The TRUTH: Fantasy TEs in 2019 + Super Bowl Reactions

for what Zach Ertz costs because he was still a top five guy. He's been a top two guy for years. He'll probably, I would guess he's going to be the third titan off the board. Maybe he's not. Maybe some of these other new guys come and take over that spot, but I think he's going to be the third guy. And the reality was he wasn't worth his draft capital at all until the decimation of the other receiving options. Now, if you got to the playoffs,

you were super happy with Zach Gertz. He dominated from weeks 9 through 15. He became the Zacherts we know and love. You brought this up so much the previous year, Mike, the fact that his target volume was so dependent upon whether or not there were other options to throw the ball to. And we saw that through the first, you know, eight weeks of the season. I drafted Zach Gertz. I lived the life of what the Eagles wanted to be before they had to throw to Zach Gertz so much.

It hurts bad, man. He had six double-digit target games. Four of those were when Alshan Jeffrey was out. Exactly. His targets weren't there when Alshan was there and, you know, they're going to replenish. Hugh Lurys talked about, like, they need to get some better house. Did you say? I did say Hugh Lorry. I was making the house. The actor? Yeah. The actor has been really weighing in here? Yeah, he goes. When something hurts, you call house.

Isn't that right? Why am I thinking? I don't know. Jeffrey Lurie? Is that you're looking at for? No. Howie. Oh, wow. That's, that's impressive. Hugh Lorry. Where would that have come from? You've been watching the new space show. I have been watching Avenue 5. Jeffrey Lorry is, you know, he owns the team, doesn't he? Man. All right. Howie Roseman, the Eagles. That's the mistake you made. You're the owner. Yeah. So, uh, anyways, he's, he's come out and talked about.

wanting to replenish, get some more youth in there, and get, he knows that wide receiver is a huge position of need. So, I mean, this is one of those things where, I mean, maybe it'll happen again and they'll have to throw to him. But you also had the touchdown problem once Dallas Goddard started siphoning off those touchdowns. I mean, you have part of the year where he was phenomenal for fantasy and part of the year where he sucked. It's just, this is the,

the episode, the series, the truth. What is the truth of Zach Ertz? The truth of Zach Ertz is that he's going to be a start-worthy tight-in again next year. Sure. That's the truth of Zachertz. The problem is whether the draft capital catches up with him now or not, they threw the ball to the tight-in position more than anybody but Baltimore. And maybe it's just all by necessity, like you said. Part of its weapons, too. You have two top-end tight ends. So.

You know, does Mark Andrews end up getting drafted ahead of Zach Ertz? Because more Mark Andrews' owners ended up winning championships. I think they're going to be pretty close. If you ask me right now, I would imagine Andrews goes a pick or two ahead of Earth next year. I would think so. Austin Hooper? This is going to be interesting as well. My goodness, those first eight weeks for Austin Hooper. He finished number six. His consistency rank was number three.

Will he be the forgotten man next year in fantasy drafts? He's got to have a team first. Yeah, I mean, you are talking about top 10 finishes every single week of the season except for week two all the way through week eight. I mean, before the buy. And then he got injured. He was dominant. Do you believe? I do believe. And not only that, but, you know, they lost some other receiving options. Now, will he be?

back in that role. I mean, it's too early to know, but as far as looking at what he did this past year, and that's all we can say right now, he was very important to the offense. He made Matt Ryan better. He had a clear rapport, and the target volume was so great that he ended up with some monster games, too. So there was nothing not to love about Austin Hooper, and you drafted him late. So he was a home run going forward.

I, you know, I don't see why, you know, Austin Hooper wasn't an afterthought in the NFL draft. He was a highly touted guy. I remember, you know, a lot of... A third round pick. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, I remember a lot of Hunter Henry and Austin Hooper talk and, you know, saying that Hooper, you know, would one day be great, and he was great. So...

You know, I'm in. I'm a believer if this situation is similar next year that what you saw the first eight weeks of the season is, you know, kind of necessity. Do you think that they'll pay him? Because they're going to need to pay him. He's 25 years old. I know the team wants to and they say they want to, but that's going to be a pretty big number for a tight end. And like you said, they lost Sunu. He's a valuable weapon. We've seen Matt Ryan succeed a lot more when he has a reputable tight-in target.

Historically speaking, do you think he'll be back in Atlanta? Because that would sure make predicting his output nicer. I lean the side that he will. Yeah, but not by a ton, I would say maybe 60, 40. True catch rate is when they adjust for like errant passes, right? His true catch rate this past year, 97.4%. Matt Ryan's going out. That's almost as good as Kelsey in the red zone, man. That's,

That's some solid numbers. Matt Ryan's going to be loaning his printer for that contract. I mean, he is going to be knocking down the door to bring back Austin Hooper. If you can throw the ball to him and if you put it in his vicinity, he catches it no matter what. And I feel like because of the fact that he got injured in the second half of the year, he wasn't that great once he got back from the injury. It wasn't what you saw the first eight weeks of the season. You know, I don't think he's going to be drafted where he should be.

You know, if he's back in that role. Well, let's just put it as we've talked about six tight ends. He's at the bottom of the six, right? As far as where he'll be drafted, despite being the third most consistent tight end last year, none of the guys we've talked about so far are going to go behind Austin Hooper in the draft. Kelsey, Kittle, Waller, Andrews, Ertz. They'll all go ahead of Hooper. You're probably right. And if that is true, then Hooper will be my number one target in the draft because the value will be great. I'll probably have him as the third tight end.

um in just projections can i give you another target jared keuk yeah jared kewk uh was that was the longest one yeah it wasn't like it's been a while mike i feel like you gotta it's got to be quick and sharp the magic of jared kook is it's got to be like a whip yes it's just a little kuk did you guys see the sam elliott commercial yeah of course

The mustache dance? There should be a law passed where Sam Elliott can only play Sam Elliott in movies. I think there are. I think he's pretty typecast at this point. His name has to remain the same. He cannot play a character. He cannot name his character. That's against the law. Yeah. You can call him Mr. E. Yeah. Because, you know, it's still. Yeah, that's fair. Ooh. You know. But his mustache does the, uh, mystery pun there. Mustache does the worm.

