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Robert Lorge looks for fantasy football tight end breakouts heading into Week 16. He uses advanced stats for tight ends to find breakouts (champs) and fallers (chumps) to add or drop.
Week 15 is finally in the books and for many, it's a sigh of relief. This past week may have been one of the most challenging fantasy weeks that I can remember. Week 7 when there were six teams on bye is another one that comes to mind, but between the number of injuries fantasy managers had to deal with in Week 15, on top of all the Covid-19 breakouts and postponed games, winning was a measure of endurance. A big congratulatory high-five to any teams still alive in Week 16 is in order.
While the other three positions threw a whole bunch of randomness into the top-12, ironically the most random position – tight end – was the most consistent in Week 15. At quarterback, Tyler Huntley, Cam Newton, Jared Goff, Mac Jones and Justin Fields all finished in the top-12. Duke Johnson, Jeff Wilson Jr., Devin Singletary and D'Onta Foreman all finished in the top-12 at running back. See what I mean about random? At wide receiver, Marquez Valdes-Scantling, Tyler Boyd, Gabriel Davis, Christian Kirk, Russell Gage, Josh Reynolds and Amon-Ra St. Brown all finished in the top-12. At tight end, only Jasper Horsted and Harrison Bryant made out of the blue appearances inside the top-12. Otherwise, it was pretty much what fantasy managers would have expected. So if this season has taught us anything, fantasy managers should be prepared for some wackiness out of this position in Week 16. Be prepared.
While in most 12-team leagues the fantasy playoffs started last week, but in 10-team leagues, the fantasy playoffs are likely just kicking off this week. I am in two such leagues that have four qualified playoff teams and a 15-game regular season. So, now that almost every fantasy league has entered the playoffs, we'll be using this week to take a look back at the season that was at the tight end position. In doing so, we'll be looking at some advanced statistics and handing out some awards, some good and some bad. But first – two tables illustrating some of the more important data points for tight ends.
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Tight End Data
| Tight End | Half-PPR PPG | Routes Per Game | % of Slot Routes | Targets Per Game | Catches Per Game |
| Mark Andrews | 14.3 | 36.6 | 83.6% | 8.4 | 5.8 |
| Travis Kelce | 13.9 | 38.3 | 79.3% | 8.5 | 5.6 |
| George Kittle | 13.8 | 27.5 | 46.2% | 7.7 | 5.7 |
| Rob Gronkowski | 12.1 | 30.8 | 42.8% | 7.0 | 4.8 |
| Dawson Knox | 10.4 | 32.8 | 59.7% | 5.1 | 3.6 |
| Darren Waller | 10.3 | 34.6 | 55.2% | 8.4 | 5.3 |
| T.J. Hockenson | 9.6 | 32.9 | 72.6% | 6.9 | 5.1 |
| Hunter Henry | 9.4 | 24.9 | 87.3% | 3.8 | 2.7 |
| Dalton Schultz | 9.1 | 32.9 | 65.5% | 5.7 | 4.1 |
| Dallas Goedert | 8.8 (10.3 post-Ertz) | 23.3 | 55.6% | 5.3 | 3.7 |
| Kyle Pitts | 8.6 | 31.5 | 84.6% | 6.8 | 4.2 |
| Zach Ertz | 8.2 (9.4 post trade) | 31 | 73.3% | 5.4 | 4.0 |
| Mike Gesicki | 8.2 | 32.7 | 98% | 6.8 | 4.5 |
| Pat Freiermuth | 7.8 | 22.9 | 43.9% | 4.6 | 3.5 |
| Noah Fant | 7.7 | 28.3 | 32.5% | 5.9 | 4.4 |
| Tyler Higbee | 6.6 | 33.5 | 51.3% | 5.2 | 3.7 |
| Jared Cook | 6.5 | 28.3 | 79.8% | 4.9 | 2.9 |
| Gerald Everett | 5.8 | 23.9 | 58.8% | 3.5 | 2.8 |
| Evan Engram | 5.6 | 31.3 | 85.3% | 5.1 | 3.3 |
| Cole Kmet | 5.3 | 28.2 | 75.9% | 5.3 | 3.3 |
| Tight End | Avg Depth of Target | Yard Per Reception | Catch Percentage | Red Zone Targets |
| Mark Andrews | 9.9 | 12.5 | 72.0% | 19 |
| Travis Kelce | 7.5 | 12.8 | 69.7% | 12 |
| George Kittle | 8.1 | 13.5 | 77.8% | 7 |
| Rob Gronkowski | 9.8 | 13.2 | 59.7% | 10 |
| Dawson Knox | 7.3 | 12.0 | 73.3% | 15 |
| Darren Waller | 10.1 | 12.1 | 63.1% | 13 |
| T.J. Hockenson | 7.4 | 9.6 | 75.3% | 9 |
| Hunter Henry | 9.1 | 11.5 | 70.7% | 17 |
| Dalton Schultz | 7.4 | 10.7 | 77.2% | 9 |
