Photo: Imagn Images

Welcome to Learning from History, where I dig into every fantasy season since 1985 to find historical comparisons for modern players.

Today's subject is Eric Ebron, a man whose 2018 breakout caught most observers by surprise and leaves us wondering what comes next for him. Ebron is a doubly-interesting subject because we can see not only what history suggests might be in store in 2019 and beyond, it can also speak to how much of a surprise 2018 should have been. And by looking at what history had to say about his last season, maybe we can gain new insight into what history might have to say about his next one.

Before we begin, here's the quick introduction that dives into the methods and the goals of the series. If you want a better explanation of what I mean by "value", or if you wonder about the advantages or limitations of historical comparisons, that's a great place to start. (If you enjoy the series and want to read more, that page also includes links to every installment.)

On the other hand, if you just want to know what might lie in store for Eric Ebron based on the players who have come before, read on.

Comparison #1: Highly-Drafted Tight Ends

I alluded already to the fact that perhaps if we'd been paying attention to history prior to 2018, Ebron's breakout might not have come as such a surprise. What I meant by that is (perhaps more than any other position) highly-drafted tight ends have a tremendously high success rate. Here's every tight end selected in the first round of the NFL draft from 1985 (the beginning of my data set) to 2014 (when Ebron was drafted) sorted by what pick they were selected with. I've also included how much fantasy value they accumulated in their careers.

A few quick bookkeeping notes. First, tight end is unique among the skill positions in that it's essentially two different positions in one: part blocker, part receiver. Some players (especially players from earlier in the sample) had long and productive careers as the former despite contributing little as the latter. Kyle Brady, Mark Bruener, and Marcedes Lewis have combined to play 571 games over 40 seasons. They also combined for just 248.3 points of fantasy value. This doesn't mean they were disappointments, it means they were blockers.

To account for this, I have marked any player who played more than 120 career games despite contributing fewer than 250 points of career fantasy value with an asterisk. I feel this does a good job of capturing players who weren't disappointments despite the overall lack of receiving production. These players are not included in the average at the bottom. (Ebron himself is also excluded from the average.)

Second, to understand these numbers it's helpful to have a sense of scale. While there's a lot of fluctuation from year to year, typically 40 points of value will rank a player within the ballpark of 12th at the position, whereas 100 points of value is the general threshold for a top-5 positional finish, and 150 points is where you start getting into league-winning, #1 fantasy finishes. As a result, 250 points of value is roughly equivalent to six low-end TE1 finishes or two high-end TE1 finishes. In all, 46 tight ends have finished their careers with 250 points of fantasy value, with recent examples including Julius Thomas (250.3 value) and Jared Cook (252.2 value). Meanwhile, that 437.2 points of value that the sample as a whole averaged would rank 26th at the position since 1985, settling somewhere between Delanie Walker (411.2 value) and Heath Miller (443.2 value).

With the fine print out of the way, the first thing that jumps off the page for me is that of the 28 non-Ebron tight ends drafted in the first round from 1985 to 2014, 75% either finished with 250+ points of value *or* had long, 8+ year careers in the NFL despite not being big receiving threats. Despite Ebron's disappointing first four seasons, the mere fact that he belonged to this cohort suggested he was a better bet to turn things around in year 5 than the typical tight end.

"Aha!" you might say, "but how many of those first-round tight ends started their careers as slowly as Eric Ebron had?" Ebron only had 109 points of fantasy value in his first four seasons. Outside of the players identified as blocking specialists above, here's every first-round tight end who had fewer than 130 points of fantasy value through four seasons along with how much fantasy value they added after four seasons.

Dallas Clark and Greg Olsen were two of the top 20 fantasy tight ends of the last 30+ years, but you never would have known it based on their pedestrian receiving totals through four years. Ethan Horton was a virtual non-entity for fantasy purposes through his first five seasons before running off 11th-, 3rd-, and 13th-place finishes in years six through eight. Tight end is a notoriously slow-developing position for fantasy, and examples like this are why draft position remains a strong indicator for years after a player is already in the league.

Comparison #2: Late Breakouts

So maybe Ebron's 2018 season should have been a bit less surprising in hindsight. The real question on everyone's mind is "how likely is it Ebron can remain relevant going forward?"

I can't speak to situational factors surrounding Ebron himself — factors such as the presence or absence of fellow tight end Jack Doyle⁠— but I can look at past tight ends who had large breakouts late into their careers. Here's every player since 1985 who

1. Topped 90 points of value in year 4 or later despite
2. never having topped 60 points of value in any prior season and
3. averaging 40 points of value or less for their entire career to that point.

The idea is to weed out players who broke out early or who had several prior solid seasons but whose average was dragged down by a few early-career zeroes. An example: Shannon Sharpe had 178 points of value in year four despite just 85 points of value in his first three seasons combined, but he wasn't really an "out-of-nowhere" breakout because he'd finished 5th at the position in year three with 73 points of value. He was on a clear upward trajectory before his first huge season. I just want guys who finished as above-average TE1s after a string of seasons of fringe fantasy relevance at best. This produces a list of ten names besides Ebron himself.

I'll be honest, my goal in this series is to dispassionately look at history and present the data as objectively as possible, but that doesn't mean I don't have biases going in, and I expected the results of this comparison to be much less favorable for Ebron. Five out of ten historical comps produced at least 200 more points of value after their surprise breakout (well, 198.8 or more points of value). Post-breakout value is positively correlated to pre-breakout average (where Ebron ranks 2nd), best pre-breakout season (Ebron ranks 4th), and size of breakout season (Ebron ranks 2nd).

If we accept that draft position is still a positive indicator, it's also worth noting that Miller, Clark, and Davis were all first-round picks, while Alge Crumpler just missed the first round at 35th overall. Meanwhile, Pollard and Wiggins were undrafted and Eric Johnson was a 7th-round pick. (Of course, Ethan Horton was a first-round pick and Martellus Bennett was a second-rounder and neither sustained their breakout, while Brent Jones was a 5th-round pick and he did better than any of the others.)

Final Thoughts

I'll admit that I expected to rain negativity on Ebron's prospects today, but history has been surprisingly kind to similar players in the past. Again, historical comparisons should be just a single tool in your toolbelt; it should supplement common sense or further analysis, not replace them. Ebron performed much worse in games Jack Doyle played last year, and Doyle should return healthy in 2019. Ebron's production was incredibly touchdown-dependent in 2018 and touchdowns tend to be extremely fickle from year to year. (Counterpoint: perhaps Ebron's breakout wouldn't have registered as such a surprise if he'd had more than one touchdown in 2016, his previous best season.)

With that said, it's noteworthy that draft position remains a positive indicator even a half-decade into a tight end's career, or that plenty of other late breakouts have managed to build upon and sustain their production going forward. Based on historically similar players, we might naively expect about a 50/50 chance that Ebron will be able to build upon and sustain last year's success. 50/50 odds aren't great... but they're not terrible, either, especially for a line of inquiry that rarely produces sure things. If I'd had to guess before digging through the data, I'd probably have ventured closer to a 25% chance.

These better odds don't override everything else I know about Ebron. But they do leave me a little bit more open to the possibility that he's not a flash in the pan and a little bit more interested in buying or holding him in fantasy football.