Fantasy Football Podcast 2016 - The TRUTH About Fantasy TE's in 2015, News, Review-a-Saurus

You kind of burned a fourth round pick on Travis Kelsey, you know. Yeah. So is there a risk with Reed in the same category? There is absolutely a risk. But what we've seen with Jordan Reed, this will be his fourth year. Is that right? I believe so, yeah. But when he's played and been, you know, he's acclimated to the offense, the offense really runs through him, the passing game. Even when Griffin was the quarterback, it just.

Reed soaked up targets where Kelsey was a projection, so to speak, of a lack of weapons. You had Macklin come in, but besides Macklin, there was no one of name value that had shown, had proven their talent where Kelsey had, I mean, his metrics of yards after catch and everything. We'll talk about Kelsey in a second, but Kelsey was, so there was a bit of projecting of improvement for Travis Kelsey. What's incredible is last year,

Reed played in 11 games. He had 50 catches last year. He had 87 this year. How many touchdowns did he have last year? Did you know this? Do you know this number? Did he have any? Zero. Yeah. Zero touchdowns he had 11 this year. You know, there's always warnings with high touchdown numbers, but those don't really persist unless you have low reception numbers. So we're going to get to some of those guys here soon. Number four, there's someone very specific. Yeah, we're going to get to one guy.

Greg Olson, though, at number four, tried and true, right? Like, to me, he is the Jason Witten-esque type of just, you know you're going to get production from him. You know he's not sexy enough to probably go high, high in the draft. He was last year. Yeah, that's true, because everybody else was gone in that passing offense. But, look, Olson did it. 77 for 1,100 yards, seven touchdowns.

You would have liked to probably see some higher touchdown numbers from him on a year where he came through for so many. So because of that, he was only the number six most consistent tight end. He had a couple dud games, a couple prolific games, and then he was pretty much a solid top 10 tight end week to week. Yeah, and I think next year, what will be interesting of, you know, where is he drafted? Because, like I'm saying, the shine on Greg Olson, who had a very solid year.

We've got to do a shine episode because that is just, that's such a dynamic in fantasy football that's ignored, you know, where big names, new names, the Abdullah's, Kelsey's. Right. These guys that, because we're all shooting for the moon, right? We all want the joy to win. You play to win. But, yeah, Olson will be, he'll be 31 heading into next year too. And I think he will be perfectly fine. I think he'll be a great option. And he could be even better than like a Reed.

value, because Olson might drop to the 6th round just because of just hype and things like that, the stock market value of these players and the perception, where Olson, I think, will be, he should be very solid again next year. You do have Kelvin Benjamin coming back. Devin Funches, I believe, is coming on. He'll be the wide receiver two.

and we get to see some more of him in the playoffs, you know, to verify if that's going to happen or not. But I think Olson should be similar. Similar numbers to this. I don't know if he'll get 1,100 yards, but, you know, the 70 catch range, 1,000 yards. It's very doable, and that's fantastic. If you get those numbers, if you can get 1,000 yards out of your tight end, you're very happy. Yeah, you've got a very safe baseline week to week. He's not going to cost you games. Now, number five on this list.

I've got some interesting numbers about him. He had the most receptions at the position. Oh, 94. He had more receptions this year by about 30% than he had his last few years, 60, 63 jumps up to 94, 31 years old, Delaney Walker. Yeah. Now, I am very curious about him because I could, you can craft arguments for players.

And I feel like I could craft two narratives for him. I could do the narrative that is, look, stability at the quarterback position. Young guy that, you know, Mariotta looked to Delaney Walker. Walker was reliable. Six touchdowns this year. The numbers have never been high. That's the most in his career. But seeing him jump 30 plus receptions and jump up in yardage there, I just don't know if they get Kindle right back.

They had no stability at the outside position. Green Beckham kind of came on late in the season. What do you project for Delaney Walker next year? Is he somebody that you're very confident in? Is he somebody you're hesitating with? Is he somebody you'd like to draft real late? Yeah, he's shaping up to be one of those great late round, late around, ninth, tenth round, guys. Listen to the target numbers for the back half of the year. 10, 8, 12, 13, 5, 15, 14. Good grief.

Yeah, 133 targets on the year, which led all tight ends. Oh, man, and that's what you want. You want that opportunity. And I don't think that's... I feel like he's going to return to the mean. Really? I feel like he's going to return to that 60-70 catch range. I think he might drop back down to, what was he before? 60, 63. Yeah, I think it would be somewhere in between the 90s and the 60s. It's going to have a lot to do. I mean, look, they had no weapons at the end of the year. Right was out for most of the back half of the year. They couldn't run the ball either.

You know, their short passing game. He was like, he was the first and second read on every play too. It's going to be very interesting what develops on their offense with David Cobb or do they draft a guy? Do they draft another wide receiver? Who do they sign, bring in? Who's healthy? Delany Walker, though, you can't argue with the fact he got it done. He was the number three most consistent tight-in. He's the only tied-in who never once finished outside the top 20. That's not too bad. And I think Walker will be drafted exactly where he was this year. I mean, just very late.

Very late. Nowhere. Yeah. I saw him drafted at a couple spots, but there was leagues where Walker went undrafted. Yeah. And now he was a guy who also played better against worst past defenses. And I think that's a product of Marriota. Yeah, that makes sense. Rookie quarterback. Of course, you would hope that they play better against a worst defense. Now, next year you like that gap to close.

So just to be a solid quarterback against everybody. But it makes sense to me. All right. Let's get to number six. Here he is. All right. That's not really fair. It's Tyler Eiffert. I sounded the alarm because there is one thing that stands out about Tyler Eifford compared to all the guys. Okay, so let me read this to you. Here's the catch totals from the top eight tight-ins. 72, 79, 87, 77, 74.