| Dallas Goedert | 9.4 | 15.2 | 73.8% | 6 |
| Kyle Pitts | 10.7 | 14.6 | 63.0% | 13 |
| Zach Ertz | 6.6 | 11.2 | 65.0% | 13 |
| Mike Gesicki | 9.4 | 10.7 | 69.6% | 11 |
| Pat Freiermuth | 5.5 | 8.6 | 79.0% | 17 |
| Noah Fant | 6.2 | 9.2 | 77.3% | 13 |
| Tyler Higbee | 5.5 | 9.0 | 73.3% | 16 |
| Jared Cook | 7.9 | 10.7 | 57.7% | 12 |
| Gerald Everett | 3.3 | 8.9 | 87.0% | 6 |
| Evan Engram | 5.4 | 9.4 | 65.6% | 4 |
| Cole Kmet | 8.1 | 10.0 | 65.3% | 9 |
Tim Allen "The Santa Clause"
Mark Andrews, Baltimore Ravens
After 15 weeks, the fantasy community officially has a new No. 1 tight end and that man is Mark Andrews. In The Santa Clause, Tim Allen goes outside after hearing a clatter on the roof. He starts yelling and before you know it, the real Santa Claus is lying in the snow. In this case, Santa Claus is Travis Kelce. The man who has reigned supreme over this position for the last decade. When Tim Allen causes Santa Claus to fall off his roof, it's up to him to save Christmas day.
Andrews has taken up the responsibility of being the best tight end in fantasy. Even after Week 15 when Kelce went and put up 36.1 half-PPR points on Thursday night to climb back into the lead, Andrews responded to the challenge and put up 30.6 to remain the No. 1 tight end. With Kelce at 32 years of age, the decline is likely starting. We've seen it this year already and Andrews is currently the one best slated to assume that mantle.
A Bad Moms Christmas
Tyler Higbee, Los Angeles Rams
Look, Bad Moms was an okay movie. It wasn't great, but it had some one-liners that made me chuckle. My wife liked it more than I did, but then again, her taste in movies is suspect to begin with. Bad Moms had some moments, ya know? I laughed a few times, not a lot, but a few. I would, by no means, call it good. That's kind of like Tyler Higbee before 2021. He had that five-game stretch where he was awesome. The rest of the time, he's been bad.
A Bad Moms Christmas debuted and my wife was excited. She really liked the first one and now you get a sequel plus a Christmas twist and I mean, forget about it. She was 100% sold. I had my doubts. Very, very strong doubts.
Pretty much 25% of Tyler Higbee’s career receptions & yards across 78 games have come in 5 games from weeks 13-17 in 2019. That’s insane. In those 5 games he had 84 yards receiving in all of them. He had never before & never since broken 67 yards in a game. Oofta….
— Rob (@RobFFAddict) August 26, 2021
Like I said, very strong doubts. Higbee has been awful this season. There have been no high points. None. He has one game with double-digit points, but a lot of people were excited about him. With the addition of Matthew Stafford and Gerald Everett going to Seattle, this was going to be his year. Just like A Bad Moms Christmas was going to be a good film. It was never going to be. There was no reason to think it would be. People got excited about a few one-liners and expected a different outcome. It was never going to happen.
It's A Wonderful Life
George Kittle, San Francisco 49ers
There are just way too many similarities here. I mean, for starters we have George Bailey and George Kittle. Let's just get that out of the way right off the bat. It goes deeper than that. George Bailey is a depressed businessman and pretty soon, he starts to wonder what if he never existed at all. Well, what if George Kittle had never gotten hurt? It's a question I know all of his fantasy managers are asking themselves – what if? Not to mention, his head coach, Kyle Shanahan was once quoted saying, "I don't know if Jimmy will be alive on Sunday".
Since Kittle returned from IR in Week 9, he's averaged 16.9 points per game. Andrews, the current No. 1 tight end is at 14.3, so you can see what we're talking about here. What if Kittle had never gotten hurt? Would George Kittle be the new Santa Claus? It's a fair question and it's one fantasy managers will no doubt be struggling over when their 2022 drafts roll around.
