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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 2020.
We continue looking at ADP risers and fallers through the offseason as we already completed our first run back in June. You can check our first review of the early-summer risers and fallers at running back, wide receiver, tight end, and quarterback.
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 in 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
Irv Smith Jr., Minnesota Vikings
Slowly but surely, fantasy GMs are buying more and more into the upside of second-year TE Irv Smith Jr. The sophomore on the Vikings might feel like a good deal at his current ADP of 135 OVR and TE23 off the board, but that's not really the truth. What is the reason behind it? First and foremost, when looking straight at PFF projections, Smith Jr. would finish 2020 with 120 PPR points, which is good for TE20, but only the 169th-best player in fantasy football overall. That's more than a 30-player gap between his draft position and his expected production.
The projection isn't wild either. Only two spots behind Irv Smith Jr. in the 2020 PPR rankings is where we find Minny's TE2 (or is it TE1?), veteran Kyle Rudolph, with 109 PPR himself. If you remove one of them from the equation, reaching 200 PPR would still be hard to accomplish but one of them could get there because of pure volume. Sadly, that isn't going to be the case and both TEs will either be sharing the field at the same time on two-TE formation sets or staying off the grass while the other gets reps.
For what it is worth, Rudolph is a much better value than Smith these days. As I already said, Rudolph projects to notch only 10 fewer PPR points while his ADP (189.3) is virtually making him a free asset not drafted in most leagues. It's much better to snatch the veteran for free rather than risking a post-10th round pick on the sophomore Smith Jr. Don't buy into the trend at this price.
Tyler Eifert, Jacksonville Jaguars
The problem with Tyler Eifert isn't hard to spot: injuries and health issues. As you can see in the table above which analyzes several tight ends active from 2013-2019, Eifert is the one with the second-fewest played games (min. 50 games while scoring 9.0+ PPG). That's only because Austin Hooper didn't debut until the 2016 season. In the same 2013-19 span, Jared Cook has accrued 936 PPR points total (only because he's remained on the field) while the former Bengal has only been able to put up 549 PPR points himself even with a slightly better average.
That explains why even though he is now the clear-cut TE1 of the Jaguars entering 2020, Eifert is still mostly getting undrafted in any type of re-draft league with an ADP over 200 overall. When drafted, he is getting off the board inside the 18th round of drafts these days...
All things considered, fantasy GMs have been boosting his ADP a bit lately, making him the TE31 in drafts while he has a projection to finish as the TE37 (80.6 PPR) next year. It checks as if he's going to play between eight and nine games at his career-average 9.3 PPG. Don't waste a pick on Eifert, but if you miss on the top-dogs at the position and have to stream players, this TE shouldn't be the worst option.
Jack Doyle, Indianapolis Colts
Jack Doyle's ADP hasn't stopped rising in the past few weeks and months, and the Colt is currently getting drafted as the TE19 in re-draft leagues with an overall ADP of 117.9. That makes him quite a bad value, as he projects to finish in the top-159 players in fantasy football PPR leagues with just 127 fantasy points. Doyle's biggest selling point is he might end up with the third-most receptions among all Indianapolis' players behind only WRs T.Y. Hilton and Parris Campbell.
That is only part of the story, though. If we focus on deeper numbers instead of just target projections, things don't look that bright. Doyle projects to get 70 targets, third-most in Indy. But, RB Nyheim Hines and rookie WR Michael Pittman Jr. project for 64 each, which means that the target share for Doyle would be 13.4% and that of the other two would be 12.4% each. Any small change in those numbers would put Doyle as low as the fifth most-used receiver in this offense, which looks much worse than the third, right?
It doesn't make much sense to spend a draft pick inside the first ten rounds on Doyle even with QB Philip Rivers looking toward TEs often. I'd leave Doyle's ADP rising while looking for other ways to find a weekly tight end or just bank on a streaming strategy before drafting this TE at his current price.
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