Alright another week in the books. In our elite tier we hit TEs #2 and #3 with Kelce and Waller. Mid tier was a little disappointing as Gesicki and Goedert didn’t capitalize on great matchups But Evan Engram bailed us out a bit from the value tier as TE6 with a 3.37X return. No time to dwell on that though as it’s on to week 10!
As a reminder, we like to give you guys at each price point so that you can build the lineup you want at any level.
Top Tier: the safest and most expensive guys available if you want to pay up
Mid Tier: affordable players that offer the best bang for your buck
Value Tier: the bargain bin players that are risky by nature but can have the huge upside in terms of value created
Fades: The guys we feel are the worst value proposition that you should actively avoid
Top Tier
Kyle Pitts - Travis Kelce and Darren Waller play each other in the night game so they are not part of the main slate. If you do play a contest that includes the night game, both are honestly good options if you can afford them as the Chiefs are the 4th worst defense vs. the TE and the Raiders are the 6th. On the main slate, Kyle Pitts is the most expensive option but he’s honestly not that expensive at $5,800 on DraftKings. The targets have been there - he hasn’t been reeling them in lately but the Cowboys are a beatable defense at TE letting up the 13th most DK points. This game also has a 54.5 over/under, the highest of the week, so expect points to be scored. If you can afford him he’s one of the safest options. At 10.5% of your budget on Yahoo and 11.6% of your budget on DraftKings, it’s a bit cheaper to build your team around him on Yahoo.
T.J. Hockenson - Since Dallas Goedert plays one of the toughest teams in the league vs. the tight end this week, Gronk is out, and Dawson Knox is coming back from injury, there really isn’t much available in terms of high end options. TJ Hockenson doesn’t have an amazing matchup but no tight end has gotten more targets over their last three games than Hockenson’s 29. In fact, even if you include his by week and stretch it out to four weeks, it would go Kelce 37, Hockenson 29, Mike Gesicki 29. Last game he played he caught 10 of 11. He’s 11% of the budget on DK and 10% on Yahoo so another one that’s a bit of a discount on Yahoo.
Mid Tier
Dalton Schultz - He’s not all that much cheaper than Hockenson on DraftKings (10%) but he’s a bargain over on Yahoo if that’s where you want to build a team (8.5%). The return of Michael Gallup is less than ideal but, with Blake Jarwin on the IR, he should see a full snap share. We already talked about how high of an over/under this game has and we want shootouts in DFS so Schultz is a pretty reasonable option - as he has been for most of the year. He’s had at least five targets in every single game since week 2 which is quite the floor in this tight end environment. To be quite frank with you though, we like the next guy better as well as all the guys in the lowest tier in terms of value.
Noah Fant - As we mentioned above, there isn’t much to love in their tier with guys like Goedert, Logan Thoms, Gronk, Knox in less than ideal situations. But this situation is starting to shape up pretty well for Noah Fant. First of all, the Philadelphia Eagles are currently dead last vs. the tight end letting up 19.6 DraftKings points per game. Remember when we mentioned Hock catching 10 of 11 targets in his last game before the bye? That was against this team. On top of that, other red zone targets Tim Patrick and Albert Okwuegbunam are banged up which consolidates things a bit in Fant’s favor. At his price point, Fant may be the start of the week. He’s pretty evenly priced across both platforms so pick your poison.
Value Tier
Pat Freiermuth - Edit no Big Ben this week, pivot to Arnold The only thing holding back this play this week is the fact that he is incredibly popular and should be high ownership. The chemistry with Big Ben is clearly there. With Chase Claypool and JuJu Smith-Schuster out, the targets are there. And with the Detroit Lions coming into town, the matchup is there too. At 8% or less of your budget on both platforms, the value is there too. The only real question is whether you want to go with the chalk or differentiate yourself from the pack.
Dan Arnold - There are three players right now that are our top candidates to be this year’s “Logan Thomas”. One is Cole Kmet who is on bye. We’ll give the other as a bonus dart throw next. But Dan Arnold is really the top candidate. We’ve talked about this multiple weeks now but Urban Meyer continues to deploy him for a ton of snaps at WR (he played 18 WR snaps again last week, more snaps than he played in-line). And now he’s led the team in targets two weeks in a row as well. Indianapolis is quietly letting up the 5th most DK points of any team to the tight end so we’ll just continue to take advantage of that. He’s exactly 7% of your budget on both platforms so either works.
BONUS DART THROW
Adam Trautman - Anyone who follows me on Twitter knows about this guy at this point. We didn’t like him early in the season because he was playing 7.5 snaps per game at WR over the first three games and that’s not enough. The next three games he played 17, 19, and 18 snaps at WR which peaked out interest. Then last week he played 29 snaps at WR and we are officially excited. Not only that, but his 11 targets from Trevor Siemian are the second most behind only Deonte Harris’s 13 since Trevor took the job. He’s pretty much bottom tier pricing at $3,000 on DK and $10 on Yahoo so he’s the cheapest option we actually trust this week.
Fades
Dawson Knox - If you follow along with these, you know my take on this situation. It’s not worth the risk. For every time it goes well, it goes poorly about five times. The biggest misconception here is that you get some sort of a “discount” on a player like this because he’s been hurt. No. Gronk is still expensive just in case he plays. Knox is still the sixth most expensive tight end this week. You are paying full price for a guy playing his first game after having his broken hand surgically repaired. There is no incentive for them to have him play a million snaps vs. the Jets. He wasn’t really even playing a full snaps share before he got hurt. You will have plenty of games to use Knox if he is fully healthy.
Tyler Conklin - Tyler Conklin is the classic trap set up. In the box score he has been doing fine. Getting some decent targets. But when you look under the hood, there are major signs of trouble. The biggest being his pass blocking. This guy is blocking on 19.4% of his snaps. No TE in the top 30 in fantasy is blocking that much. That puts him right on par with Adam Shaheen and Johnny Mundt. Last week he played 28 pass snaps and blocked on nine. That does not leave a lot of room for error. People are going to look at the price and then look at the matchup and think they are getting a bargain. When that is not the case. This player is bound to have some big time disappointing games with his deployment.