Fantasy Football 2017 - Top 12 Tight Ends + Sleepers

I don't know how much you can trust him, and you'll have to recalibrate the Cardinals' offense. It's just not good news for the Cardinals. 597 attempts for Palmer. 597, okay, almost 600. Yeah, 647. It sounded a little high, so it did. They wanted to correct that. The risk rating of John Brown is a 10. That's probably too low. Right, out of 10 out of 10, and that's probably too low. You know what it was? Carson Palmer didn't play one of the games, right?

He only played 15, I believe. I was shocked to see that the Arizona Cardinals as a team had more passing attempts than the Jaguars. I was looking that up this morning. I believe the Cardinals were. Yeah, he had the concussion and then the short week against San Francisco. He didn't make it through. Right. Oh, man. Some more happy news. Third round pick, Kenny G. G. G. worked primarily with the first team offense for the first time. Now, in training camp.

We need to be a little careful with Kenny Goladay because he's coming up a lot on the show. I don't want people to overreact. Now, I saw you on Twitter, Mike. You were tempering those expectations. You still said late round. Yes. He's still a late round. He's still a flyer. But, I mean, just following that stock, it's going up. Here's what you need to understand about that situation. It's not a locked and loaded two outside receiver situation in Detroit where there's not room for Gulladay.

Like, Golden Tate's a slot receiver. I mean, he just comes inside and you line up three wide, and you've got Marvin Jones, Kenny Gulladay, and Golden Tate with Riddick and Abdullah. And this is why we talked so much about Matthew Stafford and liking the opportunity there, especially if Ghaladay can be a red zone contributor, Eric Ebron, he's banged up again. But if he can make a contribution. So it is something to pay attention to another player to watch in the preseason.

And a player that I would certainly, if I was drafting today, be taking a late round shot on because you could see his stock and actual playing time escalate quickly. And if you can steal him right now, that'd be great. And I wanted to bring up Mike Gillisly, who has been not practicing with a hamstring injury for quite some time now. It's not good. I saw a report earlier that he was not traveling with the team for a practice.

I can't find the report anymore. Do you guys have any information on that? Was that report pulled down? I did not see that report, but I will say this. The length of time that he has been missing, you know, it was expected to be a couple days. Now we're going into multiple weeks.

that's worrisome, not just from a standpoint of, okay, it's a serious injury, which, you know, a more serious injury than just, you know, a little tweak, which says, okay, it can be reagravated in the season, but also he's new on this team and missing important, you know, training camp time. Yeah. While the other backs there, Dionne Lewis, Rex Burkhead, they are, they are not missing time. They're getting plugged in. This is turning into a puzzle. And.

The puzzle pieces are flipped over. Like, you can't even find the colors that match backwards. Gillisley is not the only handpicked running back there. I mean, Dionne Lewis was handpicked by Billichick. James White is a favorite, and Rex Burkhead was handpicked by Belichick. So all of a sudden, you're in a situation where I think all the stock was rising on Gillisly. Now I'm certainly more apprehensive. Yes.

And I think that that makes it a very risky high upside, but high downside? High downside? Low. This is the, hi, I'm Jason Moore. I'm taking over today between Fastly and High downside. Goodness. You don't want players with a high downside. And Andy, I'm going to ask you about this. Colt Center, Ryan Cowan. Oh, not good.

He's going to miss six to eight weeks. He's not been placed on the IR designated to return with foot surgery. That's what you want coming back injured Andrew Luck. No center. So I mean, that's if you look at. That's trouble. Yeah. I mean, really it's not good news for the entire offense. Obviously bad news for Andrew Luck coming back when he was already sacked as much as he was. But bad news for Frank Gore as well. Granted, it's only going to be the beginning of the season.

but I believe I saw the RB Scout tweeting out the success that Frank Gore had came most of the time when it was going to holes that were affected by Kelly. So that's going to. We've seen pouncy and the impact he's had. We are big proponents of you need to know about centers in football. They're a huge, huge asset to not just the running game, but I mean, but the good centers are calling out protections.

pointing out who the blitzer is going to be. I mean, they're a really important part of the offense. Good friend of the show, Nick Mangold. Yeah. He was once one of the best. And Alex Mack goes to Atlanta, and all of the sudden, the Falcons are one of the best running teams in the league. Alex Mack is a great case study there. All right, we're going to talk tight ends, top 12 tight ends on the show today. We're also going to share some sleeper tight ends that I'm excited to talk about. And before we do that, look, not every show.

We get iTunes reviews, and they say things like, love the show, love the sponsors. And we take pride in that as a podcast. Right now we're going to take a second to thank sponsor of the show. Pristine auction. Now we had, we finally announced our listener league picks. We went through over 500 entries and only, what, 11 of you were able to get into the listener league. So there are so many people that are, if you didn't make it, it wasn't because you weren't deserving.

There were a lot of deserving people. Absolutely. I was going to say, if you feel like you deserved to get in. You're probably right. Yeah, you're probably right. And we were so thankful for those entries. There were, I will tell you this, there were several people who got in this year with an entry that also had entered last year with a great entry, and we didn't let them in because of that, but they were persistent. They sent in another great, unique entry. We got them in.

