The Weekly Bender: Navigating the Tight End Position

Sat Jul 5 11:27am ET
By HOWARD BENDER
Fantasy Writer

Bowers has high price tag

When I was an aspiring fantasy analyst so many years ago, there were two pieces of advice given to me that I have tried to pass down over the years in the hopes of mentoring and boosting others in their careers. The first was to have a second sport. Believe it or not, I began my career as a fantasy baseball guy but immediately adopted football as my second sport. Being able to cover both helped showcase both my abilities and dedication with around-the-clock work while also proving my worth as a full-time contributor.

The second piece of advice was to find a niche where no one seemed focused. I picked two. One was mock drafts. I began something called the Mock Draft Army where I filled half the draft room with fantasy industry greats and the other half with readers, subscribers, listeners, anyone who wanted to mock side-by-side with the experts whose content they were consuming. But the second niche I found was in the world of tight ends.

Most people assume I received the “Tight End Whisperer” moniker during a 2017 run when I picked a DFS bargain tight end to score a touchdown for 15 of the 16 weeks of the regular season. Maybe that’s when it went a little more mainstream, but in fact, I was breaking down the tight end position long before anyone gave it a thought. For years, all I saw was how it was a throwaway position but I knew there was more. I knew there was a way to gain an edge over the competition and if no one was looking at tight ends, I was going to find a way to use them to my and my readers' advantage. I was dishing out names like Rob Gronkowski, Jimmy Graham and Antonio Gates before they blew up and I dazzled people with late-round gems like Visanthe Shiancoe and Julius Thomas.

Today, there are a lot more eyeballs on the position. People either understand how to use it better to their advantage in the fantasy game or they understand that everyone and their grandma wants to be a fantasy football analyst, so they need a specialty. Even my co-host on the Fantasy Alarm Show, Andrew Cooper, has found a home breaking down tight ends. But this isn’t supposed to be a history of fantasy analysts. It’s the beginning of your training; your guide to drafting properly and getting the full value out of a position most don’t understand how to draft.

We don’t need to go all the way back to 2005 to start. We can simply pick up from where we left off last season, which was supposed to be the Year of the Tight End. It wasn’t and it left people incredibly frustrated.

We saw some incredible performances in 2023, including a group of rookies who helped us buck the trend of not drafting first-year tight ends. We watched Kyle Pitts have a 1,000-yard season in 2021, Trey McBride burst onto the scene in 2022 and in 2023, Sam LaPorta and Dalton Kincaid emerged as the next wave of elite-level tight ends. Add in Travis Kelce, George Kittle and Mark Andrews and suddenly this position was flush with talent with all sorts of draft possibilities.

Last season I recommended drafting one of the top-five tight ends – Kelce, LaPorta, McBride, Kincaid and Andrews. I had Kittle as a close sixth. A full season from one of them would give you a significant advantage over someone who waited on the position and drafted someone like Dallas Goedert or Tucker Kraft. Did it work? Sort of.

First off, I warned you against drafting LaPorta in the second round. He was still the third target in the Lions’ pecking order and he needed to surpass his 889-yard, 10-touchdown season to provide value where he was being drafted. That was a win for me, though he did finish the season with the sixth-most fantasy points. Of course, I also told you to wait until the fifth round where you could just grab McBride or Kincaid which only had a 50-percent success rate.

By the end of the season, in full-point PPR formats, only McBride and Kelce finished in the top five. They were joined by Kittle, but with LaPorta sixth and Andrews ninth, people were disillusioned. It didn’t matter that the difference between TE1 and TE10 was 99.4 points (5.4 points per game) and that there still was an advantage to drafting one of the top guys, but everyone was so focused on the misery of Kincaid and Pitts owners and the emergence of Brock Bowers followed by the rise of Jonnu Smith, that the anti-TE community continued to say drafting one early was a mistake. Was it? No. Did every top guy work out? Also, no, but it’s not enough of a reason to dismiss the position.

Entering this year, it would appear that we are destined to repeat our mistakes. People are drafting Bowers in the late-first or early second round, completely ignoring what happened with LaPorta last year or the fact that it’s a new coach, a new offense and a new quarterback. I’m not saying he’s going to be a complete bust a la Kincaid, but for where he is being drafted, he needs to duplicate last season’s totals.

As for the rest of this year’s top five, McBride and Kittle both have my full confidence. They maintain strong target shares within their offenses and while it may cost you a fourth or fifth-round pick, they should be worth it. The next two, LaPorta and T.J. Hockenson, are fine to draft, but given both are sitting third in their team’s target list, it might be better to bypass them as well.

In fact, take a look at the current fantasy football ADP. I’m not sure drafting anyone in the top-five is really going to be worth it. Do you really think it’s better to draft Bowers than someone like Josh Jacobs or A.J. Brown? McBride versus Kyren Williams? Kittle versus Garrett Wilson or Kenneth Walker? LaPorta versus RJ Harvey? I’ve outlined the point differentials at the position up above? If I did the same for running backs or wide receivers, the disparity looks even greater.

I think you have a better shot gaining an advantage drafting Kittle or McBride in the fourth or fifth, but there is zero chance I am investing such a high pick in Bowers and I feel much more confident in the next tier of tight ends like Evan Engram or David Njoku. Heck, I’d even take the discount on Kelce than I would someone like Jonnu Smith, who broke out last year because of injuries to Dolphins receivers and is now stuck in Pittsburgh sharing snaps with Pat Freiermuth.

You’re going to hear a lot of tight end talk as training camps fire up. People are excited about the top guys and they’re excited about the rookies like Colston Loveland and Tyler Warren. Be ready to sift out the noise and understand where the value is going to be found.

Just like last year, there is no reason to reach so high for the top name. The bottom end of the first tier and the top end of the second tier is where you want to live. You want a tight end who is a functioning part of the offensive scheme and is either second or third on his team in targets. McBride, Kittle, Engram and Njoku stand out the most based on our criteria, with honorable mentions to late-round picks like Mason Taylor and Chig Okonkwo.

We’ll cover more of this as we move further into training camp, but for the time being…

Bender out.

The Weekly Bender: Navigating the Tight End Position

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