The Weekly Gut Check - Vol. 99
A Projections Primer Part 4: TEs
8/3/07

The “Gut Feeling” is often synonymous with a sense of desperation resulting from a lack of preparation. The Gut Check is a huge proponent of studying the numbers, but there’s a point where one can place too much emphasis on the wrong information. This can result in the undervaluing or overlooking a player’s potential. Therefore, The Weekly Gut Check is devoted to examining the frame of reference behind certain number-driven guidelines that fantasy football owners use to make decisions.

Although The Weekly Gut Check doesn’t claim to be psychic, he does believe that he can dispel certain numbers biases and help you make the best choices for your team. We’ll keep a running tally of The Weekly Gut Check’s insights. This way you can gauge his views as something to seriously consider, or at least seriously consider running the opposite way as fast as you can!

The Gut Check has decided to provide a historical overview of fantasy stats that will help owners avoid the common pitfall or projecting player performance—extreme over-and under-valuation of players. Last week, yours truly profiled the wide receiver position. This week the focus is tight end.

Historical Stats For Tight Ends

The key components one must consider when projecting receiver performance:

• Total Fantasy Points
  
• Targets
  
• Receptions
  
• Receiving Yards
  
• Receiving Touchdowns

Pretty straightforward, but the way many people project stats they don’t bother to view how each stat influences the other. For instance, one isn’t demonstrating adequate knowledge of the position if one predicts a mid-range, fantasy tight end to gain 900 yards but doesn’t realize only 30 players at the position have gained at least 900 yards since 1978. If one views the best performances with these stats, one should get a stronger idea of how to project performance.

Fantasy Points—These point totals are for a standard scoring fantasy league: 1 point per 10 yards receiving and 6 points per touchdown:

From 1978-88, it was seriously worthwhile to have the best tight end or even the second-best at the position. But the value of receivers jumped over the next two decades and now the best tight end is half as valuable as he was almost 30 years ago. Drafting a Kellen Winslow, Todd Christensen, or Ozzie Newsome in the first 2 rounds was reasonable at one time, but presently, even Antonio Gates isn’t valued that high in most traditional leagues. Here are the best tight end performances for a 16-game season.

Anyone surprised Todd Christensen had the best fantasy season ever for a tight end playing a 16-game season? This was actually the best of all-time. The Raiders tight end appears 4 times on this list—only Tony Gonzalez matches the frequency of appearances. Gates is poised to match this total if he can post another 900-yard, 6-score season in 2007, which is quite reasonable for him.

Here’s a brief overview of the statistical commonalities from this list that I’ll explore further. A minimum of 800 yards in receptions, which tells you the 800-yard mark is a top-3 worthy figure for tight ends when projecting numbers. A 1000-yard mark is unrealistic for any tight end not named Antonio Gates. Sure, Tony Gonzalez hit the 1200-yard mark as recently as 2004, but three years is an eternity ago for fantasy performance and Gates is still very much the present.

With few exceptions, 70 receptions is a minimum for a top-notch performance from a TE. Its worth noting Gates had over 80 receptions in 2004-2005, but dropped to 71 catches in 2006. Should you expect a rebound with Rivers’ additional experience? I don’t think so. Give opposing defenses some credit—unless Vincent Jackson evolves into a borderline pro bowl player himself, expect the Chargers tight end to hover around his 2006 stats, if not experience a slight drop off. He’ll still be worthwhile as the top choice at his position, unless Vernon Davis plays to his potential, because of his track record and relatively good health.

It appears every tight end on this list had no less than 6 touchdowns, but no more than 13. Only 9 of the top fantasy season for a tight end consistent of double-digit touchdown totals. Only three of these 10-plus scoring seasons came in this decade. This should tell you right away that a top fantasy tight end does his damage with yardage.

Overall, there are 1-3 tight ends that have a dominant period lasting for 3-5 seasons in every decade. There are also players that have a standout season but disappear the next year. Does this mean Gates is on his way downhill and a new dominant force at the position is about to emerge? Although the stats also give one reason to speculate, I believe San Francisco’s Vernon Davis is that player based on his talent, alone. If you want a bargain player to draft in the 7th-10th round after Gates is long gone, I recommend the second-year Niner.

Even 900 yards is a rarity. Only 13 tight ends have attained 900-999 yards since 1978. But in contrast to the 1000-yard mark, it appears much safer from a historical perspective to project 900-999 yards for a tight end in this decade—7 of the 13 produced at this level.

