Last season, through the first five weeks, Logan Thomas was the 26th best tight end in PPR.  Not good.  Then he miraculously broke out into mega stardom to capture the hearts and minds of the nation.  Well, maybe not quite that dramatic.  But he did become one of the most reliable fantasy assets - over the remaining 11 games, he was the third best tight end behind only Travis Kelce and Darren Waller.  Are those guys good? I’d say.  Anyone who has toiled in this tight end landscape the way we have understands how rare and precious that type of season from Logan Thomas is. 

 

The reality however is that there won’t always be a Logan Thomas rising from the ashes of the tight end wasteland to deliver us from evil.  But we still have to try.  We have to give ourselves the best shot at upside if we don’t currently have one of the Kelces or the Wallers of the world.  So let’s take a look at the five guys who have the best shot at being that guy this year.

Logan Thomas

Why He Could Be: Well, duh.  Pretty obvious.  But, as luck would have it, he’s actually become available in a number of leagues due to his struggles with a hamstring injury.  Plus it’s good for us to talk about him first so we can discuss some of the things we are looking for.  The reason Logan Thomas was so good was because he met pretty much all of our criteria for elite tight ends.  

  • He was playing pretty much every snap.  He played 1,009 snaps which is 92% of the overall offensive snaps - only the center Chase Roullier (1,089) and tackle Morgan Moses (1,065) played more.
  • He consistently lined up at WR. He played 732 snaps at WR and only 324 in-line.
  • He ran a ton of routes. His 609 routes run led the league for tight ends. The next closest were Travis Kelce with 566 and Dalton Schultz with 553.
  • He was a top two target on his teamTerry McLaurin led the team and he was second.

These are all huge parts of the formula for tight end success and he’s in a position to potentially do that once he returns.

Why He Couldn’t Be: In fantasy football, scenarios that don’t change are the best thing for consistency.  The Chiefs offense is Mahomes, Kelce, Tyreek, and CEH.  That hasn’t changed much which is why Kelce is always such a safe pick.  They know they can win with their offense so they just want to maintain what they have.  Not Washington.  They went out of their way to grab Curtis Samuel.  He hasn’t played much because of his own injuries but he is the biggest threat to Thomas’s targets down the stretch when it’s most important.  If we don’t have upside during fantasy playoffs, it doesn’t matter.

Not only that but we have different quarterbacks this year (and we don’t know which will be the guy down the stretch with Ryan Fitzpatrick trying to return).  Plus Thomas has been banged up and Ricky Seals-Jones has been serviceable while he’s been out.  The true benefit to Thomas was that he played virtually every snap.  If he’s no longer playing every snap, he’s no longer that appealing.  So, when he does come back, we hope that RSJ just goes away.

Dan Arnold

Why He Could Be: This is one of the rare and magical times that a player just gets transported into the best situation possible.  Arnold was on the Panthers where they have CMC, DJ Moore, Robby Anderson, Terrace Marshall Jr. and two other tight ends.  Then Urban Meyer decides to pluck him out of that spot and bring him to a team that lost their starting tight end, their top wide receiver, and their rookie pass catching back.  Beautiful.

In week one, Urban Meyer was inexplicably using James O’Shaughnessy as if he was Travis Kelce.  He played a full snap share, ran a ton of routes, and got a ton of targets.  James O’Shaughnessy’s 32 snaps at wide receiver in week one was tied for fifth among all tight ends.  Which tight end was he tied with that week? You guessed it - Logan Thomas.  Arnold has led the Jaguars in targets the last two weeks and being a top two target on your team is the most important criteria for breakout tight ends, as we discussed in this article. 

Why He Couldn’t Be: There are some minor grievances here.  First is that Dan Arnold isn’t quite playing a full snap share the way Logan Thomas was.  Despite how good he looked in the box score last week, Arnold actually only played 35 of 61 snaps.  If this was 2020 Logan Thomas, he would have played something more like 60 of 61.  And Arnold definitely should not be running 24 routes out of 32 pass plays when Mavin Jones is running 31 routes and Laviska Shenault is running 27.  He should be running all of them.  That takes away from his upside a bit.

Beyond that, we aren’t 100% sold that he is definitively the second pass catcher.  On Washington last year, Terry McLaurin had 134 targets, Logan Thomas had 110, and the next closest WR or TE was Cam Sims with 48.  I think we can all agree that Marvin Jones and Laviska Shenault offer a little more competition than that.  And we also aren’t sure that the rookie Trevor Lawrence can deliver super high quality targets just yet.  I mean, it’s hard to get excited about what we’ve seen so far and he just tweaked his ankle.

 

Cole Kmet

Why He Could Be: Cole Kmet quietly has a BUNCH of the signs of an elite tight end.  First off, Matt Nagy’s offense is ideal for a tight end.  He perfected it in Kansas City and we all know how the TE is used there.  Like Kelce, Kmet lines up at WR for a big chunk of his snaps - last week he played 24 snaps at WR and 24 at in-line tight end so he’s trending in that direction. That’s part of the reason they actually traded their slot WR Anthony Miller away.  

