At the end of every year of fantasy football, you're left with some immediate observations about what you'll do differently in 2018. You'll spend time thinking about which RB is potentially going to be your money-in-the-bank guy in 2018, or which third-round wide receiver will make up for the 2017 mistake of drafting Terrelle Pryor in that spot.

It'll only be a matter of time until you get to tight ends, and start playing the TE game. Where should you take a TE? Is it that important? You'll go through the five stages of grief by yourself, and it will vary wildly depending on whether you owned Rob Gronkowski, Jimmy Graham, or Tyler Eifert going into Week One of 2017.

Here's the dirty little secret about the tight end position that doesn't get discussed enough, chiefly for the benefit of new players: it's largely been the same group of guys for the last few years rounding out the Top-10, meaning that more often someone is drafting "Rob Gronkowski," the talented over-the-middle tight end that stayed healthy all the time, and not Rob Gronkowski, actual 29-year old person who is going over the middle less as the team tries to keep him on the field consistently. More so than any other position, keep an eye on stats, health, and expected usage, and you can either draft a guy who makes sense at that round (such as Zach Ertz and Delanie Walker going in the seventh round, on average, this year) or at the very least have a last-pick player in your back pocket with a lot of upside (such as Evan Engram or Jared Cook, with very different results.)

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Tight End Busts

It's not that Jimmy Graham had a bad year; in fact, it's hard to call anyone who was drafted fourth and finished sixth at his position a bust. So why does he make the list? Say it with me, Jimmy Graham owners. (This would be the part where the studio audience would scream "It's all about the playoffs!" to me.) Yeah, it's about the fantasy playoffs. In PPR leagues, even with two subpar performances to start off the season, Graham was good for an average of about 13 points a game each week. In the last four weeks, a.k.a. the time in which every single league has to deal with the majority of their fantasy playoffs? He was good for 3.9 points, a reminder that Graham was ultimately playing a specialist position for the latter half of the season, and wasn't in the team's everyday plans. Graham makes this end of the list because, no matter what he did to get you to the playoffs, he may have cost you that same position by being in your lineup and producing nothing. Here's hoping Graham ends up in an offense that features him more next year, and his fantasy value isn't entirely in the past.

It seemed like, despite drafting OJ Howard, this season marked another year of solid play from Cameron Brate. At least, that was the intention. September and October saw a decent target share for the TE, and he held the distinction of four straight weeks of entering the end zone, a valuable commodity for the position. But his luck changed right about the time the calendar flipped to November. Brate saw significantly more games of less than six targets in the last two months. For perspective, he saw more targets in October (37) compared to the entirety of November and December (34). Without having a BYE week to serve as a marker, it's normally hard to tell when the tides change for a player, but paired with an injury to Jameis Winston around the same time, November was the season of Brate's contempt from which he'd never recover, puttering to top-10 finish largely fueled by early season success.

I found a very strange phenomenon when I went searching for consensus rankings on Martellus Bennett in 2017, in that it was almost like I was searching for a missing person. A few rankings sites I visited seemed to have gone back and removed Bennett's name entirely, most likely due to injury, but it also is a reminder that Bennett and his fantasy value fell off the planet this year. For the weeks he was healthy, Bennett effectively halved his fantasy production. Partly due to the injuries of Aaron Rodgers, partly due to a very bizarre saga where Bennett was injured, then not injured, then a Patriot, then injured again, and ultimately bound for the injured reserve list, Bennett was without a touchdown and topped out at an in-game maximum of six receptions. He'll be 31 by the time the 2018 season begins, and with his history of injuries taken into account, may only have an outside shot of fantasy success in that season.

I wanted Julius Thomas to come back strong the same way everyone else did. For everyone who wanted to wait on TE, it was no doubt that Thomas was a popular name as a "last pick," a sort of fill-in player who you could roll the dice on and see if he returned to his fantasy-relevant role after rejoining former offensive coordinator Adam Gase down in Miami. Thomas's season looks a lot like the injured Bennett's first half, only with a small handful of touchdowns to accompany the full season of play. While Thomas was only drafted in deeper leagues (he averaged between 16-20 in ADP at the position, depending on your source), the very little expectations for him were dashed quickly, marking yet another likely quiet end to a formerly fantasy stalwart.

There are a few other tight ends who ultimately round out the list similar to Thomas: low expectations, even lower results.

Vance McDonald? His trade from the San Francisco 49ers to the Pittsburgh Steelers saw McDonald play a bigger on-field role at the end of the season compared to his counterpart Jesse James, but this more hindered both players of the course of the season, instead of defining a clear lead at the position.

Coby Fleener's stat sheet will make your eyes pop out with its roller coaster-like highs and lows, but the reality is that the Saints new tight end only exceed more than two receptions twice in the eleven games he played this season.

Lastly, Austin Hooper, who opened up this season with some vigor similar to Brate, went by the wayside in the second half of the season to the tune of 2-3 receptions a game and no more than fifty yards in a game since Week 9.

Compared to my other lists this season, this is the list where "Bust" seems to be the wrong word. There were very few guys expected to play a large role in their offense that didn't, and there were more potential breakouts at the position this year than pure straight flops. Of course, the determining factor of a players performance at this position, even more than many others in fantasy, is injury. With a position like TE where only one player is really required, compared to a mix of WR and RB's to both fill out a roster and remain competitive in bye weeks, the injuries to big name guys like Jordan Reed, Greg Olsen and Tyler Eifert tend to stick out more in this shallow position. Many of us were affected by our TE, whoever they were, missing at least one game this season, as this brutally physical position has had a rich history of breaks and strains. It tends to even the playing field slightly, while also signaling that having two TE is becoming more necessity than luxury.

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