And then he does all that dancing. We needed more mustache dance in that commercial. I enjoy the commercial very much. So the thing with Jerry, are we moving on to Jerich? Yeah, I guess. Okay. So the thing with Jerich, he was much better than I thought he was going to be this year. Consistency rank number five. Yeah, very consistent, very good. When I look at the totality of all the tight ends and the consistency front to back of how they performed.

There's two kind of numbers that really stand out to me. Take the top two guys out. They were, you know, Kelsey and Kettle were great. Every other really actually relevant tight end was their bust rate was almost identical. 25, 33, 33, 23, 29%. Like, you know, basically about a third of their games they bust. But the percentage of great games that these tight ends perform at, they weren't the same. So like Jared Cook was down at 21.

uh, Zach Ertz was down at 19. And, um, let's see, uh, Darren Waller was down at 19% of their games as great games. So they didn't have as many games that were great in Jared Kuk's, uh, position. It was because they didn't necessarily need him to. He could, he could do it. He was phenomenal. But when you got Michael Thomas and you got all these other options, he, he wasn't as often necessary to have a big game. And so the other players that,

are mixed in Mark Andrews, Austin Hooper, and a guy we're yet to talk about, who had a percentage of monster games way higher up in the 30s. I think I want the guys who have, I'm not worried about how often they bust. I'm worried about how often they can have a great game. That's kind of one of my takeaways from this series for next year. Yeah, Cook is hard, though, Jay, for me. Because if you. Who? Cute. Thank you.

Well, he was Jared Cook for the first four games. That's what I was going to say is you have a new player on a new team for four weeks. If you break down the percentage of times he put up great games beyond week five, that number goes up quite a bit. It goes to 30%. And that would be much better. That's in line with the other players. So if you think this is that would be higher than the 21? I'm saying that would be, I'm saying 30% would be basically in the tier of the Hoopers, Mark Andrews, and.

I would say if you don't have Kittle or Kelsey, you're probably happier with Jared Cook from weeks five on than anybody else in all of football. You could have got, you got Cook off the waiver wire, too. I mean, his worst game in that entire span was 14th at the position. Every other week he was inside the top 12. I just mean from a happiness factor, if Drew Brees is back and Jared Kuk is back, I don't know, I go Kuking again. Okay. Look, if the first month of the season was a new team getting involved, getting used to it,

And that is, that's the reason that I think you're right that Jared Cook would, you know, should be phenomenal next year. I think that that's an easy reason to say, but it could also just been they had other great options because they have other great options. Who? Michael, the offense. I know they have Michael Thomas, but who do they have beyond Michael Thomas? That's it. That's it. You know, Alva Camara.

I would put him in there as well. I'm just saying as far as touchdowns. I'm shocked by Cook's consistency. His consistency was outlandishly good from weeks five on. So whether it was newness or not, they figured it out in week five and it lasted through the rest of the year, which was nice to see because Jared Cook has been in a position to be projected to do well many, many times in the past and never done this before. And maybe that's a reason to avoid it. This was the reverse cook because he was bad week one. Oh, that's interesting.

Jerry Cook is legendary for being awesome week one, making fantasy players spend 20% of their fab. And then he copper fields. Yeah. He's gone. We now call it the Hawkinson. So here's something. I was curious. We have three different really important titans this year that had real, real bad stretches. He had Jared Cook with the first month of the season where he was terrible. You had Austin Hooper.

post-injury where he wasn't the same as after those first eight weeks. And you have, we're going to talk about him soon, Tyler Higby, who was unfathomably good the last five weeks, but the beginning of the season wasn't a starter. I went into our metrics, and I just deleted out all of those bad stretches if we say there's legitimate reason, if. Okay. So if, you know, a Hooper was dealing with the injury, if Cook was getting used to the new team, and Higby obviously was not the starter yet.

based on all of those metrics, Austin Hooper would have been the number one most consistent. Tyler Higby would have been the number five most consistent. And to your point here, Andy, Jared Cook, Kuk, would have been the number two most consistent tight-in, even ahead of Kelsey and Kittle. Yeah, because he was awesome. All right, we need to talk about a few more names that might have some big time relevance next year and need some truth revealed. Tyler Higby. Tyler Higby is weeks 13 on.

What's a revelation? He was the consistency rank of number 10 in the full season. From weeks 11 through 17, he was number three. In that span, he was absolutely dominant. But how do you really bank on five weeks of a Sean McVeigh offense to define where you're drafting Tyler Higby? He's the kind of player that you could draft him. Like, he will go late. Yes. He will 100% go late. So you either go late.

And you catch lightning in a bottle, or you go late and you over commit to a player that isn't actually part of the offense, or he goes late and he is a revelation for you. Well, the nice thing is that when that change happened, the last five weeks, there was, it was not simply just, hey.

Let's throw it to this guy a little bit more and see how he does. You had a snap percentage the whole season that was in the 50s, 60s, and then the last five weeks his snap percentages were 91, 97, 85, 89, and 96% of offensive snaps. They said he is now the starter. He is now a centerpiece of this offense. So I think we're going to have to wait and see going into next year. Is he featured like that? I mean, I don't know if we're going to have.