Fantasy Football 2018 - The TRUTH About Fantasy TEs in 2017

This is what happens when you have a podcast and a microphone and you can get in and say things when you're very upset with a person. Yeah, why don't you remind people while he was nicknamed, why he was nicknamed Baby Hands. Because you and I were playing head to head. And I think that the game, it was a Monday night game, if I recall correctly, and it had come down to you had the Tennessee Titans defense. Which you never want to have your hopes in. Versus the Colts.

And this was the game where Jack Doyle kept fumbling and kept dropping passes. I mean, he was great all season long. But this one, when the national spotlight was on. My Tennessee Titans kept saying, give me that ball. My full attention was on Jack Doyle. I saw the truth. I saw those baby hints. Yeah, they were just too tiny to hold on to that ball. Too tiny and two weak. However, he did finish with the second most receptions for a tight end. He had 80 receptions.

It was a solid year for Jack Doyle. Yeah. What's, what we have, what's interesting here is he did this all without Andrew Luck. Right. He was, you know, one of those late, like when, when you hear it, here it is. Yeah, here's the guy that's going to go. Here's your late round arrow pointing up guy. It's Jack Doyle. Yeah, he'll be drafted in that eighth, ninth, tenth round. I'll be happy to take him. I will as well, especially if luck is actually back. I mean, you know, you can utilize.

him in a number of ways and they have always been kind of that two tight end team you know whether it was uh eric swoop um or uh who's a guy that went to the fleener no it well when it was fleener oh and dwayne allen thank you um but this year it became the jack doyle show maybe by injury or or whatnot but you're going to have a new offensive coordinator here

and it looks like, I mean, it's too early to tell, but it looks like it's going to be probably McDaniels. And I think you're going to have a good offense here that utilizes the tight end. I'm putting my, I claim him. You can't claim him this early. Yes, I can. No. Brooks, it's on the tape. Write it down. Jack DeBow's my guy. If you claim him this early, Mike, I will force you to stick with that even if he's, if everything goes wrong.

They go and they sign a big tight in. I'm going to say, nope, you said he's your guy. Are you sticking to that yet? I do what I want, Jason. All right. So how was Jack Doyle this year? I mean, 80 receptions, 690 yards, four touchdowns. He had 107 targets. He was great. Only 7% of the time. But he was good. 40% a bus rate of 40%. So he's, we're getting more into the line of streamer. Exactly. A streamer.

But putting up similar production to the guys just ahead of him in Delaney Walker and Kyle Rudolph. Jack Doyle, he was the start of the week countless times on this show because you could pick him up. He was on the waiver wire frequently. People getting mad at them baby hands. But then he just came through. When it was a good spot for Jack Doyle, you felt like he could come through and he would come through.

Yeah, I mean, if you look at his game log and you try to remind yourself of people really were up on Jack Doyle going into the draft. And he disappointed people and got dropped everywhere because three of his first four weeks were atrocious. You had week one with who played quarterback for the Colts in week one. I can't even remember his name. Was it Tolzing? Yes, Scott Tolzing. Thank you.

There you go. And then you had the quarterback change and you're trying to figure that out. You know, I mean, put it this way. His first four weeks before thereby, he was averaging five fantasy points a game. Oh, dominant. And half points. So, yeah, he was on waivers. From that point on, you know, he averaged 9.6 fantasy points a game and was much better once you got that rapport established. You still, though, had those games that were frustrating.

where he would disappear. And sometimes those games were games where you go, it looks like it should be his game. But I put almost all of that on the fact that the Colts were hapless offense. And Jacoby Brissette, you know, you had a game plan where it seemed like this week it's either Jack Doyle that I'm going to look to first, second, and third, or it's T.Y. Hilton I'm going to look to first, second, and third. It was more often Doyle than T.Y. Hilton. But if luck comes back, he's going to be able to utilize him. He's a good.

He's a good real-life receiving tight end. He's a good football player. Not the most over-athletic guy. You don't want to be over-athletic. If you're over-athletic, I'll run that ball. That's a fair point. Underthrow everything. Somehow, number nine on this list is Cameron Braith, and he has a consistency rank of number 10. This is blowing my mind right now because I have the stink of week seven through 12.

That's all I remember. No, no, no. You don't need week seven through 12. You have the stink from week one through 17 because he wasn't good. Okay. How do we get these numbers? But that's the real. 600 yards and six touchdown. This is the truth of tight ends this year. He was, he was a top 10 tight end, top 10 consistency, and he was awful.

56% of the time, more than half the time, he busted, meaning he was so bad. He was great 25% of the time. Yeah, he was, I mean, he was a real boom bust type of player. He had a quarter of his games that were game winners. He had half of his games more than that were game losers and then he was, you know, okay, the rest. But that's a top 10 tight end in this landscape. You know, if you want to make the argument that you should go hard in the paint after Zach Gertz or,

Travis Kelsey or Grunk. Camera breaks your argument. You say, I don't want to deal with a top 10 tight end. I need a top three tight end or I can't handle it. I'll grant you that. That's understandable. Weeks one through seven. Week one, I guess is bad, but I'm just, I'm including that because that's when the run really happened. He was excellent.

Yes. I mean, he had a stretch early on in the season before James Winston went down where he was averaging almost 12 fantasy points. Yes, yes. Right around there is when we had Ryan Fitzpatrick come in and Cameron Brate was removed from the game plan and then just couldn't seem to even get things going back when James appeared or when James came back from the shoulder injury. Camera Brate will be interesting next season. He averaged almost 12 fantasy points a game.