But a couple of them poked fun at our love of pristine auction. And for good reason, we love pristine auction and their autograph memorabilia. We love the fact that they keep advancing in this area where now you can get autographed jerseys and instantly have them framed and you don't have to like go down to your local store and pay a bunch of money to have them framed. You can order the jersey and then just boom, it shows up framed as well. There are hundreds of daily auctions every single day and you can go grab your favorite player for the upcoming draft for your football room, whatever you're doing.

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They're all about dogs being happy. I have my mom hooked on Barkbox. Her two little doxins. These, look, they're living the life. They're living the dream out there. And they are spoiled each and every month with Barkbox. This is what we need you to do, Footclan. You head over to Barkbox.com slash footballers. You can get a free extra month when you sign up for the six or 12 month plan. That's barkbox.com slash footballers. Let's talk tight ends. I like that drop.

Yeah, that's a good one. Gets you. Doodoo doodoo. Got the tom work on the drums? Who made that drop, Mike? Good job, Mike. So it was really, really good. All right, tight-in rankings, top 12, number one. Consensus number one. We all got him there and he deserves it. Rob Grankowski finished the number one tight-in in 2011, number four in 2012, number one in 2014 and number one in 2015.

And in spite of the injury history, in eight games last year, he had 540 yards. So very good season for Rob Grankowski, insane production. His career averaged this right is 14.5 yards per reception. And last year in basically six games, because he was a... Yeah, do recall that when he came back, he's first game didn't get a target. And then once Brady came back, it was domination.

21.6 yards per reception. That's Deshawn Jackson. That's better than Deshaun Jackson. 106 yard per game average. There's not a lot you need to say about Grancowski other than the fact that you are playing with fire to a degree. And I looked at, I think I went to ESPN this morning, and they had their do not draft list. And the headliner was Rob Grancowski. So how do you feel about that, Mike? That is really funny because this is the first.

year. I have ever recommended drafting Rob Grunkowski because the price is more palatable. Yeah, you can find him in the third round often. When he was, when he's a first run pick, no, no, you do not spend your first run pick on a on a, on a replaceable position. There's only one of them that you have to play. There's only 12 active essentially each and every week.

But if you can get Grunk at the back of the seconds because you're close to the turn or early in the third, I'm all about that life because he is such a difference maker. And you already have two studs on your team that you're not blowing an opportunity cost by reaching for Rob Grunkowski. So I'm all in on it. I know. And it's playing is absolutely playing with fire. But I play to win and I play aggressively. So this year?

I'm in on Rob. He is the one and only tight end that I am willing to draft early, you know, inside the first five rounds. I'm not going to take anyone else that's going inside the first five rounds because they aren't as big a difference maker as they need to be at a position that you only start one at. Gronk right now is statted out in my personal rankings. People ask like, well, where would he be like if he was a wide receiver?

He'd be just behind Mike Evans and ahead of T.Y. Hilton at number eight in my rankings if he were a wide receiver. And he gets to play in a slot where no one else comes really close to that. You look at his consistency when he does start. He is almost 20% higher than second place when it comes to finishes as a top 12 tight in. That consistency is huge. Obviously.

There's the injury risk. But there are, you know, he's got several seasons finishing with 15 or more games, and he has, in the past, won many fantasy teams have won a championship on the back of Rob Grancowski. So it's like Mike said, if you want to play to win and you're willing to take that risk and play with fire, late, second, early third, I say it's worth it. Well, and this is not a, this is a theme that runs throughout the tight-in position.

with injury risk. There are players like number two here, Jordan Reed, Tyler Eiffert, that have had a history of injuries. So we're going to talk about that a lot. Number two, he's on the wall today. Jordan Reed, Rule 86. Oh, he's on the wall! Now, the injury to the foot of Jordan Reed has caused. He's got those orthodontists now. Right. He's got braces on his feet now, and he's working through it. Now, he's got, look, he got some special orthotics for his cleats. And he's loving it, by the way. And he says he's loving it, but come on.

I mean, no one's loving that. Everybody's fine, right, until they're not. So his ADP, though, his average draft position has dropped into the late fifth round. Mike, you know, Jason just said he wasn't messing around with any other tight ends in the first five rounds. But this seems like a price that if you do believe he'll be on the field, we know the impact he can make. He's never played 16 games, but he's very dominant as a force. Gruden said that, look,

everything runs through Jordan Reed. How do you feel about him in the back of the fifth right now knowing the injury situation? I actually disagree with Jason that Gronk's the only difference maker at the tight end. I think Jordan Reed is absolutely right up there with him. Now, what Gronk was doing last year, then he would, he'd be an unstoppable fantasy force. I don't think he's going to over the course of your.

do what he was doing last year of 100 yards per game. But Jordan Reed is right up there with Rob Grumkowski, especially if you are in a half or a full point PPR because they're different players. Gronk's getting you that ridiculous 21 yards per catch. That's not what Reed gives you. He gives you actually very little of those 20 plus yard plays, but he is a huge threat in the red zone. He's a huge threat to score.