Elf
Elf is the best Christmas movie of the past 20 years. It is the best modern-day Christmas movie and that's Travis Kelce. Gronk (we'll get to him) definitely has a claim to being the best tight end of all time, although I do think Kelce is going to, at the very least, make that question a debate. The other thing about Elf is everyone loves it. I have not, to this day, found anyone that dislikes this movie. It's one of everyone's favorite Christmas movies and that's Kelce. We all love this guy. We all know he's the best.
A Boy Called Christmas
Kyle Pitts, Atlanta Falcons
I am sure many of you are wondering what movie is this. It's on Netflix. It's brand new and it's amazing. I encourage any of you who have not seen it to watch it. My kids and I watched it – no joke like three nights in a row – and we all absolutely loved it. I loved it not just because they were sitting quietly and I could take off my dad shoes for a bit, but also because the movie is actually good. Like, really good.
Now, while it may not have come in with the fanfare Kyle Pitts did, the point of this comparison is simple, it's not big – yet. Pitts, while he's been a fantastic rookie tight end by all accounts, hasn't been the difference-maker those who drafted him hoped he'd be. Much like A Boy Called Christmas, which was just released not too long ago on Netflix is unlikely to become a Christmas favorite in its first year. That's just not how things work, not usually. So we need to give it time. We need to be patient because it's got all the ingredients of a classic. I fully believe next year people will be talking about A Boy Called Christmas as one of the best kid's Christmas movies, just like we'll be talking about Pitts as one of the best tight ends in the NFL.
Die Hard
Mike Gesicki, Miami Dolphins
Die Hard is not a Christmas movie. If it were, Step-Brothers and Iron Man 3 are Christmas movies. Since Die Hard is NOT a Christmas movie, it makes sense that Mike Gesicki is the Die Hard of Christmas movies because Mike Gesicki is not a tight end. He's played 612 snaps out wide or in the slot out of his 693 snap total. 88% of the time he's lined up as a receiver and pretty much all of his routes are run from a wide receiver alignment. We can embrace the awesomeness that is Die Hard without acknowledging it as the Christmas movie it is not, just like all fantasy managers can be thankful for Gesicki's tight end designation – without it, he'd be mostly irrelevant. If there's a discussion about what position Gesicki plays, let's go straight to the source...
Friendly reminder that even Mike Gesicki doesn't think he plays tight endpic.twitter.com/ACooWSNTUL
— Ian Hartitz (@Ihartitz) November 17, 2021
Four Christmases
Dalton Schultz, Dallas Cowboys
If you haven't seen Four Christmases, you're doing yourself a disservice. It's an awesome comedy about having to endure family holidays. Especially those holiday seasons where you need to go to, you guessed it, four different Christmas parties. When people make a list of the best Christmas movies, Four Christmases is rarely ever mentioned, but it really should be. As someone who has three different Christmases to attend, I relate to it so well. If that's you, you need to give it a watch.
Tight end top-12 fantasy football finishes:
9: Travis Kelce
7: Mark Andrews, T.J. Hockenson, Dalton Schultz
6: George Kittle, Dawson Knox, Tyler Higbee
5: Rob Gronkoswki, Darren Waller, Zach Ertz, Noah Fant, Evan Engram, Mike Gesicki, Pat FreiermuthI'm not forgetting anyone
— Ian Hartitz (@Ihartitz) December 8, 2021
As underrated as this Christmas movie is, Dalton Schultz has been just as underrated when it comes to tight ends.
Home Alone
Dallas Goedert, Philadelphia Eagles
Home Alone is a classic Christmas movie. The thing I remember most about this movie – especially as a kid and it's true for my kids now – we fast forward it to the part where Kevin starts kicking some serious tail. The build-up, when you're a kid, can be so long, you know? When really all you want to watch are the bad guys getting hit in the face with a paint can or having their head set on fire or having an iron smack them in the mouth. The ending is undeniably the best part of the movie and it's really not even close.
That's Dallas Goedert. In the first six weeks of the season, fantasy managers had to deal with this awful timeshare between him and Zach Ertz. From Weeks 7–15, Goedert is the No. 4 tight end. He's averaging 10.3 points per game during that stretch and is one of only four tight ends in double-digits during that time.