Those first seven weeks. You want to guess what he averaged from week 8 through 17? And keep in mind, keep in mind. He played in every single one of those games. I'm going to go three points a game. Close. 4.7. Oh, that's very close. So also known as top 10 tight end. I mean, this is the truth of the landscape. Oh, it's tough. This is why we don't want you to go away thinking, oh man, I have to get one of those top three tight ends.

Because that's not the strategy that has to win. What we want you to go away with is thinking, I want to stream the position. Because you can grab Cameron Bray, a top 10 tight end off of waivers all throughout the year. People are not holding on to Cameron Brate. You could grab them in most leagues. You can grab Jack Doyle off of waivers throughout the season. He puts up two bad games in a row. He'll be on waivers. You could grab them. You can grab a...

Jason Wittner, Benjamin Watson, or Eric Ebron, or Jared Cook all through the year, and you stream the matchups, and I promise you. Now, when you stream these matchups, you're not getting grunk, you're not getting Zach Kurtz, and you're not getting Kelsey. But you're probably getting what's right after that. You're probably getting about what would equate to the fourth best tight end or the fifth best tight end. I'd go five, six range. If you play that matchup versus.

grabbing a guy that's going to finish as the 8th or 9th or 10th best tight end and be so wickedly bad that he ruins your fantasy season. Number 10, Jason Witten, a consistency rank of only 14 was great, 13% of the time good, 25% of the time busted half. 50% of the time. He averaged just 8.9 yards per reception on 87 targets. That puts him at 5th worst. That's from our...

or that's a hot stat there for Jason Witten. He was tough to gauge because at the beginning of the season, it seemed like Jason Witten was a, he was like the tied in two forever. Well, that was because his first two weeks were really good. Those first two weeks he scored 15.4 and 20.7. And it was like, oh, man, he's going to be utilized very well. From that point, from week three,

Through week 11, he averaged 4.9 points. So that was still while Dak was playing well. That wasn't he had down weeks because Dak had down weeks thing. Jason Witten, I mean, everybody we named from here on out is the exact same story. It's, yeah, you finish as a top 12 tight end. If you played him week in and week out, you're not even making the playoffs.

You can't start these middling guys week in, week out. You have to play matchups. That's why leagues that, you know, that put a cap on waiver moves, things like that, oh, that's just terrible. And those leagues, you should go after Gronk or Elsie or Ertz. Elsie? From Frozen? The K is silent. Travis Elsie.

Uh, we are, we've already gone pretty long, but dad's gone. I don't really care about that, but a couple going. A couple more guys I want to highlight here. Hunter Henry finished as a tight end 14, but Jason is claiming. I am. Jason is claiming that Hunter Henry was the sixth most consistent tight end. Jason, are you standing by this claim? I stand by this claim. Here's why because you might go, well, wait, he was very inconsistent.

You remember his nickname, Mike? The goose. Why is his nickname, the goose? Because he's, week one and week three, week one, when I needed one reception for five yards from Hunter Henry to win my matchup. And he got zero. Yeah, it was, it was definitely frustrating, especially the beginning of the year. But here's why he was the sixth most consistent tight end. First, because tight ends suck. Second,

because it doesn't matter for our for what we're looking at a consistency it doesn't matter if you scored four points or zero points if you put up a crap game it's it's a crap game you're going to hurt him now obviously i'd rather have four more points on my roster than zero so you can argue with that but when we're just looking at is this guy good how often is he good how often did he help my team 50% of his games

He was a good tight in. He finished the week half those times as basically what amounts to being a good play and helping you. He also had, you know, a game where he helped win the week for you. Going forward, Gates is only older. I like Hunter Henry. Definitely worth pointing him out. Yeah, he could be one of those late round arrow guys as people. Calling it out, Brooks. That's my guy. Oh, nice. Very nice. But as people return to fantasy football and they see.

Hunter Henry 14th. Nah. He went from eight touchdowns to four. I just hope Antonio Gates comes back, which he's saying he wants to solely so that Hunter Henry continues to go late in drafts. The last guy I want to point out here, good friend of the show. Rule 86. Oh, I didn't know. Oh, who did you? I thought you were going good friend of the show. Jason Moore.

best buddy championship runner oh charles clay sure we can point out charles clay he was because he should be talked about 18th ranked in uh for fantasy as a tight end consistency ranked though of 12 he started the year hot yeah I mean hot the reality with Charles Clay is he had he only played 13 games and there was a game in there without Tyrod Taylor which was you know Tyrod and Charles Clay had that connection so

We'll have to see if Tyrod comes back. I doubt it. But if he does. No, Tyrod Taylor will not be a Buffalo bill. But Charles Clay was good 38% of the time. He's done. He's done. He's done. His career's over. All right. I just wanted to point out Jordan Reed. It was a, it was bad. It was a bad year for Jordan Reed. You're going to need to coin a new word. Okay, because if, you know, stompled.

trompled, trompled, whatever it is. We coined two words today. Saying that Jordan Reed's year was bad. It was Reed ridiculous. Oh, I love it. I love it every minute of it. It was Reed ridiculous. There it is. They can't all be winners, but some of them. Consistency rank of 24, six games. You know the story of Jordan Reed.