Rise and Grind
Early in the morning of August 1, 2016, the NFL (daily fantasy sports) season officially started: FanDuel released its Week 1 salaries. (Note that the season-opening Thursday game between the Panthers and Broncos is not included in the first slate that FanDuel released.)
In this series — The Freedman Files — I’m uncontrollably spewing my thoughts systematically analyzing these FanDuel salaries on a position-by-position basis.
— Part 1: Quarterbacks
— Part 2: Running Backs
— Part 3: Wide Receivers
— Part 4: Tight Ends
You’ve reached the last piece. Congratulations.
For a macro perspective on Week 1 FanDuel salaries, be sure to check out FantasyLabs co-founder Jonathan Bales‘ recent piece.
He Said It Best
Bales said it best in his macro analysis. If you are going to pay up at tight end — and I’m not saying that you must — then FanDuel is the place to do it. When looking at the top-tier players at each position, this is what Bales had to say about the big guys who catch balls, which . . . wasn’t meant to sound the way it sounded . . .
The top position is tight end, although that’s a bit misleading because we’re mostly looking at the Gronk effect. Still, Gronk and now Jordan Reed are severely underpriced on FanDuel as compared to DraftKings. I’d go as far as to say that, if you’re playing an elite tight end in any given week this year, you should get almost all of your exposure to him on FanDuel and go cheap at tight end on DraftKings.
So that’s settled. We don’t need to talk about Rob Gronkowski or Reed, right?
Let’s Talk About Gronk
If you want to look up Gronk’s stats and you google ‘Rob Gronkowski Pro Football Reference,’ this is what automatically populates the search bar once you’ve typed in ‘Rob Gronkowski Pro’:
For the past five years or so, I’ve been searching for stats by googling that basic formulation — ‘[First Name] [Surname] [Pro Football Reference]’ — and never have I seen a professional athlete automatically associated with protein. Of course, as I write this it’s 1 AM and there’s maybe a 57 percent chance that I’m on my way to a hangover and that I’m not really seeing what I think I’m seeing and that I’m not even typing this sentence but only dreaming that I’m typing this sentence — but still, even if all of that is the case, I’ve never seen this before.
Anyway . . .
In Week 1, Gronk and the Patriots are almost certainly going to be without quarterback Tom Brady. [Side Note: How many Hall-of-Fame quarterbacks were ever suspended as players?]
How has Gronk done in his career when he hasn’t had Brady throwing the ball to him? Courtesy of the RotoViz Game Splits App . . .
Well, I really must be intoximicated if I thought it was a good idea to post that image.
Here’s the truth: Gronk is (clearly) the most expensive tight end at $8,700 — $1,300 more than Reed — and he’s playing with a very unproven and young backup quarterback whose greatest professional accomplishment so far is not throwing an interception in 31 career attempts. Gronk carries a lot of risk. We have no way of knowing how a non-Brady offense will distribute the ball.
In Week 1 the Patriots are road underdogs and implied to score only 21.25 points against a Cardinals team that was ranked seventh against tight ends in Football Outsiders’ Defense-Adjusted Value Over Average (DVOA) metric. This doesn’t seem to be an ideal spot for Gronk.
On the plus side, over the last two years Arizona has been one of the worst teams in the NFL against tight ends from a Plus/Minus perspective:
On the negative side, there’s this (via our Trends tool) . . .
In our entire database, no tight end — not even Gronk himself — has ever reached the $8,700 mark. In Week 1, he’s setting a new high for positional pricing . . . and he’s doing it without Brady and against a defense that, in terms of ‘real’ football, defended the position reasonably well last year.
And there’s also this . . .
The Patriots are implied to score only 21.25 points — and never before has a tight end in the $7,700-$8,600 range been on a team implied to score so few points . . . and Gronk is above that salary range.
This is not just a rare situation. It’s entirely unprecedented in a number of crucial ways.
If we look at previous situations that are somewhat comparable — a tight end is priced at $8,000-plus and his team is implied to score fewer than 25 points — we get this:
The sample is smaller than my desire to keep writing this article, and in the end it really proves only one thing: Gronk has been a beast even when he has been expensive and in bad spots . . . with Brady throwing him the ball.
