Fantasy Football - The TRUTH: Top 10 Fantasy TEs + Wheel of Shame - Podcast for 2/5

Welcome to the Fantasy Footballers podcast with your host, Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, and Mike Wright. Welcome in. It's big game time. Thursday, February 5th, we are recording in the morning, record release day. So we are, you know, it didn't come out at 2 a.m. or whatever it's been doing in the soft season. Sorry to the 2 a.m. Yeah. They're always very happy when they get the 2 a.m. update. I don't know why they're awake. But we're here. So they're working security. Yeah. Yeah. And it's quiet and they just need a podcast to watch slash listen to. We have a great show for you today. We have our final truth episode talking about the top 10 tight ends. I have a couple of things I want to ask you guys about them. That's good. We have the fantasy face off our last one. I don't really have anything to say about them. So that's a problem.

I mean, I don't always ask you a question. Sometimes you just say stuff. Okay. We have the entire Deucer's Alley crew here in the building. No one currently in the restroom for the time being. Jeremy with his safety running shirt on just in case he's running at night. I did want to bring this. My goodness. I wanted to bring this up. I like it, Jerry. Yeah. When he walked in, I saw him. And what I mean is he was a mile away. Yeah. But. Did you have your sunglasses on, I hope? Like Jason, you, when you went from. like fat to fit. Yeah. You can go fat to less fat. I was trying to decide. Um, you, you, you are the gradient, right? Like you, you're like, you always wore black shirts. Right. Then you moved into like dark navy. Navies. And now you're looking some maroon, but still darker hues. Oh, absolutely. And Al is very famously a black clothing guy. I, now I sounds like I'm calling. Well, he was fat. What I'm saying is. Yeah, I really thought you were going to say he's famously fat.

I was like, oh, wow. Oh, wow. I can't tell you how much I didn't mean for this to happen. Oh, you walked right into that. Anyways, keep going. Talk about how fatty is. No, he wears. He goes from like all black outfits to like Jimmy Buffett all the time. He's always got like a very like. You must have a cruise plane. No, I can tell you why this happened. I do. Yeah. Is that what it is? It started from a cruise for sure because this man no matter what. even when he was in our collective big boy days um whenever he went on a cruise he would go and get the wildest brightest complicated patterns complicated patterns the most complicated you have no idea how expensive and and he would wear those on the cruise ship and i think one of the times he was on a cruise he goes i think i just look better in these which you probably do

And I'm proud of you. I like you. I love it. And when he plays pickleball, he's always got really cool shirts for pickleball as well. This was all meant to be complimentary. And it really walked into a fantastically fat joke. And that's not what it was famously fat. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Please. Not fantastically. No, it's, it wasn't fantastic. I did it again. Infamously. You fat? Oh, man. Welcome into the podcast. We have. I love my producers so much. Big day on. You really have to go with the big day? Oh, come on. Andy has sometimes the words come out faster than his brain is like, I know where exactly where this is going, but it's like the words are already out. Yeah. And then you catch up. You're like, oh. You're darn right. You're darn right. But we're moving on.

Well, this is our last show before the big game. And the big game is our way. I mean, we have them put that on to celebrate the Ultimate Draft Kit pre-order day. So that'll be available. Ultimate DraftKit.com on Sunday. If you're on the newsletter, you'll get an email about it. You can pay attention to social media. The Falcon will have stuff out there. You can start getting hyped on all these rookies. If you get the UDK Plus, the dynasty passed, the first release is on Super Bowl Sunday. So while you're waiting for football to happen. You can get in there, look at the team opportunity pages, look at the, you know, the lay of the land on the rookies, our dynasty startup rankings, all that will be available Super Bowl Sunday. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's going to be fun. UltimateDraftKit.com. We've done a lot of work. There's new features coming, a fully refreshed, like visual on the app. And, yeah, it's going to be a blast.

