In part two of our six-part draft preview series, Fantasy Insanity breaks down tight ends, followed next week by quarterbacks.
It’s hard to finish on top. Both Breaking Bad and its sequel, Better Call Saul, were on top. Regardless of how you feel about the show’s final seconds, The Sopranos remained strong until the end.
John Elway was at the peak of his career when he retired, Peyton Manning finished his career at the peak despite losing the use of his arm a season or two ago, Barry Sanders was the best player at his position when he retired.
But many others falter toward the end: Many people didn’t like the endings of Seinfeld and How I Met Your Mother, and the final season of Game of Thrones was a legendary disaster.
Similarly, Todd Gurley’s final days on the field were memorable, Julio Jones has been clinging to past success for longer than Modern Family has, and Ezekiel Elliott’s show appears to have been around longer than The Simpsons.
Watching the stars go dark is never fun, but if you can know in advance that it’s happening, you can avoid the darkness that comes from poor fantasy choices.
If there’s any player on the cusp of losing steam right now, it’s Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, who worries he’s entering the “introducing a new young character” phase of his sitcom fantasy show.
To be clear, this doesn’t mean he’s suddenly become useless. Far from it. He’s still one of the top TE options, but he’s not as dominant as he once was. He’s now more like Kirstie Alley’s “Cheers” than Shelley Long’s “Cheers.” Still very good, less fundamentally strong, but more popular and arguably more entertaining.
Kelce dominated the tight end position for many years, finishing as TE6 in his second season in 2014, before dropping to TE8 the following season before finishing as TE1 for five straight years.
He was the No. 2 TE behind Mark Andrews in 2021, then dropped back to No. 1, then dropped to No. 3 TE behind Sam LaPorta and Evan Engram last season, and we think he could drop even further this season.
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LaPorta and Engram will likely give him a shot again, and I expect Andrews to return to the top of the TE rankings. He was the No. 3 TE last season before breaking his leg in Week 11.
Additionally, Trey McBride is averaging nearly 15 points per game in PPR, good enough for TE3 during that span, and if things go south for Brandon Aiyuk, George Kittle could have his best season since pre-pandemic.
I also project Dallas’ Jake Ferguson and Pittsburgh’s Pat Friarmuth to be big upgrades — not enough to put them in the league of top fantasy tight ends, but still worth selecting in the eighth through 11th rounds.
Now, Kelce is almost always one of the top two tight ends drafted. We’re fine with that. That makes sense. He’s in that zone. But you have to pick in the top three rounds to get there. That doesn’t make much sense.
Fantasy Football DVQ Commentary
Hop out the pool, open your vacation suitcase, fire up your laptop and get ready: fantasy football season is back.
Fantasy Madman is back with the latest instalment of DVQ.
The Draft Value Index is a player rating system that assigns one universal number to every player that predicts the point in the draft when a player’s projected production will match up with his estimated draft pick value.
Because the disparity between the top production levels is large, the disparity between the top ranked DVQ values is also large.
A player’s projections take into account playing time, expected usage/touches, coaching tendencies, part performance, and injury history. DVQ measures these projections against the player’s schedule and takes into account position depth and replacement value.
These ratings are updated regularly.
One of the reasons Kelce has skyrocketed in our ratings in recent years is because our Draft Value Index (DVQ) is a factor of position-specific scoring variation. From 2019-2021, Kelce outscored the No. 2 tight end by 25, 34 and 38 points. And in 2022, he was nearly 100 points better than the No. 2 tight end.
That gap no longer exists, and there’s no reason to believe it will return. Conversely, some of the young tight ends are in good positions on the offensive line, and the addition of new wide receivers likely means the Chiefs offense will be less reliant on Kelce.
With no separation at the top of the tight end projections, Kelce’s return to parity has lowered the overall tight end DVQ rating, meaning Madman will be much less inclined to select a top TE and will instead wait until much further into the draft.
Kelce has been great, and while he’s not done yet, he may be starting to be better than great. And we don’t recommend drafting just “good” players in the first three rounds. It’s time to change the channel on this tight end show.