If you want to pay more for Gronk than you’ve ever paid when he is without the only starting quarterback he’s ever had and in a spot worse than any he has ever been in when he has been priced up . . . do you really need me to finish that thought?
That’s not a run-on sentence. That’s a run-for-your-life sentence.
Sure, I Just Spent Almost 1,000 Words Talking About One Guy — Let’s Talk About Another Expensive Tight End
Reed isn’t a Gronkian manimal, but he’s still his own sort of beast. Over the last two years, he has yielded an impressive +5.03 Plus/Minus on 60.0 percent Consistency. But here’s the problem: He’s not priced like the Reed of the last two seasons. For his last 25 games he had an average expectation of 5.78 points, based on his salary. In Week 1, his salary-based expected total is 9.63 points. His margin of error has significantly shrunk.
This might interest you:
At $7,400, Reed is literally at his all-time high — and as a Warren Buffett-inspired cheap-as-f*ck value investor I don’t like investing in an asset when it’s at the top of its market. It also doesn’t help that the one time Reed was priced at $7,400 (or even above $7,000) he tanked with a -3.13 Plus/Minus. I admit that Reed’s $7,400 sample is small — but based on that one week 15 years ago when I worked for a veterinarian, I’m of the opinion that if a sample is sh*t, you want it to be as small as possible.
I’ve never worked for a veterinarian, but I really wanted to use that line. At 3 AM, that seemed like a great line.
What Reed does have going for him is his history with Cousins:
That mark of 14.11 points is close to Gronk’s 14.27 with Brady. Unlike Gronk, Reed will actually have his starting quarterback in Week 1 — and he’s $1,300 cheaper. If you are going to spend more than $6,500 on a tight end, you should probably roster Reed instead of Gronk.
Walker, Barnidge, & Miller
It’s not just the name of the firm that defends me in cases of workplace misconduct. It’s also a list of guys who, for at least stretches of 2015, looked like non-Gronk elite tight ends despite never doing much before the age of 30.
After Kendall Wright was lost to injury, Delanie Walker ($6,500) performed at a better-than-Gronk level, averaging 15.68 FanDuel points across six games.
With the Browns having little at wide receiver, Gary Barnidge ($6,300) was able to emerge as a top-five FanDuel tight end on a points-per-game basis. Especially once the team transitioned away from Hindenburg disaster former Browns quarterback Johnny Manziel and veteran Josh McCown was starting games, Barnidge did well. He averaged 15.39 FanDuel points in McCown’s eight starts.
And the Zach Miller ($5,300), who used to be known as ‘The Other Zach Miller,’ did well last year with the Bears in something of a breakout season. After being thrust into action in Week 8, Miller averaged 10.74 FanDuel points for his final eight games of the season. And in his four games without Martellus Bennett, he averaged 11.03 points.
Of those three, Miller is by far the cheapest. Whereas Walker and Barnidge have top-five salaries at the position, Miller is tied for the 15th-highest salary. Also, the situations in which Walker and Barnidge thrived last year will not apply in Week 1: Wright (and other receivers) will likely steal targets from Walker, and McCown will not be the quarterback throwing the ball to Barnidge, who will be competing with the talented rookie receiver Corey Coleman for targets.
Miller, though, is still basically in the same situation. The Bears need Miller to see snaps, and the Black Unicorn has ridden away.
If I’m going to roster an older tight end coming off a bound-to-regress context-dependent career-best campaign, I’m going to favor the guy who is cheapest and still in the same contextual situation.
You Must Be a Professor, Because Your Hands Are Covered in Chalk
Throughout his entire career — even going back to his San Diego days with time-fighter Antonio Gates ($6,200) — Saints quarterback Drew Brees has relied on his tight end and consistently infused the position with value.
As far as DFS goes, in 2014 . . .
And in 2015 . . .
In Week 1, new acquisition Coby Fleener is $5,400. He is tied for the 13th-highest salary at the position. The Saints are at home and implied to score 25.75 points against the Raiders, who last year allowed 96 receptions, 1,290 yards, and 11 touchdowns to tight ends. Those marks respectively were third-, second-, and second-worst on the season.
The Obligatory Dad Runner Reference
On the field he might move like the octogenarian patriarch of a long-storied family, but Jason Witten ($5,500) still occasionally has DFS value — such as when he plays the Giants.