You can follow us on social media, by the way, on X at the FF ballers. Instagram.com slash fantasy footballers. I encourage you to do that. No quick question today, but we'll jump right into the news. News and notes from around the league. Uh-oh. Oh, no. I just realized what I got to do, guys. The Giants, if you're watching on YouTube, the Giants hired. Ready? Former Chiefs Offensive Coordinator. Hey-ah! Matt Nagy! The bunch of magicians back, baby. Now here's what he's got a new job. Mike just, I mean, he's not that he was gone, but he's really back now. Mike playing some 52 card pickup here in the more like a maybe like a 23. So here's the deal. I want to let people know what happened. We, we have a company Slack channel that shares the breaking news. We have kind of a ridiculous policy. Like somebody is always, we're always eager to break the news. Everyone's paying attention to the whatever's going on on on social media.

and if you break the news and then you break the news to like you double up on the news if you post anything in slack that had already been posted you get body bag yeah that's like a shameful thing to do like uh but what happened is davy jones the other day we got a report and mike is mike is incredibly into jackson dart yes a believer collecting all of his cards my money and for good reason for for good reason right like we um We have a lot of expectations. Harbaugh, neighbors coming back, Scataboo. Jackson Dart was already a fantasy darling during the games he played, the majority of them. And so we get this news that Cliff Kingsbury is going to be the next OC of the Giants. And Mike is, he's riding high. He's riding away. You got Kyler's rookie and sophomore season that was outstanding with Cliff Kingsbury, the mobile quarterback. Then he goes to Jaden Daniels, Rocks the World with Jaden Daniels, his rookie season. Mobile quarterback.

Jackson Dart with Cliff. That is fantasy gold. That's that's NFL success. That's great. I believe Mike said, oh, baby. Yes. It was in all caps. So it was like an oh baby. But that was shared by a buffoon and was not true. Like, hey, if you're online and you are like you're in sports and you're trying to get into the breaking news game. have some sources and your sources don't just be randos on the internet where you're like oh this is being reported well I'm gonna get out in front of it like you should have people you talk to so from a emotional perspective Mike Matt Nagy is the opposite of how you felt about Cliff Kingsbury that dude how these guys keep getting jobs I have no idea

Well, he's the offensive coordinator. So are you, are you nerfing your, your Jackson Dart? I think that he can rise above. You're trusting that head coach Matt Nagy was the real problem. No, offensive coordinator Matt Nagy is also a problem. Yeah, he wasn't that great. I mean, even if you look at the Patrick Mahomes days and some of the metrics of what Mahomes was already doing and then what he continued to do with Nagy, Nagy obviously. Like, why is he not still the OC in Kansas? right right yeah because because they were like his contact was up yeah why didn't why didn't they bring him back because they had a chance to get the famous eric be enemy back i i feel like that speaks loud so so maybe maybe we don't have the uh you know we'll have our coaching changes episode and we'll talk about it but maybe we don't have the excitement we thought we were going to have it was a bummer the jets hired former panthers head coach frank rike as their offensive coordinator future

second half of the season head coach. Yep. Frank Reich. Yeah. I mean, he was out of the NFL. He was at Stanford. He had a awful, awful year in Carolina. Now, it's like for 15 minutes and 15 games. So last year, it did not work out for Coach Glenn. I honestly, I would assume that Coach Glenn is like a smart guy. I mean, you don't, you can't at least get these opportunities if you're just a complete dumb dumb. It didn't work out, him being a head coach. And he has to know, or he has to at least have the thought process when he's hiring these guys. Like, I might get fired halfway through this year. I know how the NFL works. And when you don't have, when you have the complete lack of success that I had in my first year, if you start out that way in year two, often you see those guys fired. It's like, that's got to be a strange mental exercise of when you're hiring an OC like Reich who has.

head coaching experience like oh boy oh boy to be honest with you there's just no forward thinking needed when you are playing for your job you are playing for the next moment on the clock and that's all he thinks about i'm not saying avoid it i'm saying that the thought has to have crossed his mind the cardinals hired former jets offensive coordinator nathaniel hackett because we the cardinals would like multiple offensive coordinators of the jets what are we Do you realize that's what we've done? Yes. We've hired two officers of coordinators from the Jets. Nathaniel Hackett will be the opposite coordinator, but in a wink wink kind of way because Michael Flore will call the plays. Yeah, I hate this as a Cardinals fan. This is another one like you're like they just keep getting jobs. Exactly. Hackett, Nagy. I mean, Hackett is, well, if you pull, if you coached a Hall of Fame, a first ballot is hall of fame quarterback.