Badder Santa
Dawson Knox, Buffalo Bills
I love Badder Santa. It very well might be my favorite Christmas movie. The one-liners are amazing. Billy Bob Thornton is magical. Not everyone loves it as I do. It is the one Christmas movie I absolutely need to watch every single year. Truthfully, Ted is right up there too. And before you argue if Ted is a Christmas movie, it absolutely is. John gets a magical bear after wishing for it on Christmas. There is no movie without Christmas. Without Christmas, there's no Ted. No Ted, no movie. Anyways, back to Badder Santa and Knox.
Knox is just fun. Sure, Badder Santa may not be the best story – you can certainly pick it apart if you want to – but at the end of the day, it's just fun. That's Knox. It has been fun rostering this guy. For starters, you were able to get him off the waiver wire, which is always awesome. Since then, all he's done is score touchdowns. Don't underestimate him.
There are only 6 tight ends averaging double-digit points in half-PPR scoring.
5 of them are easy…
Kelce, Andrews, Gronk, Waller & Kittle.Who is the 6th?
— Rob (@RobFFAddict) December 21, 2021
The sixth? Dawson Knox.
National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation
Rob Gronkowski, Tampa Bay Buccaneers
National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation is arguably one of the best Christmas comedies and overall Christmas movies of all time. Likewise, Gronkowski is the best fantasy tight end of all time. If you wanted to laugh watching a Christmas movie in the 1990s this was your go-to. This movie has reigned supreme for so long and despite the years going by, it's still a classic. Sound familiar?
Gronk took a year off a while ago and when he came back, there were questions as to whether he still had it. Mystery solved. The dude can still play. He is still unquestionably one of the best tight ends in the game right now despite his age.
A Christmas Story
Evan Engram, New York Giants
A Christmas Story sucks. It is a terrible Christmas movie. I absolutely do not get the appeal to it. My wife loves it. Makes me watch every year and every year when the credits roll, I feel like I wasted two hours of my day, but I do it because it makes her happy. For whatever reason, people love this movie and it's completely mind-boggling to me.
That's Evan Engram. Every year, fantasy managers convince themselves this is the year that everything clicks with Evan Engram. Like some of my Packer buddies believe this is the year Marquez Valdes-Scantling puts it all together. It's sad really. Sometimes we just need to be honest with ourselves and admit reality. A Christmas Story is not good. Evan Engram is not good. Every year, people get excited to watch A Christmas Story and I can only imagine they end up disappointed. At this point, they have to watch it only for the tradition of it all. I have no doubt when the 2022 season rolls around, fantasy managers will be talking themselves into Evan Engram. Not me, I want nothing to do with A Christmas Story. Ever. Not even in there's a fire.
Best Streamers For Week 16
Noah Fant, Denver Broncos
I know everyone is worried about Drew Lock, but he's a gunslinger and that's not always a bad thing as it relates to fantasy. Teddy Bridgewater is a play-it-safe kind of quarterback and that limits upside. Lock can self-destruct, but he can also explode. He's like a less talented Jameis Winston. I'm willing to roll the dice on Lock getting his first start of the season and Fant in a very good matchup. Fant has the Raiders in Week 16 who are allowing the most fantasy points to opposing tight ends per week at 11.6.
Cole Kmet, Chicago Bears
He's averaged 6.8 targets since their bye in Week 10. In Week 15, he commanded nine targets, catching six of them for 71 yards. The volume has been there for Kmet recently, and in the past four weeks, he has two games with at least six catches and 65 yards. He's trending in the right direction and his role and utilization have been fantasy-friendly all season. He's been hindered by the overall offense and quarterback play. In Week 16, he goes up against the Seahawks who are allowing the fifth-most points to tight ends on a weekly basis.
Tight End Busts For Week 16
Hunter Henry. New England Patriots
Hunter was excellent last week in a great matchup and he was the No. 1 streamer last week. If you scroll back up to look at Henry's targets per game, you'll see a very disgusting, very low number. When you're playing Henry, it's for one thing and one thing only – a touchdown. Without one, there's a 99.5% chance you're going to be disappointed. Well, this isn't a good week to hope for a touchdown. The Patriots are up against the Bills, who have allowed the fifth-fewest points per game to opposing tight ends this season. He's an easy fade.
Gerald Everett, Seattle Seahawks
Everett has been surprisingly good lately, but he's not nearly to the point where he's must-start. He's shown well recently, even in some tough matchups, but this isn't an offense that is moving the ball or scoring a lot of points. They're one of the slowest offenses in the league and in Week 16, they'll likely have a healthy Tyler Lockett and D.K. Metcalf which will further shrink the limited volume in the Seattle passing game already. They play the Bears in Week 16, who have allowed the sixth-fewest points per game to tight ends.
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