Just over 12.5 percent of his career games have been against the New York varsity squad, but 21.7 percent of his touchdowns have been scored against them.
Last year, the Giants allowed 101 receptions to tight ends for 1,303 yards and nine touchdowns. Those marks were worst, worst, and sixth-worst in the NFL. Over the last two seasons, no team has allowed a higher Plus/Minus to tight ends actually projected to score at least one FanDuel point in the matchup.
He’s old, but with the help of that little blue pill, Witten can still get up to slay two times per year:
For a granddad runner, that’s pretty good.
Maybe?
Per The RotoViz Screener, first-round tight ends generally improve (a little) from their second to third seasons:
So I guess that’s something that the disappointing Eric Ebron ($5,100) has going for him.
OK . . . there’s also this . . .
On the basis of his draft position, size, and NFL production through two years, the player to whom Ebron is most comparable is Vernon Davis, who has had a good career — he actually led the NFL with 13 touchdowns receiving in his fourth year — but he also royally sucked in his third year.
Maybe Ebron won’t suck this year. I think that he probably will. Either way, at $5,000 and going against an Indianapolis defense that last year was 20th in DVOA against tight ends, Ebron probably deserves some tournament exposure.
Tyed up for Week 1
Will Tye is only $5,200, and he had a fantastic end to his 2015 rookie campaign with the Giants. Once Larry Donnell‘s injury necessitated that the Giants use the undrafted Stony Brook product as their primary tight end, Tye put up production akin to what we see from future studs in their rookie years.
For instance, in nine games as a rookie, Jordan Reed averaged 10.24 FanDuel points per game. After he became the lead tight end, Tye averaged 9.21 points across eight games. And after the Giants’ Week 11 bye — during which Tye could use the extra time to adapt more to the starting role and the coaching staff could make adjustments to suit his strengths — he averaged 10.45 points for the final six games of the season.
Additionally, as a guy who actually played at Florida State for the first two years, Tye has the physical profile to be good at the position in the NFL. Like Reed, the 6’2″ Tye is shorter than most tight ends — but in his pre-draft workouts he ran a 4.57-second 40-yard dash at 257 lbs., which is very impressive for a player that big. To put that in context: DeAndre Hopkins ran his 40-yard dash at exactly the same speed at his 2013 pro day — but he weighed 214 lbs.
So there’s a lot to like about Tye . . . but not in Week 1 against Dallas. Last year, no team allowed fewer receptions (61) to tight ends than the Cowboys. They also allowed the second-fewest yards (615). And they ranked third against the position in pass defense DVOA.
To close the season, Tye had a +5.90 Plus/Minus with 83.3 percent Consistency in his final six games. Of course, he was never priced above $5,200 in that span. Right now, he’s priced at his career high and facing a team that shuts down tight ends.
Tye is a fine play for tournaments, but fade him in cash games for Week 1. If he doesn’t do well, then his salary will drop and he’ll be in a better position to provide value later in the season. And if he does well against the Cowboys . . . at least you rostered him in tournaments.
He has some undeniable potential in 2016.
Is This the End?
If he wins the starting job, you need to have tournament exposure to Vance McDonald in Week 1. If he doesn’t win the starting job — you need to have tournament exposure to him in Week 1. Zach Ertz was Chip Kelly’s primary receiving tight end for three years in Philadelphia, and he started only 14 of 47 games he could possibly start. Instead, Brent Celek remained atop the ‘official’ depth chart, starting 43 games since 2013.
Even if McDonald gets Celeked by Brent’s brother Garrett, he’s the tight end you want in San Francisco. The Rams have a good pass defense — eighth in DVOA last year — but they are weakest against tight ends. That could be the matchup that Kelly looks to exploit in Week 1.
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The Labyrinthian: 2016, 77
This is the 77th installment of The Labyrinthian, a series dedicated to exploring random fields of knowledge in order to give you unordinary theoretical, philosophical, strategic, and/or often rambling guidance on daily fantasy sports. Consult the introductory piece to the series for further explanation.
Previous installments of The Labyrinthian can be accessed via my author page. If you have suggestions on material I should know about or even write about in a future Labyrinthian, please contact me via email, [email protected], or Twitter @MattFtheOracle.