You can ride that for so long. I mean, there's a lot of respect for play. There's a lot of respect for coaches that we don't have respect for. Right. And I'm, I don't know how to put properly into words that if Aaron Rogers were to be the Arizona Cardinals quarterback this next year, because of the connection with Nathaniel Hackett, peace. I am out. O-U-T-out. I will be. doing a whole new search for a new team. Are you going to put out like? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Wanted ads. Are you getting a recruiter? Like you would for a job? I'm going to go hardcore into this. I'm going to look at the ownership structure of all the franchises because that's that's what I want. I don't want quarterback. I don't want head coach. I want ownership that is functional, competent and quality. Can I put this out there into the universe? If you start looking for a new team, I want these new teams, the fans of these new teams to know one thing. Jason doesn't know how to root for you.

Or how to root in general. So it might be a confusing situation. If, like, I am okay if the job of Nathaniel Hackett is LaFleur is like, here's the game plan. He's like, that's great coach. I love it. And he's like, yes man? Yeah, he's like, oh, we want him to be a yes man. You know what, this, hey, we just ran these two plays. I got these, these new, these next two in line. And he's like, that's incredible coach. Get them in there. You realize there were 21 offensive coordinator jobs? this offseason? There are 32 teams. That's insane. 21 of them and 17 of the 21 have been filled. The Raiders, Bears, Rams, and Seahawks. Like, obviously, the Seahawks will need to fill after Kubiak goes to become the Raiders head coach. But, yeah, I mean, 21 of 32, it's almost like only one team wins the Super Bowl. Hack it as the O.C. I obviously, we didn't like him as a head coach. There's hope that.

Maybe he's a better OC than a head coach. Okay, but the nice thing here is that he is not the play caller. He's not, he is hopefully just an offensive manager, assistant to the actual head coach who is the offensive guru in Mike LaFleur. Well, we're going to jump right in, I think. We are through the news. We've got a big game coming up. We've got some rosters. I am going to get chained today. So we might as well get into the truth. You want answers? I think I'm entitled. You want answers. I want the truth. Handle the truth. All right. We have talked about every other position. We are arriving at the truth of the tight end position. Maybe the toughest pill to swallow for some fantasy managers. The truth of the tight end position is it's a hard truth. It really is. Jason's talked about it before. I believe a quote from Jason is well about...

The first five or six tight ends they matter and none of the others matter and they suck. Yeah, they suck. Once you get to, I mean, I remember years ago, Trey Boo Boo. Wow. Yeah. Trey Burton. Trey Burton. I couldn't even remember his name. I just remember Trey Boo Boo. Trey Burton was a my guy. I glad you brought it up. That year when he was a my guy, he finished as the Titan seven. So you can hang your hat on that and be like, oh, baby, top seven. The dude sucked. The whole year he was worthless and he finishes the tight end seven. That's a relative. The whole like tight ends that finishes a tight end one. We do this with the quarterbacks, right? Quarterbacks every year, there's like 40 something quarterbacks that finish a week as a tight end one. This year there were 64 tight ends that finished as tight in one.

on 32 teams. On any given week, 64 different tight ends had a top 12 week, which meant that you had about 58 chances to be like, oh, maybe there'll be something. Yeah. Can we just change the verbiage of a tight end one is a top six tight end? That would help so much. It really would. And if you're a tight end too, that means you're at seven or lower. Here's one of the things I was going to ask you. I'm with you. Like if you're, if you finish there, that means that you had a couple spike weeks. We should really do that.

Like, I don't confuse so many people. It will confuse us, but it will be more accurate. Here's the thing. I want to ask you your opinion on this. If there are 64 tight ends that finish inside the top 12. Yes, top 12. That's fine. And, okay, so that's 24, 25 more than the quarterback position, which is already a streaming position for a lot of people. Is it fair to say that, like, outside of the top five or six names, this is. maybe more similar to picking a kicker than anything else? Yeah, for sure. I mean, there are good arguments that I've seen to get rid of the tight-in position. I don't like that. But tight-ins still matter. Tight-ins are a difference maker at the top. You know, when you've got those Trey McBride and George Kittle, RIP. Yeah, the injuries really...

