify that, here's the routes he ran at the end of 2019 when he became a household name: 33, 26, 42, 34, and 37. You can now understand why he's struggling to be a consistent producer. Until something changes there, it's going to be hard to trust him every week. Now, to be fair, Washington has allowed the fourth-most fantasy points per target to tight ends in 2020, as they've already allowed five touchdowns to them. It surely doesn't help that they played Mark Andrews, Dallas Goedert, and Zach Ertz in a few of their games, as those three tight ends accounted for four of the five touchdowns. You don't want to completely write off Higbee but understand why you need to temper expectations. He should be considered a mid-to-low-end TE1 this week in a good matchup.