The Bears have not been super pass happy this year which masks the fact that Cole Kmet actually has a 19% target share on the season which is 8th among all tight ends.  You just don’t notice it because in these games they only throw 20 times, 19% is four targets.  Kmet also has an elite 22% red zone share and he has an 82.4% snap share (7th of all tight ends).  With more volume you see more production and that’s actually just what we saw this past week (the Bears threw 29 times and Kmet got eight of those targets).  

Why He Couldn’t Be: The big problem is that the Bears don’t necessarily want to throw.  They’ve actually been doing pretty well running the football and now David Montgomery comes back.  They also have a mobile QB who is hesitant to dump it down as many mobile QBs are.  None of that is good for a tight end. They have Allen Robinson and Darnell Mooney who run deeper aDot routes so it’s kind of hard to sell Kmet as a locked in top two target.

Beyond that, his deployment isn’t all sunshine and rainbows.  Logan Thomas last year had a monster route participation meaning he hardly blocked on pass plays - only 4.7% of the time in fact which is elite.  This year Cole Kmet has blocked on 12.5% of his pass plays.  That’s not the end of the world but routes run are super important.  Tyler Higbee played the 8th most snaps of any tight end last year but he blocked on roughly 100 pass plays which crushed his upside.  If you are on the field for a pass play but they ask you to stay in and block, you might as well be on the sideline watching from there.

 

Pat Freiermuth

Why He Could Be: This is one of fantasy football’s hottest commodities, thanks in large part to catchy “Muth is Luth” memes from the podcast/Reddit communities.  At the time those memes started, Pat Freiermuth actually wasn’t a good asset for fantasy football.  He was splitting snaps with Eric Ebron and both he and Ebron were behind Juju Smith-Schuster, Chase Claypool,Diontae Johnson, and even Najee Harris.  But as the season progressed, Freiermuth flashed some skills and started chipping away at the snap share for Eric Ebron.  The biggest benefit for Freiermuth however has been injuries.  First JuJu Smith-Schuster went down then Eric Ebron and now Chase Claypool.  That leaves Freiermuth as the low aDot target in an offense with Big Ben at the helm who has now led the league for the second year in a row as the QB with the shortest time from snap to release (2.31 seconds this year).  That’s a good spot to be.

Why He Couldn’t Be: The elephant in the room here is still some of those injured players.  People love to say that Freiermuth has “taken the job” from Eric Ebron but that’s not really how it works in the modern NFL. This isn't a quarterback or kicker where you just have a strict linear depth chart.  Believe it or not, they like Eric Ebron over there.  Ebron is going to come back and play and that will take some snaps from Muth.  And, even more importantly, Chase Claypool isn’t done for the year.  He will be back and then it’s back to competing with Diontae Johnson, Chase Claypool, and Najee Harris for that top two target share that we so desperately crave.  Maybe the rookie has entrenched himself as a top two target and you can’t put him back in the bottle but we’ve seen plenty of guys benefit from injury only to lose that target share when the other guys come back. So we can’t cry too much if Freiermuth does go back in the bottle to a certain degree.

 

Adam Trautman

Why He Could Be: This one may have some people confused.  “But Coop - didn’t you write an article telling us to stay away from Adam Trautman?”  Why yes, I did.  And for the early part of the year, I was right.  During the first four weeks of the season, Adam Trautman was only averaging 7.5 snaps per game at WR and he was hardly involved in the offense.  He went back to back weeks without catching a pass.  But a funny thing has happened over the last couple weeks.  Trautman started playing 17, then 19, then 18 snaps at WR. Then this week that jumped up to 29.  And he got seven targets.

See, here is the thing people forget about Logan Thomas.  During that span last year when he was outside the top 25 TEs? Dwayne Haskins was the quarterback.  Then he got hurt and Alex Smith took over. This was a MASSIVE catalyst for Logan Thomas’s success.  Well, I just so happened to chart the players who have gotten the most targets from Trevor Siemian this season.  

Would you look at that! Adam Trautman number two.  Not only is Michael Thomas done for the year but you see that guy at number one? Deonte Harris? He just had his court case for his DUI which was settled meaning he’s now eligible for a three game suspension.  Which could come at any time.  Trautman doesn’t necessarily have to lead the team in targets.  But that would be nice. 

Why He Couldn’t Be: Well let’s be honest here - it’s because he hasn’t been.  He has yet to eclipse 50 yards in a game.  He has yet to score a touchdown.  He honestly might not be that good.  We love the new role, the new deployment, and the new targets.  But that only truly works if you are catching them.  And just this last week we saw a major issue in terms of that when Trautman not only dropped one of his targets that shows up in the box score but he also dropped a two point conversion which doesn’t show up in the box score.  Sometimes it’s as simple as that.  You can’t catch the balls that you don’t.

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