derailed the position. There's a lot of fun draft strategy around the position. But the truth is, as we joke about 64 tight ends finishing, you know, in the top 12, it is also true that so many of those. Like when we talk about it with the quarterback, when you finish in the top 12 of quarterback, you legit had a good week. You had a good fantasy finish. So many of these 64, like, oh, they finished tight-in 10 on the week and they scored, what, seven points? They caught a five-yard touchdown and they're in the top. Yeah, this entire discussion, to me, at least personally, is not to make the tight-in position seem less exciting or important or fun. I think the tight-end position has been incredibly fun for going on three years of rookies making breakout performances from LaPorta to Bowers to this year with Loveland and Warren and Fanon. It's exciting and it's fun. It's just to say,

let us all make a vow here on the show when we are trying to prove our point to one another and seem right that if we decide to throw out he was a top 12 tied in that will no longer be accepted it will no longer be accepted and you will have to I love that you know you'll be ashamed you'll be called out a man of honor and we should call each other out on such nonsense yeah and we will definitely say it oh for sure at some point in time when I need probably this episode when I need to prove something to you probably this episode um

I'm going to do it on purpose to see if either of you catch me. Okay. We might be too used to it. We have seen 12 personnel sets increase over the last four seasons from 17 to 19 to 20 to 22 percent, which is... It's how they're counteracting the new defensive schemes. I mean, this is what the NFL does is someone figures something out. Tip for tat. Everyone starts copying it because it works incredibly. And then... then the defenses have to adjust, and then we'll eventually find a new meta. Total fantasy points scored by the tight-in position because of that, in part, higher than ever before in 2025. Mike, you just shared a ridiculous Trey McBride number. That's who we're going to start with today. By the way, our metrics for great games, when we look at consistency, great games are going to be 15 or more points for the tight-in position. Good games, eight or more points, Jason, and then bust games fewer than five and a half points. Yep. But we'll start with Trey McBride.

Tram McBride is a very good football player. Yes, he is. Number one. Number one in consistency, number one in the first half, number one in the second half. The gap between Tray McBride and the rest. Is this the most that you can remember since the great Kelsey year's type of situation? Yeah, for sure, because in part because the number two tight ends got injured this year. You know, you had George Kittle who was fire when he was on the field, but wasn't on the field for a lot of it. He lapped the competition. Tray McBride, according to, this is a Jared Smola tweet. Shout out to Jared. Tray McBride ran 118 more routes than any other tight end last season. That is a bigger gap than the number two and number nine tight end. In routes run. In routes run. Yeah, I think the, I really wanted to make sure that that got brought up because the truth about Tray McBride is actually difficult because the truth is he's elite.

possibly the best past catching tight end in the NFL. He's one of the highest paid. He might be the highest paid still. I don't remember. And he dominated if you had him on your team. He really carried you. But Jason, like your argument when we're talking about Michael Wilson, you have to. Yeah. You can't just be like, oh my gosh, tight end one, one, three, three. He's like, this dude just carrying me. 118 more routes. because the Arizona Cardinals were throwing the ball on every down. They had no sense, no semblance of a running game. So not that Tray McBride draft him as the number one tight end next year. But I bet that this is going to put him into the first round. And people are going to be like, I got to get him. It's like the new Kelsey where he outscores, Kyle just shared, he outscored the tight end two by more than five points a game.

Like that is a difference maker who is worthy of the first round. If you were actually going to get that. But will you get that level of separation again? That seems unlikely. Well, in a double digit touchdowns, 11 touchdowns on top of the fact that you had those extra routes and targets. Not only 11 touchdowns, but if you look at the year prior in 2024, in the red zone, Trey McBride had 21 targets. 21 targets. It turned into one touchdown. These are Murray targets. They were Murray targets, but. This year 33 turned into 11 touchdowns. This is like there is some meat in the middle that's going to come and we don't know who the quarterback is. Higgins. Elijah? Oh, meat. No. We a joke, Jay. I love it. I missed it. It was so good. But to just illustrate kind of the passing volume when Jacobi Berset came in.

The defense was decimated and they threw the ball basically every play. Jacoby Brissette and his starts was on pace for 700 passing attempts. That is, that's not happening. That would be, you know, over 41 passing attempts a game on average. If you look at like super offensive teams, the Rams this year, 35 passing attempts on average. Detroit, 34. Like that. It's going to come down. The routes run will come down. The touchdowns will come down. Well, you don't break all-time records. It was the most routes for a title of all-time. And it's all-time record for targets, all-time record for receptions. So he broke a bunch of records, but he's really, really good. Yes. And even when those numbers come down, the pure volume numbers, he still has enough to stand alone as the number one again next year. Sure. It's just your draft cost. I mean, 41% great games is insane.

