Fantasy Football 2018 - Early TE Rankings

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Jason Moore and Mike Wright. Ah, great. We're back again. Back by popular demand from a couple days ago. Tuesday, April 17th. Welcome back. We have our early tight-in rankings on today's show. Everyone is here. Everyone is present in mind and body.

You know, let's slow down there a little bit. I'm here in body. I am physically here. Oh, okay. We never know my mental state. No, no. And that's part of the fun. Mm-hmm. That's why they click subscribe, Jason, on iTunes. And I thank them for it. Thank you. Thank you. Mike is here. Hey! Always enthusiastic. Always excitable. I was giving Jason his moment in the Sunday. Was that the...

Was that the celery that you had at lunch? Is that why you're so amped up? A lot of natural caffeine in that celery. Four, what do you call a cut of? A stalk. A stalk. Yeah, thank you. Yeah. Four giant stalks of celery. Not good. Unhappy all the way. Are there people out there that really take a bite of celery and go, yeah, this is, this is it. With peanut butter. By itself, Jason? By itself. By itself.

Does ranch count? No, I was going to say, I mean, I mean, does that count as by itself? No, I doused my celery in ranch just so I could get it down. Completely by itself bite of celery. No, nobody goes, oh my good. Jim, get in here. You got to try this. It's so good. I like putting Gore in your lineup. I tried to feed a stock of celery to a bunny rabbit.

I got kicked in the face. Did you? Yeah. You ever been kicked in the face by a bunny? I know this is a bit of... We have a great quick question. I'm going to get right to it. But I'm going to say this. The problem with dressing and stuff on carrots and celery is that the dressing is gone and you still have three quarters of the chew left. That's the problem with putting it on vegetables. You're not putting enough dressing, my friend. That's where I lean. That's the key. You can find us on Twitter at the FF Ballers. Instagram.com slash fantasy footballers community.

is join thefoot.com become a member of the foot clan and get access to foot clan leagues, an extra episode every week, bonus stats, projections, some secret, some secret things. Secrets. Behind the curtain. You get to see behind the curtain. Quick question of the day. Can you compare streaming the quarterback position to streaming the tight end position? And that's a great question.

Before I saw Brooks put this in as the quick question, I had thought a little bit about. I wanted to go back and look at last year's stats and see how the top tight-ins did, the top quarterbacks did, and then compare it to the next 10. Just how those finished, the next 10 finished. And they're the same. I actually thought there might be a disparity between if you had Granc, Kelsey, and Ertz compared to like the average score of the next 10, I thought that that gap would be larger than the top three quarterbacks in the next 10.

It was the same. It was about four points per game difference if you average the top three at the position and compare it to the next 10. I don't know if I gave you an answer saying that other than the fact that the score, the difference between the top tier guys, and then that next category of, you know, streaming player is about four points. Yeah, one of the, there's, you can argue actually for it and against it. There's kind of two countering arguments. One says that.

You know, at quarterback, your replaceable value, right? You've got a ton of great quarterback options, far more than 12 good startable quarterback. So you can play off the waivers. Tight ends, you've got three good ones and then a bunch of garbage. Yes. You know, and so you can make the argument that it's worth having one of those tight ends so that you don't have to play, you know, that crazy game. But the other side of that is what happens is quarterbacks are pretty consistent. They're always putting up points.

Tight-ins, you looked at the end-of-year rankings, Andy, where you say the difference is not so much. But the tight-ins after those top three, they are as inconsistent as possible, and it's very match-up-based. So you want to get those streaming tight-in options when they're playing those juicy tight-end matchups, and I think you can stream as successfully there. It's a little bit more annoying because there's not as good of...

a pool of players to choose from. It's inconsistent. And here's the thing, though. You're talking about all the top three guys. Zachertz was not drafted to be one of the elite tight ends. He was by me. Fair. We liked him to break out, but Gronk hit, Kelsey hit. Let me illuminate something on the stats real quick. Okay. If you do the same examination to the running back position, the gap is 10 points.

Between the top three? Between the top three and the next 10 on a per game basis. Okay. And what did you say it was for the tight end? Four. Yeah. I'm just making the point. That's why you stream. I didn't mean to cut you off. Go ahead and finish what you're saying. A top three running back is dominant. But I lean with the streaming philosophy, which I'm sure we'll talk about in today's show. Like I said, Ertz was about an eighth round pick. You had Greg Olson, Jordan Reed, Tyler Eifertz.

Jimmy Graham, which Graham finished okay, Martell's Bennett, Delaney Walker. Those guys were all drafted in front of Zach Hertz. So if there's people out there saying, whoa, you know, we drafted Zach Hurst to be this. People did not. No. People did not do that last year. If you take the argument to the extent that, man, I just don't want to deal with tight in. I'm just going to grab one of those awesome automatic guys. Unless they get hurt.