At this point, the Gut Check would like to laud Tony Gonzalez for appearing on this list 6 times in his career—more than the great Kellen Winslow, Ozzie Newsome, or Shannon Sharpe. Gonzalez was the passing game in his offense. Shannon Sharpe had Rod Smith and Ed McCaffrey book-ending him and Newsome had some underrated receiving threats in the early 80s when Brian Sipe was throwing for 4000-yard seasons prior to defecting to the USFL’s New Jersey Generals. While Gates has been on this list an amazing three times at this early of a stage in his career, he still has to double this frequency to match his divisional rival.

Speaking of divisions, did you notice the preponderance of AFC West tight ends on this list? 60 percent of the seasons on this list come from this one-time AFL division. To take it a step further, there are only 3 tight ends on this list that played in the NFC. Not that this means you should ignore NFC tight ends, but it is interesting that the AFC West has nearly 17 of the best season reception performances plus 2/3 of the best yardage seasons and top fantasy point producers of all-time at the position.

Receptions/Targets—In contrast to receivers, tight ends among the top-12 of fantasy production have a marked contrast in targets from the rest of their peers. Starting-quality, fantasy tight ends had no lower than 80 targets in 2006. The rest of the pack is in the range of 40-60 targets—a stark difference. This also holds true for the previous three seasons. So 80-120 targets is the consistent range for starting tight ends with the top five above 100 looks.

To give an even broader perspective, since 1978, there have only been 44, 70-catch seasons from the position. What is encouraging is that nearly half (21) of these 70-reception performances have occurred since 2000. In fact 4 of these seasons occurred last year and three of the four tight ends gained at least 875 yards. While the 1000-yard mark isn’t too realistic a projection, 800-950 certainly looks okay for even 2-3 tight ends in a given year.

At this point, let’s see which of these three lists has the highest average of fantasy points:

As with receivers, the yardage and scores appear to matter slightly more than receptions. The differences are quite negligible, even in the arena of touchdowns. Still all the numbers are misleading because it is important to remember how few 80-catch, 1000-yard seasons have occurred in the history of the position.

What one needs to consider from this comparison of lists is that the best producing tight ends are the more athletic, deep threats that also get redzone opportunities. Todd Christensen, Sharpe, and Ozzie Newsome were receivers in college and Gonzalez and Winslow also produced mismatches when split away from the line of scrimmage.

Touchdowns—When it comes to touchdowns, tight ends can score many of them as role players who come alive inside the redzone. The reception count ranges from as low as 34 (Billy Joe Dupree in ’78) to 95 (Todd Christensen). Yardage varies nearly as much. Bubba Franks had a paltry 322 yards, but Favre found him 9 times in the end zone 2001. Favre did the same thing with an aging Keith Jackson in 1996 when the former Oklahoma Sooner, Eagle, and Dolphin had a career-high 10 scores on just 40 receptions.

Reaching double-digit receptions is rare, it has only happened 3 times this decade—and 12 times since 1978. There have only been 40 seasons where a tight end scored 8 times since the advent of the 16-game season. Nine of these performances came in this decade out of forty recorded so there does not appear to be an upward trend.

Check out the dramatic difference in receptions and yardage for the average stats from this all-time TD list in comparison to the other groups.

Although the touchdown scorers average nearly 20 fewer receptions and 150 yards less, they score nearly 3 more touchdowns and average the same fantasy points. Most fantasy owners will attest that touchdowns are less reliable to predict than yardage and reception totals, so it’s not a safe bet to project a player for a stat line similar to Keith Jackson’s ’96 season.

The Gut Check is considering a study of touchdown consistency among players to determine any helpful indicators for performance projection/prediction. At this point, it’s likely wiser to pair reasonable scoring amounts commensurate with reception and yardage totals. The possible exceptions appear to be tight ends who get far more looks than their receivers (Coates, Gonzalez, and Newsome) or tight ends in west coast offenses (Sharpe, Franks, Jones, Jackson, and Dudley).

All this data should help one understand some basic points about projecting fantasy performance for tight ends:

1. Yardage, touchdowns, and targets are the most consistent indicators for high fantasy performance.
   
   
   • Any projection of 10 touchdowns or more is treading into the territory of all-time greatness.
     
   • Any projection of 900 yards is also rarified air, but becoming slightly more common for top TEs in the 00s.
     
   • 100 targets in season, or 6.25 per game, is a good benchmark for top-12 worthy performances from year to year.
   
   
2. Calculate targets by using previous seasons of stats and compare them to their corresponding quarterback’s attempts to gauge some level of accuracy.
   
   
3. A higher reception total does not always correlate with higher yardage totals due to the fact big-play tight ends often compile very productive totals on lower reception counts as redzone producers.
   
   
4. Try to ascertain the role of the tight end in his current offensive system and look at stat performances from similar players with the related roles.

If one considers these points and the analysis from this article when considering projections, he will have a better chance of separating likelihood from hype.