41% of the time, 15 or more points. 88% good games. That's insane. And it wasn't only against bad defenses. The Cardinals played all sorts of teams, obviously, and he had the same production against all of them. So he does stand alone. Another point would be that Marvin missed a lot of time in the back half of the season on top of it. A lot went right for Trey McBride, who, again, I can't imagine he's not my number one tied in going into next season. But he's not a first rounder for me. To draft him in the first round, so much has to go right. It is one of those because of what we talked about at the tight end position. It's an advantage that is marked every week between you and your opponent. Because it's not just the gap between him and the other tight ends. It's also just like the difference maker on a regular basis for your team to know that you have the guaranteed production coming there to take chances on.

higher-end players at other positions. There are, I mean, we've seen it. There are a lot of advantages when the Grunkowski's dominate, when the Kelsey's dominate, and you've got them on your team. And at the end of the day, regardless of those numbers, when an Arizona quarterback of any kind, whether it's Malik Willis, whether it's cousins or Rogers or Kyler's back, when they drop back to pass, the best decision that they can make is Tray McBride over Michael Wilson or Marvin Harrison Jr. But there will be more balance. There will be more balance to an offense that finally gets a running back into the back field. It feels like in the second round is where he should belong, whether or not he ends there. Because even if he doesn't lap the field like this year, you know you're not whiffing on a pick. He's not going to bust. Anybody can get injured, but he's not going to, you know, running backs and wide receivers, I think, are easy to just have a bad year where, you know, Sequan's, you know.

Not great for the pick. Justin Jefferson's quarterback play is bad or whatever. But Trey McBride at that position, he doesn't even have to be as good as he is to still be as good as it was this last year to be a very good pick. It's so early. I will be so curious to see where he goes because I think questions like Jefferson versus McBride are going to be the question or neighbors and those players. And I don't think very many of us are actually going to pick. that wide receiver change. No, I wouldn't. I know. Yeah. Yeah. That'll be crazy. All right. He stands alone atop the tight in position. So we will. You can't wait to hear who number two was. So we will take a break and reveal number two. I didn't realize it until just now. Yeah. Yeah. We did it. It's Kyle. Year five breakout. It's Kyle Pitts. Now this is what a truth episode is. Year five.

Couple week breakout. Tide in two, young, stud, free agent on the open market, drafted top 10 in the NFL to finish number two. And he does. This is why we do truth episodes. Because Kyle Pitts came in at number two, but his consistency rank was seven. And it was 11 and 10 for the first and second half. He had a really nice week 15. He had so many points that week. In fact, he had the most points of any tight in in the history of. fantasy football in a single week. And that really skews his season long ranking. I think if even, even skewing his season long ranking, I think it's important to look at points per game, which are equally skewed by that single game, but points per game add back in the other guys that were injured that might not be in this list in order like Tucker Kraft, George Kittle, Brock Bowers. They were better. They just didn't finish number two because they lost games.

Yeah, Pitts, what do you think happens? I think he gets a bag. I think he gets a big bag of money. Does that make him a focal point on a new roster? Yes, probably. I don't think someone's going to bring him in and pay him a lot of money unless they're saying that they have a plan to integrate him into an offense. This is an exceptionally weak free agent class for wide receivers. And I think if you're a general manager and you're saying we need a wide receiver too. That's the type of team. And that's what actually excites me about him going to the free agent market is the fact that- He could still get franchised. Sure. He could be franchised. He could also sign back with the Falcons. That's a team that needs a wide receiver too if he's gone. I was going to say they're a team that I can't imagine you want to put Michael Pinnock's in a position to have less or have fewer weapons. Right. Then he had last year. But, I mean, he's he's going to, he will be.

an important passing option for whatever team he lands on. However, he was an important passing option on the team he was currently on. And, you know, he was okay at best. He was, he was good when Drake London was gone. So like week one, he had 9.4 points. Week four was a good week. That was 15. But then the other games that are good are Drake London was out. Like week eight. Hey, guess who showed up again, Kyle Pitts? Then weeks tall through 15. That was Kyle Pitts time. Now, week 16 was also good against Arizona, but I mean, that's Drake London's first game back after the injury. He is, he is terrifying for fantasy football. Always. Always has been, always will be. And I think that this. You can make the argument for him.