Recently, the DFF team and I participated in a PPR, Superflex, 1.5 PPR tight end premium redraft mock. Unlike our previous mock draft breakdowns, I’m not planning to go team-by-team and discuss how much I like each roster. However, I’ll reference my team, which I drafted from the 1.05 slot, as a basis for my general thoughts. The point of this exercise was to look at quarterback value and tight end value in this format and draw conclusions about strategy.
Why TE Premium?
There’s a big strategic difference between Superflex and tight end premium. Superflex requires or at least allows an extra starter at the quarterback position. Since quarterbacks score far more fantasy points than any other position, it almost always makes sense to start a second quarterback in that slot.
On the other hand, tight ends score the least of all the main fantasy positions. It’s possible to use a 2TE format to force fantasy owners to value tight ends. However, there are barely 12 fantasy-relevant tight ends in the league, let alone 24. Forcing people to start 24 tight ends every week isn’t a fair or viable fantasy format, in my view. It introduces even more randomness, as the bottom tight ends are wholly touchdown-dependent players.
Therefore, TE premium formats have become popular. Nobody would ever consider starting a tight end in a flex spot outside of the top couple of players in typical fantasy formats. As you only have to start one tight end, nobody ends up with multiple flex-viable tight ends, so it never comes up. With enough of a premium, even mid-range tight ends can become usable in the flex. In 2019, the TE12, Mike Gesicki, scored 136 PPR points, which would have made him the WR52. However, with a 1.5 PPR TE premium, Gesicki would have slotted in as WR42, still not great, but closer to startable.
Additionally, the top tight ends, like Travis Kelce and George Kittle, get a massive bump. Kelce would have been the WR9 in 2019 in PPR scoring, but with a 1.5 PPR TE premium, he jumped to the clear WR2, only behind Michael Thomas. Considering that the top players with the most receptions receive the most significant bump in such a format, those players provide a massive edge over the competition.
As I mentioned above, most bottom-tier tight ends are touchdown-dependent. In normal PPR Catching a touchdown cancels out six receptions from a high-volume player that doesn’t score. However, in a 1.5 PPR premium format, it only takes four receptions to equal a touchdown. Total targets and receptions are far more predictable than touchdowns, which are mostly random. Therefore, tight end premium not only boosts the top players but also reduces randomness and increases predictability. Improved predictability and lower randomness reward the better fantasy owners, which is, of course, what we want to do when designing a fantasy format.
Finally, it’s essential to recognize that while it won’t change much, adding further emphasis to receptions might slightly change the order of tight end draft rankings. For example, a player like Jared Cook, who’s my TE11, might drop a few spots. He’s touchdown dependent and relies on red-zone upside for most of his fantasy value.
Even a high-end option like Mark Andrews only caught 64 receptions in 2019, far less than Kelce, Kittle, Darren Waller, or Zach Ertz. Andrews is my TE4 typically, but he’s right next to Ertz at TE3 in my overall rankings. While I wouldn’t move Andrews in my tight end rankings, I’d see him closer to Waller at TE5 in overall value, moving him 10-15 spots down on my board. As always, the main lesson is to be aware of your league format and draft accordingly. Not paying attention to these rules is the quickest way to become a fantasy football failure.
The Draft
With the Superflex element to the mock draft, it’s impossible to directly compare the draft price of tight ends to a standard 1QB draft. However, if we factor out the quarterbacks, we can get a good idea of how our drafters valued tight ends. After the top five running backs, Kittle and Kelce were the next two players off the board, coming in as the sixth and seventh position players. In my DFF redraft rankings, I have Kelce at 12th and Kittle at 16th overall. While Kittle went first in this draft and I prefer Kelce, I think the price is fair. As I discussed above, a top tight end like Kelce can score like the top WRs in with a 1.5 PPR TE premium, so he’s worth the high cost.
After Kittle and Kelce, Andrews and Ertz went at 3.09 and 3.10, respectively. I mentioned earlier that I’d far prefer Ertz to Andrews in this format, so I like the Ertz pick far more than the Andrews one. There were a few players that went later I might have preferred to Ertz, such as Odell Beckham, Mike Evans, and Allen Robinson, but it’s not a bad pick. For me, Andrews went too high for the reasons I talked about before. Also, no further tight ends went until Darren Waller at 7.07. I think Waller was a steal at that price, especially if he can replicate his production from 2019.
In the eighth and ninth rounds, there was a small run on the tight end position. Evan Engram, Austin Hooper, Hunter Henry, Rob Gronkowski, Tyler Higbee, and Noah Fant went in those two rounds. Higbee, Engram, and Henry make up my mid-range tier of tight ends this year. I think they provided excellent value, and I wish I had taken Higbee or Henry at 8.08 instead of Cam Akers. Higbee and Henry both provide massive reception upside, and I should have factored in the premium more than I did.
The difference between the middle and bottom tier tight ends becomes amplified in tight end premium. In usual redraft formats, I think that everyone after the top eight tight ends is somewhat similar. Hooper, Gronkowski, and Fant are in that group. While Hooper was a target monster in Atlanta, the Browns’ offense will be more run-heavy. Additionally, they have even more receiving competition than Atlanta did. I expect him to contribute in the red zone, but not as a PPR machine.
Gronkowski is similar but even more extreme. Chris Godwin and Mike Evans will dominate targets, but Gronkowski will be a massive red zone threat. I certainly wouldn’t consider him before the late rounds, even in tight end premium. Fant is the most interesting, as I believe he has the most potential for targets. The Broncos have a crowded offense, but the other weapons are less proven. Even so, I wouldn’t count on Fant as a top-tier option. Therefore, I believe that these players went too high in our mock exercise. Waiting on a tight end was a better strategy at that stage in the draft.
After that run on tight ends, the rest of the draft consisted of picking up fliers at the position. I grabbed the duo of Jared Cook and Jonnu Smith for my team. While Cook isn’t as valuable due to his touchdown-dependent nature, I didn’t mind selecting him in the 12th round. Like regular drafts, if I miss out on the top tight ends, I’m happy to choose two tight ends late in my draft. As I’ve mentioned numerous times, streaming tight ends was a nightmare in 2019, and I don’t see why 2020 will be any different. You can always find wide receivers and quarterbacks on the waiver wire, but tight ends are hard to come by. I was happy to take two, and hopefully, I can decide which one I want to keep after a couple of games.
The Verdict
Unlike Superflex, 1.5 PPR tight end premium doesn’t make that much of a difference to draft strategy. It adds a layer of strategy to vanilla redraft formats, so it isn’t a bad thing to add to spice up your league. I do think that even at 1.5 PPR, not enough tight ends are flex-viable. If the premium were 1.75 or even 2 PPR, that could change things. However, do we want to make tight ends that much more artificially valuable? That’s a question for you to decide when you design your league.
Thanks for reading this article. You can find me on Twitter at @DFF_Karp. I love to interact with anyone in the community, so reach out at any time! I take fantasy questions and help with all formats, so keep sending those questions my way.
