The best and worst best ball TEs
We’ve now reached the tight end portion of my look at the best and worst best ball options for fantasy football in 2019. To recap, I’ve been going position-by-position all week to identify the players at each position who were the best and worst for best ball production in the 2019 season.
To do this, I established weekly thresholds at each position — 25 PPR points for QB, 20 for RB/WR, 15 for TE — and tracked how often each player reached those marks in a given week.
Tight end is a difficult position for many reasons, but one of them is that the position has a tough ceiling. Had I made the threshold for this position 20 points on a weekly basis, like the other skill positions, it would have limited the field to only 40-some player-games all year, and that’s just not an impressive enough sample size. So 15 points feels shallow, but it also gives a decent sample size.
(Check out the pieces on quarterbacks, running backs, and wide receivers.)
Best ball helpers
George Kittle, San Francisco 49ers
(15-plus points 8 times in 14 games, 57.1%)
Kittle only topped 20 points three times all year, but he was a reliable 15-point producer. At a position where 15 points can really matter, Kittle is an excellent option in any fantasy format, just like …
Travis Kelce, Kansas City Chiefs
(9 times in 16 games, 56.3%)
Kelce has been the top fantasy producer at tight end four years running, and while his per-game numbers were essentially the same as Kittle’s last year, Kelce has played all but one game over the last six years since missing his rookie year.
Will Dissly, Seattle Seahawks
(3 times in 6 games, 50.0%)
Dissly has now played 10 career games (including two he’s left early to injury) and topped 19 fantasy points in four of them. That’s an incredible rate for a guy who wasn’t seen as any kind of likely fantasy contributor when he was drafted. Now, the injuries matter a lot, and the Seahawks’ signing of Greg Olsen last week matters even more. So it’s hard to imagine Dissly can keep that going in 2020 even once he is healthy. That means this is more of an interesting curiosity right now than anything predictive for 2020.
Best ball hurters
O.J. Howard, Tampa Bay Buccaneers
(0 times in 14 games, 0.0%)
Howard’s year wasn’t just massively disappointing in the aggregate, it was a big letdown on the micro level as well. He scored only one touchdown all year, the only game he topped 12 points. The plus side? Howard is going to be dirt cheap in drafts in 2020, and we’ve seen examples of his talent in seasons that weren’t 2019.
David Njoku, Cleveland Browns
(0 times in 4 games, 0.0%)
Njoku, also a first-rounder in 2017, has now played 36 career games. He has not yet had a two-score game. He has not yet had a 75-yard game. Last year was supposed to be his third-year breakout, but he spent most of it injured. I’m open to giving Njoku another year to develop, but it’s been a disappointing run so far.
Jack Doyle, Indianapolis Colts (1 time in 16 games, 6.3%)
Eric Ebron, Indianapolis Colts (1 time in 11 games, 9.1%)
Ebron topped 15 points seven times in 16 games in 2018; Doyle did it once in just six outings. Whether it was simple regression or the switch to Jacoby Brissett (or more likely both), things took a turn in 2019. With Ebron gone now and a mystery as to Indianapolis’ quarterback, good luck handicapping these two for 2020 right now.
T.J. Hockenson, Detroit Lions
(1 time in 12 games, 8.3%)
Hockenson’s Week 1 was massive, a 25.1-point outing that got him claimed on every waiver wire where he hadn’t been drafted and getting him started in a lot of leagues for several weeks thereafter. He responded by not reaching even 35 yards in a game again until Week 9 and averaging only 5.1 PPR points a game until he was injured for the rest of the season in Week 13. Brighter days are ahead for Hockenson in the future, but it’s easy to say now that his big Week 1 was a product of facing the Cardinals than succeeding in his own right.