72, 74, and then there's Tyler Eifford. So that's through the top eight. That's through the top eight. Eifer had 52 catches. Aye. Here's the target numbers. 110, 133, 103, 103, 124, 114, 114, 115, 120. Tyler Eifert, 52. 52 target? That can't be right. No. That's got to be wrong. That is so low. You did it. I know. I know. I'm going to vet it real quick. But.

The truth of the matter is he had so... No, no. He had 52. I'm sorry. It was 72 targets. 52 on 72. 52 catches on 52 targets. Tyler Iper. The best tight end in history. The most perfect. He's got nice gloves, okay? He's got a really good catch rate. No, but 52 on 72 is a great catch rate. That being said... 72 is very low. Very low comparatively. Yes, he missed three games. He had 13 touchdowns. That's why he's number six on the final.

on the docket here. He had 13 touchdowns, and so the panic alarm goes off because I just, look, that offense is good enough for him to score 13 again. I'm not saying it's not. He's a red zone target, but with Eifert, you are buying into a standard league tight-end type of guy, in my opinion. You're not going, if he doesn't score, he's not going to put up the kind of numbers that a Delaney Walker will give you baseline week to week. There were a couple weeks when Eifford was outside the top 20.

Eifford had a zero week. Yeah. If you remember. Right. And he did catch a touchdown. It was called back on the logistics of a catch rule. But he still had zero. He finished that game with nothing for nothing. And how many weeks did he have his production fully supported just by a touchdown? Like a one catch touchdown game? Yeah. I'm not sure. Because he had some lower catch weeks. Now look, he's a guy that we, yeah, listen to this. Second half of the year, okay?

Week 10 on, catches. Three, three, three, three, zero, two, zero, zero. Well, it's... Okay, he was injured. Okay, sorry about that. Three, three, three, three, two four. Yeah, that's... Not a PPR production type of situation. Nope. You know, but, that being said, he had three catches, two touchdowns. Three catches, one touchdown. So it's just a warning to you out there that...

My opinion is Tyler Eifford's not going to be on any of my teams. Because Eifford's name got big this year. The 13 stands out and he's going to go higher than some of these guys we've talked about on the list. Who goes higher in the draft? Eifert or Greg Olson. Ooh, that'll be close, right? That'll be very close. Look, I mean, Eifford or Barnage. Eifford. We'll go before Barnage. Yeah, exactly. So that's kind of my point is that...

You have a little bit of, you got upside with Eifford, great offense, red zone, targeted in the red zone, great talent, obviously missed some games, so those numbers will be a little higher. Just wanted to throw it out there. Yeah, it's good to keep these things in mind right now before you start. We start sweltering the shine. Look, tuck it away, pull out the drawer, file this away. Remember it when you start looking at these off-season trades, someone comes and offers you. Oh, man, you want to go, give me, you know, barnage in a pick to get Eifert. Well,

Be careful. Right. Be careful what, you know, what's before you. So number seven, we talked about him briefly. Zeus. He was the shiniest of shiny. Travis Kelsey. He looked, it's not a bad year. 72 for 875 and 5 on 103 targets. But he wasn't what you hoped he was. No, it's the touchdowns were lacking.

and the monster games. I mean, he gave you week one out of the gates. Well, he had a monster week. He wasn't in the top two because that was, if you remember, week one, there was this really strange tight end explosion. Right. Where Gronk, I think had three touchdowns. I had a couple touchdowns. So Kelsey wasn't in the top two technically. But that was, that was his only big week. And it was, man, you felt great. You felt great because that was a week winning.

performance unfortunately you didn't really get any more of those he was just he was solid but the offense where you thought or I thought that Alex Smith would go to him more that it wouldn't be the Macklin show which it turned into the passing game really became all about Macklin it was just yeah it's a frustrating it's not disappointing but frustrating for sure

There are guys that had very... Okay, so the next guy in the list is Benjamin Watson. He had an almost identical stat line, right? Yeah. When you look at Benjamin Watson, you don't have any feelings of disappointment. You don't have any feelings of discouragement. You waver wired him. Because you waver wired him. The numbers were identical. Look, Kelsey was 72, 875, 5 on 103. Watson was 74, 8, 25, 6 on 110. These guys were back-to-back in consistency rating.

Watson kind of, you know, Josh, what was it, Josh Hill, right? Got the off-season narrative in a lot of fantasy departments, and we said, wait, hold on a second. Look, he's not done anything. This guy doesn't, he's not Jimmy Graham, and then Ben Watson came out and proved that he can still catch the ball at an old age. Josh Hill did his best Tyler Eifford performance last year, where he was just, you caught the ball once a week, but it was a touchdown.

Now, Benjamin Watson is 35 years old. So I've got a new game we're playing for the second half of the show. Okay. And it's called Travis Kelsey or Benjamin Watson next year based on draft spot. Oh, man. Based on draft spot? 35-year-old Ben Watson, young guitar toting. It was the Donkey Kong punch. Oh, that's right. Just a reminder. Travis...

Where does Kelsey get drafted? I mean, he burned people, so to speak. So I can't imagine. Eighth round? Yeah, I'll say seventh, eighth round is probably where he'll go. Ben Watson will go undrafted. Yeah, or very late. So, yeah, if they don't make a move for a tight end in New Orleans, give me Ben Watson. All right, we'll keep it going then. So Watson was eight, number nine.

was Richard Rogers. Hill Mayor. Richard Rogers. Oh, he's getting in on that, too. I guess. 58 for 510 and 8. I feel like about half of the 510 came in one game. Yeah. He had 85 targets, and Richard Rogers was what, he has a very cool name, and here's what it is. Tied end to a great quarterback. Yep. Right? And some of the competition there fell away.