The lead up to Halloween is one of the most painful times of year for those who lead the otherwise painless existence of work, a mortgage and no kids. You get your house ready for trick-or-treaters and you get the big bags of fun size candy bars to dole out on All Hallow’s Eve. Then you sneak just one little candy bar. Then another. Then another. Soon you’re trying to pretend like the four-or-five Mr. Goodbars left in the bag will stretch throughout all of Halloween. Stressed at the prospect, you eat the four-or-five Mr. Goodbars. You might as well have just eaten a whole candy bar at that point. This is exactly like fantasy football tight ends.
The pre-draft process is deciding if you’re going to go for the big candy bar (Rob Gronkowski, Travis Kelce) or if you’re going to hodgepodge together streaming tight ends throughout the year. You get a Crunch bar here, a Kit-Kat there, and you make your way to a whole candy bar. If you’ve gone the Fun Sized approached to tight ends, we can help. Below are three tight ends that might be available in your leagues. The first two are out there in 50% or more of Yahoo! fantasy football leagues, the last one is out there in 98% of leagues (he burned us last week, but it’s time to jump back in).
Tyler Kroft versus Indianapolis (45% owned)
He’s my tight end start of the week, but here’s the skinny. The Bengals can’t tell he’s not Tyler Eifert, it’s a weird face blindness thing Marvin Lewis has. I don’t know, but they are using him almost exactly the same way as Tyler Eifert, which means a ton of touchdown opportunity against the Colts, who are the worst at everything.
Zach Miller at New Orleans (23% owned)
This one is all about game flow, the Bears’ construction and Miller’s opportunity. The Bears will desperately need to throw, unlike last weekend where Mitchell Trubisky threw seven more NFL passes than I did. Those targets have to go somewhere. Since taking over as the starter, Trubisky has just 48 pass attempts, and thirteen of those have gone towards Miller. That’s a 27.1% target share. That’s a lot. To compare, Julio Jones had a 24% target share last year, Nuk Hopkins had a 25.9% target share, and T.Y. Hilton 26.5% (the leader, Mike Evans, was one target shy of breaking 30%). He’ll have plenty of target volume to produce.
Nick O’Leary versus Oakland (2% owned)
O’Leary’s had a couple of decent, not great, decent five-points-and-change fantasy football games in a row, the only thing he’s missed is a touchdown in that span. This week the Bills host the Raiders in a game that has low-key shootout potential. The Bills already yielded TDs to marginal talents in A.J. Derby and Vernon Davis. He’s a good bet to breakthrough with the touchdown this week.
