Deep Sleeper: Tampa Bay Tight End Austin Seferian-Jenkins

As a rookie, Austin Seferian-Jenkins (ASJ for short) didn’t do a whole lot, but that shouldn’t surprise you. Tight ends are notorious for taking 2-3 years to start putting up relevant fantasy numbers. In the last five years we’ve only seen five rookie tight ends surpass the 500 yard mark and none had more than Tim Wright’s 571 yards in 2013. Similarly, only three rookie tight ends in the past five years have exceeded five touchdowns. Those were the Patriots duo of Rob Gronkowski and Aaron Hernandez and Joseph Fauria who wasn’t even fantasy relevant because of how little he saw the field.

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With those facts in mind, I think it’s important not to give up on any of the rookie tight ends from last year just yet. There are some very athletic and talented tight ends from the 2014 class and perhaps none more athletic and promising than Austin Seferian-Jenkins, who dominated at the college level. At a glance, his numbers don’t seem overly impressive; he averaged a 49-613-7 line in 3 seasons with the Washington Huskies. Those numbers are paltry in comparison to the 106-1352-7 line Jace Amaro put up in his final season at Texas Tech, but once you factor in Texas Tech’s pass heavy offense compared to Washington’s more run heavy scheme, ASJ’s numbers become a lot more impressive. This is backed up by Seferian-Jenkins’ college dominator rating on Player Profiler which sits at the 87th percentile, well ahead of either Jace Amaro or Eric Ebron.

Moving to his NFL numbers, ASJ had 21 receptions for 221 yards and 2 touchdowns. Those numbers certainly don’t impress but they do look a bit nicer once you realize he only played in 9 games. He nearly matched the production of Ebron in four fewer games. Another note of particular importance is that ASJ was playing far more snaps than his fellow rookie counterparts. In the 7 games between his two injuries, Seferian-Jenkins was on the field for 93.6% of snaps. He actually played more snaps total than Ebron or Amaro despite playing in fewer games. That is a great indicator that the coaches in Tampa Bay are fans of ASJ and he will be the primary tight end once again assuming he is healthy.

The Bucs did claim Tim Wright off waivers but at 6’4” 220 lbs (a full 40 lbs lighter than ASJ), Wright’s inability to block defenders will be a major issue in him seeing playing time over ASJ. In Wright’s lone full season, he had a -6.6 run block per Pro Football Focus grade while ASJ received a +2.0 last year. Wright was used primarily as a receiver last year and while that sounds nice, in most cases it means you aren’t seeing the field nearly as much which cuts into your opportunities to catch passes. As a result, Wright only had 259 yards. In the same New England system, Aaron Hernandez had 910 yards in 2011 despite the presence of a healthy Gronk for all 16 games. This was because Hernandez was a competent blocker as well.

So now that I’ve made my case for ASJ’s role as primary tight end over Tim Wright in 2015, what can we expect out of him? Well Rotoballer’s own Edward Gorelik wrote a not so positive article about rookie QBs, dispelling the myth that an inexperienced QB will play it safe and check down to his tight ends more often. This doesn’t necessarily spell doom for ASJ as a number of rookie QBs did target their top tight end at least 70 times, which is a respectable number (17 tight ends had at least 70 targets last year). Just don’t expect any sort of boost solely because Winston is a rookie QB.

In ASJ’s seven full games he averaged exactly four targets per game. That is 64 targets over a full season. Is there room for more? I think so, at least a little bit. Louis Murphy had the third most targets last year, receiving at least six targets in four games that ASJ also played in. Three of those games came in weeks 4-6 and Murphy played a less important role in the offense after that. Now he will have to compete with rookie Kenny Bell for the WR3 role and I think there is a very good chance ASJ is ahead of either of them as the third option in the passing game. That could put ASJ at around 75 targets on the season, maybe more.

Simply projecting ASJ’s 2014 numbers over 75 targets give us this line: 46-483-4. Okay, it’s still not incredibly appealing, but those numbers don’t account for the potential benefit of Jameis Winston (not as a rookie QB, but as a likely better QB than McCown/Glennon) and an improved offensive line, where the Bucs spent two second round picks. Those numbers are not unreasonable even within Edward’s cautionary piece on rookie QBs and tight ends. Jermaine Gresham managed to be TE13 in Andy Dalton’s rookie year, while just last year Derek Carr to Mychal Rivera produced a TE19 season. I’d definitely prefer Winston/Seferian-Jenkins over that duo!

Of all the second year tight ends, ASJ is the one I feel best about getting consistent playing time and a healthy number of targets. That original projection alone would make Seferian-Jenkins a top 20 tight end last year and absolutely worth owning in any sort of TE premium leagues or 14 team+ leagues. Given the potential upside as well, ASJ is a very good value at his current FantasyPros ADP of TE26, three spots behind Eric Ebron. It’s nothing sexy, but hey, value is value.

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