Tight End ADP Risers

Antonio Losada looks at the fantasy football ADP variation of three tight ends and assesses their fantasy football value as their draft value rises in 2021.

We continue looking at ADP risers and fallers through the offseason as we already completed our first run back in June.

Average Draft Position (ADP) indicates the average position where a player is drafted over more than one fantasy football draft. You can consider it as the price you have to pay to draft and get a player on your team.

ADPs are helpful to gauge the average value of players on draft day as viewed by the competition.

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Tight End - ADP Risers

Robert Tonyan - Green Bay Packers

No one has to be a genius to understand this ADP rise. In two words: Aaron Rodgers. The quarterback is back in town, he's healthy, he'll spend at least one more year in Green Bay before calling it quits or moving on to another place, and the Packers feature a stud WR (Davante Adams) and a mighty RB (Aaron Jones) to go along with TE Robert Tonyan as the clear starter at his position in GB.

Tonyan, though, comes off a career year that looks like a freakish outlier all across the board. Tonyan was the fourth-best tight end of 2020 thanks mostly to scoring 11 (!) touchdowns on just 59 targets, of which he caught 52 of them. Low volume plus sky-high production screams regression to the mean, folks. The 19-position rise Tonyan's ADP has experienced in the past month has the four-year man as the TE11 in terms of price while being projected to a TE12 finish (per PFF).

The 143+ PPR points that PFF sees as a probable outcome for Tonyan aren't bad, sure, but they aren't overly great and would fall quite short of his 2020 tally of 176 FP. But that's a reasonable expectation. Tonyan is not going to score even half of the touchdowns he put up last year, Rodgers in town or not. There it is, there I said it. There is no such thing as a surefire-tight end outside of Kelce/Waller/Kittle. Outside of those three, you're better aiming at the position with a 13+ round pick, and fantasy GMs are getting Tonyan before drafts reach that round. Just fade Tonyan--a man in which GMs are banking absolutely and purely because of past and hardly repeatable production--and move on.

Irv Smith Jr. - Minnesota Vikings

Irv Smith is finally getting the TE1 gig after sharing the field with veteran Kyle Rudolph for the past few years since he entered the league. This new larger dose of opportunities is undoubtedly going to contribute to an uptick in production for Smith and see him raise his total and average fantasy-point production over the season.

On top of that theory, actual news came out of Minny's camp reporting a good rapport between Smith and veteran QB Kirk Cousins through the summer sessions. There is no way that Smith edges Adam Thielen and Justin Jefferson in targets and usage, obviously, but he might have a way to be the third-most used receiver above recently-signed Dede Westbrook.

Is the rise in ADP worth trusting and ponying up a top-100 pick on the third-year TE, though? I'd say yes, as long as the ADP doesn't keep growing and turns Smith into too much of a risky/expensive bet. Irv Smith projects to a TE15 finish next year to the tune of 132+ PPR points as PFF sees it. That's not bad, and if he is lucky, he could find himself into the TE1 realm because of the volatility of the position and the players that make it. But anything breaking the 75-to-80 ADP for Smith would be just too much for me to swallow.

Adam Trautman - New Orleans Saints

This is a very interesting case because there are two confronting things colliding here--although, by the look of it, for now, it's the positive news that is winning the battle as Trautman's ADP has been on the rise of late. To wit: Michael Thomas is officially out for a good chunk of the season, the Saints have a slim-at-best receiving corps that will feature Tre'Quan Smith as the WR2 (just imagine), and Trautman was already a breakout candidate for 2021 after an ultra-limited 2020 season in which he only logged 16 targets in 15 appearances.

Now, for the bad news: QB1A Taysom Hill is seemingly projected to start at the quarterback position come Week 1. I mean, nothing world-breaking, but still bad news considering Hill's mojo is on the ground rushing the rock and putting on gimmicky shows, while QB1B Jameis Winston is widely known for his guns blazing approach and don't-give-a-damn tendencies.

At the end of the day, perhaps Hill starts the year slowly playing the safe route and throwing short aDOT passes that benefit Trautman and help him rack up points. The receiving corps just sucks, so it's not that he will have it hard to get targets if he can be a steady performer out there. For his price (ADP of 112th overall; TE15) and projection (113+ PPR points), Trautman's isn't the smartest of picks to make in this summer's drafts even though he's in a prime position inside his offense to put up numbers. Don't get fooled by that seemingly positive context. The likes of Evan Engram, Jonnu Smith, Gerald Everett, and Rob Gronkowski are getting drafted around Trautman's ADP and come with much higher floors.

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