In the second in a six-part draft preview series, Fantasy Insanity analyzes tight ends. Next week: quarterbacks.
It is hard to finish on top. “Breaking Bad” did, as well as it’s follow-up “better Call Saul.” Whatever you think of the final seconds of the show, “Sopranos” was strong all the way till the end.
John Elway was at his pinnacle when he retired. Peyton Manning finished his career on top, even if his arm stopped working a season or two prior. Barry Sanders was the best at his position when he called it quits.
But so many others stumble on their way to the finish. Many did not like how “Seinfeld” ended, or “How I Met Your Mother.” The colossal failure that was the final season of “Game of Thrones” is legendary.
Similarly, Todd Gurley’s final days on the field were forgettable. Julio Jones has been clinging to past success longer than “Modern Family” did. It seems like the Ezekiel Elliott show has been running longer than “The Simpsons.”
It is never fun watching stars dim, but if you can spot it happening ahead of time, you can avoid the darkness that comes with poor fantasy picks.
If there is one player who we see currently jumping the shark, it is Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce. We fear he is entering the “introduce a new young character” stage of his sitcom fantasy run.
To be clear, this doesn’t mean he is suddenly useless, far from it. He still is one of the top TE options you are going to find. But he is not the juggernaut he once was. He is now more Kirstie Alley “Cheers” than Shelley Long “Cheers” — still very good, and arguably now more popular and entertaining, even if not as fundamentally strong.
Kelce dominated the tight end position for years. In his second season, 2014, he finished TE6. He dropped to TE8 the next season, then was the TE1 five straight years.
He was TE2 behind Mark Andrews in 2021, then back to No. 1, then fell to TE3 last season, trailing Sam LaPorta and Evan Engram. We feel he could fall further this season.
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LaPorta and Engram will challenge him again, and we also expect Andrews to return to the top of the TE standings. He was TE3 last season before suffering a broken leg in Week 11.
Additionally, Trey McBride averaged nearly 15 points per game in PPR, good enough for TE3 in that span. If the Brandon Aiyuk situation goes sideways, George Kittle could turn in his best season since before the pandemic.
And we expect big jumps in production from Dallas’ Jake Ferguson and Pittsburgh’s Pat Freiermuth — not necessarily enough to put them in the convo of top fantasy tight ends, but plenty to make picking them in rounds 8-11 an excellent value.
Right now, Kelce almost always is one of the top two tight ends drafted. We’re OK with that, it makes sense. He is in that realm. But … doing so requires a pick in the top three rounds. That does not make as much sense.
Fantasy Football DVQ Explainer
Hop out of the pool, unpack your vacation suitcase, boot up your laptop and get ready, because fantasy football season is back.
The Fantasy Madman has returned with the latest iteration of his DVQ.
The Draft Value Quotient is a player rating system that assigns one universal number for every player. This value projects the point in the draft at which a player’s projected production will match the estimated draft pick value.
Since there is a wider separation among production at the top, so too is there a wider gap between DVQ values at the top of the rankings.
The player projections takes into account playing time, expected use/touches, coaching tendencies, part performance and injury history. The DVQ measures these projections against a player’s schedule and factors in positional depth and value above replacement.
These ratings are updated regularly.
One reason Kelce vaulted up our ratings in recent years is because a factor in our Draft Value Quotient (DVQ) is positional scoring variance. Consider, from 2019-21, Kelce outscored the No. 2 tight end by 25, 34 and 38 those seasons. Then in 2022, he was nearly 100 better than TE2.
That separation no longer exists, and we have no reason to believe it is returning. Conversely, some of the younger TEs are in offenses just as favorable, and the Chiefs’ offense is likely to become less Kelce-dependent — with the addition of new wide receivers.
Since there is no a lack of separation at the top of the tight end projections, Kelce’s descent into normalcy is dragging down the DVQ ratings for the entire tight end cast. That means the Madman is much less inclined to pick a top TE and instead wait until much deeper in the draft.
Kelce had a great run. And his run isn’t over yet, but it might start to look more good than great. And we don’t suggest drafting just “good” in the first three rounds. Time to change the channel on this tight ends show.
