New England Patriots 2020 Fantasy Football Rookie Roundup

The 2020 NFL Draft is in the books, and that means it’s time for us to fully turn our attention to the 2020 NFL season and fantasy football. While COVID-19 means we can’t guarantee an NFL season, our league mates want us to be on our heels, unprepared for the season. Never you fear, Football Absurdity is here to cover all of the 78 fantasy football eligible players drafted in the 2020 NFL Draft. Keep in mind, most of these guys won’t get selected in your draft, but you’ll want to know these 2020 NFL draftees when your fantasy football draft comes around. We continue our tour around the AFC East with the former juggernaut, the New England Patriots. The Patriots will be without Tom Brady under center for the first time since Dwight Eisenhower was in office.

But what about their fantasy football eligible draft picks? Let’s get this out of the way: the Patriots took two tight ends, and those are their sole fantasy football eligible players. As an aside, the Patriots took one more fantasy football eligible player than they took fifth-round kickers with tattoos of weird far-right fringe group logos. Rookie tight ends are famously useless in fantasy football, and the Patriots threw a league-low 53 targets to tight ends last year. It doesn’t shape up well, unless…?

FULL NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS DRAFT RESULTS

Round 3, Pick 27: Devin Asiasi, Tight End, UCLA (6’3” 257 lbs)

Courtesy: NFL.com, (u) = unofficial.

Depth Chart:
TE1         Matt LaCosse
TE2         Devin Asiasi
TE3         Dalton Keene

TALENT

NFL.com’s Lance Zierlein can put my biggest beef with Devin Asiasi far more diplomatically than I can: “[h]e needs to work on eliminating bad weight and improving his technique as an in-line blocker.” The biggest beef is, well, his beef. He is 257 pounds but isn’t as sculpted as you expect a lot of NFL-level tight ends to be. Still, with an NFL weight regimen and diet, that resolves quickly. Asiasi does have a lot to like, but his bad blocking pushed him down my preseason ranks to TE6 in a weak tight end class.

Still, despite the “bad weight,” he’s an athletic tight end who regularly works his way into the intermediate and deep passing game. He is incredible at finding himself open both against man and zone coverage. Asiasi is faster than he has any right to be. He struggles with going up and getting the football and lacks a bit of toughness that would be necessary for the NFL. There are a lot of physical tools there, but he needs to be coached into being mean, and then we’re cooking.

2020 OPPORTUNITY

Now, rookie tight ends are notoriously terrible at returning production in their rookie years. The ones that return production in year one are usually freak athletes and highly-touted prospects. Even then, we saw last season with Noah Fant and T.J. Hockenson that even freakishly athletic highly-touted prospects can fall on their faces in year one. The Patriots threw the ball to tight ends 3.3 times a game last year, so there isn’t a lot there to work with there.

But then again it’s Bill Belichick so if he shipped off all the wide receivers and turned this offense into a Devin Asiasi-James White one-two punch while allowing Jarrett Stidham the latitude to throw 600 passes, would you really be that surprised?

2020 FANTASY FOOTBALL OUTLOOK

Safely ignore rookie tight ends, pretty much across the board. Asiasi was drafted in the group most likely to return fantasy football value for rookie tight ends: sixteen of the top twenty yardage seasons for rookie TEs (since 2000) were players from the first three rounds. Unfortunately, the deck is stacked against him: 102 tight ends were drafted in that span, and only seven had more than 8.6 half-PPR points (TE12 in 2019) in at least six-of-ten games in their rookie year. Evan Engram did it in eight games, and he is the leader. The best a rookie has done in the new millennium is TE12 numbers or better in half of his games.

TALENT:

OPPORTUNITY:

2020 FANTASY FOOTBALL OUTLOOK: (Belichick Wild Card Factor)

Round 3, Pick 37: Dalton Keene, Tight End, Virginia Tech (6’4” 253 lbs)

Courtesy: NFL.com, (u) = unofficial.

Depth Chart:
TE1         Matt LaCosse
TE2         Devin Asiasi
TE3         Dalton Keene

TALENT

Dalton Keene might end up being much better than Devin Asiasi. He’s already a better blocker and more athletic with the ball in his hands. Unfortunately, Virginia Tech had to do a lot of scheming to get the ball into his hands. His major highlights are mostly run after the catch, with screens, drags, and crossers making up the majority of his route tree. Still, for a tight end, this guy can book it in the open field. He’s an angry runner and angry blocker, as evidenced by his nickname “Rambo.” He’s a gritty guy in the traditional sense and is exactly the type of clay that Bill Belichick loves to sculpt.

2020 OPPORTUNITY

Copy and paste Devin Asiasi’s outlook profile, with the caveat that Belichick will probably scheme Keene into production at least once a game. That isn’t a lot of opportunities, even though it will likely help the Patriots.

2020 FANTASY FOOTBALL OUTLOOK

Did you not read what I said about Asiasi?

TALENT:

OPPORTUNITY:

2020 FANTASY FOOTBALL OUTLOOK:

(Belichick Wild Card Factor)

For more 2020 NFL Draft coverage, check out these:

The Rookie Roundup… Roundup
Fantasy Football Fallout: 2020 NFL Draft Round One
Football Absurdity Podcast: First Round Recap

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