Right. And then you waste the draft capital and you lose the draft flexibility. Recall the names that I said, those guys were all drafted above Ertz. And then here rounding out your top 10, Evan Angram, Kyle Rudolph, Jack Doyle, Cameron Brate, Jason Whitten. I didn't say any of those names who were drafted to be a top tight end, but there they are because that's just what happens when the ebbs and the flows of a tight end getting a good matchup, pulling in a couple more touchdowns.

then the other guys, that's how you went at the position. Well, the beauty of today's show is not only are we going to give you our top 10 consensus tight-in rankings, but we're also each going to give you a sleeper outside of those ranks that we think could finish there. So if you're looking for that diamond in the rough, we're going to give you some early names that we think have the potential to do it, to get into that category, to be that steal. Because if you steal a tight-in late that you're drafting to stream and they be coming every week starter,

that's when your team can do a lot of damage. Same thing goes with quarterback position. So I did want to remind everybody, if you haven't listened to the previous shows, we did running backs and wide receivers, our early rankings right before that. We did free agency winners and losers at the end of March. We have our early mock draft up from the end of March. A lot of older shows before this one, very valuable. If you haven't listened, if you're joining us for the first time, first of all, welcome.

You're not going to regret it. Glad you made it past the celery takes. Yeah. We always start with some good veggie takes. To be fair, I think we sucked a lot of people in with that. It's not a hot take to say that. It's a relatable, disgusting product. To say that celery sucks, I mean, you've got 95% of the market with you. So they came for the celery takes. They're staying.

For the fantasy. Yeah. I like what these guys are thinking about. Yeah. Salary sucks. I hate celery, too. Oh, those add-ons, though, are delicious. I like ranch and peanut butter. Those add-ons. I don't know what. Have you ever ordered them at a restaurant as an add-on? Yeah, can I get an add-on? I'd like some ketchup, please. A catch-up ad-on? Today you ordered mustard for your fries. Oh, please. We don't have time for that. All right, we don't have time for that. All right. By the way, a couple quick notes. One, we're recording this show a little bit early. So have any...

incredible breaking news that you're amazed we haven't talked about is not in the show it is only because of that and we're doing that brooks is heading out of town for a little while and frankly we need him we will frankly we have to admit at this point in time we need brooks to do the show we'll definitely cover everything whether it's on the next show make sure you're following our social media too because we're we're not disappearing from existence no uh just a few days early yeah we'll we'll share our takes on instagram and twitter and facebook so

But one thing we didn't get to talk about. Yes. From a couple shows ago when we were discussing. Yes. I don't even know. Jordan Matthews. Yes. Has signed a one-year contract with the Patriots. Mm-hmm. Which apparently equates. In Mike's mind, signing their contract equates to him being a good fantasy player, which unfortunately hasn't been the case for the past couple of years. No. It's a...

It's simply equates. It's validation that you and Bill Belichick are in the same sphere of thought. You're done right. If you look at my dynasty squad, everyone who becomes a Patriot, they're on my roster. You consider yourself a good talent evaluation. I'm basically a talent scout for the New England Patriots. Basically. It's a unpaid. It's a heavy burden. Unpaid. But the thing is, I had talked about on a previous show that I think that Dorset is going to get a chance.

To me, Jordan Matthews will get the, he will get the chance to be the number three wide receiver, whether or not he can formulate and mold into what the Patriots want to do with their play calling and how they run concepts. I read this fascinating article about the Patriots, how they run just concepts instead of strict plays. And it's really an incredible read. I apologize, I don't know the name of the article.

But if Jordan Matthews can get into that, I think that he has the advantage because both Philip Dorset and Kenny Britt can be cut with zero dead cap. We don't know the numbers of Jordan Matthews contract what is guaranteed to him or not. It's probably nothing. Yeah, it's probably very low. It's most likely that he's not guaranteed anything. And then you have three players that could all be actually valuable because of the Belichick way, the Patriot way. Of stealing players from the bills. And they could all be.

They could be cuts, too. I mean, you've had players come in. What, Reggie Wayne was part of camp a few years ago, and Tim Tebow was part of camp. They didn't make the final roster. We don't know. And I'm not going to sit here and tell you that I think Jordan Matthews is worse than Dorset or Britt. I don't. I think he's better than those guys, assuming he's healthy. I think things have been blown out of proportion on my hate for Matthews. I just don't think he's very, he's got a very narrow skill set.

That's the gist of my view of him. So I think it can be done by a lot of different players if you give them volume. But hey, nice piece to add to that after losing cuts. If your skill set is to be a very good slot receiver, can you name a better team to play on than the New England Patriots? Yes, I could because they have Julian Edelman. I don't think that, I mean, that would be the argument against it. Mike, you talked about Matthews being used.

almost like a tight end in their system when they used to do the two tight in sets. Maybe it's Gronk and Matthews and Edelman's outside or I don't know. We don't know what they're going to do. It'll be very interesting to see what happens. I have an email out to Belichick to see. I want him to clarify. I'm inviting him on. Open invitation to Bill Belichick. It is not confirmed yet, not denied yet, but he could be on the show someday. Yes. Yes. We'll see what happens. All right.