Drafting a tight end in fantasy football is a challenge to many people - some would even say it’s an annoyance. The good news for you is that Howard Bender and I have done quite a bit of tight end whispering in our time and we’re here to sit down and simplify the position for you. No more headaches. Drafting a tight end in the modern era boils down to these two strategies: you either use high draft capital on one tight end that you can trust or use a late round technique I like to call “Yin-Yang Tight End”.

The Goal

The vast majority of fantasy leagues are 10-12 man leagues with some form of points per reception and one tight end slot. If you are in a “tight end premium” league or some league with multiple TE spots that changes things but the context of this article is a typical league. And the math for typical leagues is simple: if you are in a 10-12 man league with one TE spot and your tight end isn’t top 5-6 then you have a below average starting tight end. And starting below average players at any spot puts you at a disadvantage. So our end goal here is to get you a top five tight end one way or another.

If you go back through time, there are essentially two paths to finishing as a top five tight end in fantasy. Targets or touchdowns. We know this because I went back and looked at every top five tight end in fantasy over the last 20 years. Here’s what I found:

  • Every top five tight end in PPR going back to 2003 had either 90+ targets or 10+ touchdowns (Randy McMichael in 2003 was the last tight end to finish top five without one or the other.)
  • In half PPR the only exception was 2020 Mark Andrews who finished top five with 88 targets (though he missed a game due to COVID). So the rule of 90+ targets or 10+ TDs rings pretty true for both formats.
  • Over those 20 years there were 68 tight ends who finished top five with 90+ targets and less than 10 touchdowns. There were six that had 10+ touchdowns but less than 90 targets. And there were 19 that had both 90+ targets and 10+ touchdowns. 12 players were responsible for these 19 seasons. Those players are as follows:

The reality of what all that means is that consistent targets are the easiest way to fantasy success. When you look at the guys who finished top five with 10+ touchdowns but less than 90+ targets, most of these touchdown dependent players were also highly inconsistent for fantasy. For instance, Robert Tonyan is one of three tight ends over that span to have 10+ TDs on less than 70 targets. Which was great until championship week last year when you needed him most and he caught one pass - which wasn’t a touchdown. 

So, your main focus should be on targets. We’ll get deeper into the other things you want to look for and specific players in our Ultimate Tight End Guide coming out later this week but this is a concept article that’s going to tell you HOW to draft guys - not who to draft. In my opinion, in typical 10-12 team fantasy leagues, these are the only two strategies you should be using. 

Strategy One: Draft an Elite Tight End

This one doesn’t really need much explaining. If you don’t want to deal with the hassle and uncertainty of the tight end position, just draft an elite tight end that you know is a virtual lock for 90+ targets barring injury. This not only saves you from doing a bunch of research but it also saves you a valuable bench spot as you only need to draft one tight end - just add someone for his bye week and you’re golden. If you spend the draft capital on someone like Travis Kelce, you are going to start him every single week and you are in huge trouble if he gets hurt anyway so no sense in rostering another tight end all season. It’s as simple as that really. 

The trade off of course is that you need to use a high end pick on a position that historically pretty much never produces the top scoring overall player in fantasy. You are getting a positional advantage, but you are giving up upside elsewhere. If that doesn’t sound good to you and you want to go with something a little more risky or advanced, here is the second strategy.

Strategy Two: Yin & Yang Tight End

To me, this is the fun one. And it’s actually a fairly common strategy that you might have employed yourself in the past without even knowing it. Here is how it works:

The strategy is based on drafting two tight ends minimum - a “Yin” and a “Yang”

  • Your “Yin” tight end is a “safe” player. What I mean by that they have a relatively decent “floor” in that they are likely to at least catch a couple passes each week but they also don’t have a particularly high “ceiling” for one reason or another - maybe they aren’t a focal point of the offense, they play a limited snap share, the offense isn’t particularly great etc. You can count on them to not give you a goose egg but we also aren’t expecting them to break into the elite tier. Medium floor, medium ceiling.
  • Your “Yang” tight end is a “risky” player. This player has some path to elite upside, whether it be a chance at being a top 2 target on the team (or even THE target leader), he’s in a prolific offense, he’s one injury away from an elite target share, etc. He’s a wild card so you can’t trust him to start for you week one but you want him on the roster in case he breaks out. Low floor, high ceiling.

You can call it whatever you want - I simply call it Yin & Yang because, when I write my Ultimate Tight End Guide, it becomes exhausting to write “safe, medium floor, medium ceiling guy” and “risky, low floor, high ceiling dart throw” over and over so I just explain each is then say Yin or Yang.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, here is how you deploy them. You take the Yin tight end and start him week 1 since he’s safe and should at least give you something. You can’t afford to start an unknown commodity who might give you a zero because every week matters in normal, head to head redraft leagues. It took Logan Thomas a little while to get ramped up last year so you wanted to stash him based on his targets but you couldn’t trust him early because he wasn’t delivering yet. But anyway, you start the safe guy week one and, if the Yang tight end has good usage, maybe you switch over to him for week 2. If he doesn’t, you drop him for the hot waiver pick up. Who do you pick up? Follow me on Twitter @CoopAFiasco and I’ll tell you, just like I told everyone to add Logan Thomas after week 1. As I mentioned, it took him a bit to get comfortable but he finished as the TE3 in PPR.

The bottom line of either strategy is that you always want to be searching for an above average starting tight end. If you go with the “elite tight end” strategy and he’s just mediocre, you don’t just settle with him because he “should still be a TE1”. You need to pivot to Yin-Yang TE and find yourself a top five tight end so you can win your fantasy league. People are obsessed with this idea of only having one tight end or QB because that’s “how you’re supposed to do it” but that’s what your bench is for - finding breakouts. It’s not only WRs and RBs that breakout and win leagues - QBs and TEs do too. The easiest way to come in third in your league is to start a QB, TE, defense etc. that’s sub-par. And, in the wise words of Ricky Bobby, “if you ain’t first, you’re last”.