Tight End By Committee: PPR

Photo: Imagn Images

Over the past few years, there have been two very popular articles written by our very own Chase Stuart that look at an interesting approach to building a fantasy team with late value picks. Based upon the theory of using both Strength of Schedule ("SOS") and taking two players as a combination to build one very good player, he has discussed both Team Defense by Committee ("TDBC") and Quarterback by Committee ("QBBC") as a general fantasy league strategy. In general I think that this is a wise move because very early on in fantasy drafts there are a ton of running back and wide receiver prospects to go after to build a great team. While there are a few studs at quarterback and also a few choice defenses, I do not see a huge need in leagues to pursue either too hard in the beginning stages of a fantasy draft.

So with this in mind, I started to think about what else can be done with the committee approach. Wide receiver? Perhaps, but not a WR1. Running back? Maybe. Tight end? Hmmm, that's really intriguing. What if you could grab tight ends later in the draft that could combine to perform on a TE1 level, based solely on their current projections and their schedule? Now we're talking. This really got my attention, so I went after this. Let's take a look at how I went about building this committee and then we can digest and discuss the results.

(TIGHT) END GAME

So how to begin? Defenses and quarterbacks are relatively easy to "committee" together. There's usually only one quarterback and certainly only one team defense per NFL club, so the approach is pretty simple as far as picking out which players / teams to try and pair up. When it comes to tight ends, the line is not quite so easy to draw, but I needed some basis to pick which players it made sense to try and combine for a decent committee. I decided that I would use the following criteria to decide which players to start with for evaluating:

CRITERIA #1 - TE13 AND BEYOND

This seems pretty simple. If we want to have a duo that puts up TE1 numbers, that means we want TE12 or better production - else we would just draft TE12 or higher and forget the whole idea. So here is the list of players with which I started, based on their Average Draft Position (ADP):

Table 1: Tight Ends TE13-TE26+ Based on ADP

Two names were added beyond TE26 because of their high projections (Jace Amaro, TE28 and Clive Wilford, projected to be undrafted, so consider him TE34).  So now we have 16 guys to pair up and see how they do. That makes 120 potential committees, so there had better be a decent one (or several, we hope) out of all of those couplets. Now, before I go over the method of how to pair them up and the results, we need one more rule:

CRITERIA #2 - NO MORE THAN ONE TE FROM ROUND 10 AND ONE FROM ROUND 12

This could get tricky here, but understand the overall goal. The point of TEBC is to "free up" the first 9-10 rounds of your fantasy draft to pursue all of the other positions for your team. Grabbing 3-4 running backs and 4-5 receivers after grabbing a stud RB in Round 1 sounds like a good idea to me. This also gives you the flexibility of grabbing a stud QB, depending on your personal preference, or even to get TE1 if there's a huge value play available and have the "TEBC" be your TE2 (although I would only recommend this in very deep leagues with 20+ roster spots). Flexibility is the name of the game here. We all want value in our drafts, and having the ability to grab lots of RBs and WRs in the first 9-10 Rounds gives us that ability.

Here is the good news - all of the tight ends on the list above have ADPs that are Round 10 or higher (later). In fact, only Antonio Gates and Owen Daniels are borderline Round 11 guys. We will have to keep that in mind when we look at the result because if we decide to wait unit Round 11 to get this pair to make up our TEBC we may be pushing it a little too far and may not get the combination that we want.

So what do we do now to figure out some TE pairs?

CRITERIA #3 - USE FOOTBALLGUYS' TE STRENGTH OF SCHEDULE

This sounds pretty simple, doesn't it? Just take the TE Strength of Schedule to figure out when certain players are more likely to score well. What I did is similar to what the Projections Dominator and Draft Dominator do for you - take the projected fantasy points and slice them up over 16 weeks based on the strength of schedule. I call this result the "distributed fantasy points" for each receiver.

After I had all 16 tight ends with distributed fantasy points on a weekly basis, I just compared all of the possible TE pairs to find the best duos for TEBC. So here we are - time for some results.

Table 2: Tight End Committee Pairs

As we can see from Table 2, we have some very good pairs to select from for TEBC. There are 46 pairs that are worth more than Heath Miller by his lonesome, who is projected to come in with 144 points. Let's also take a look at how often some of these guys show up on the table:

Table 3: Tight End Committee Pair Appearances by Player

As we can see from Table 3, the results are dominated by two guys – Heath Miller and Austin Seferian-Jenkins.  Two more players appeared at least 10 times (Charles Clay and Kyle Rudolph) so this gives us the key players to target for the TEBC approach to the draft.  It is quite possible that putting two of these four guys together will form this year's best option for TEBC.  It is also worth noting that there are also four more tight ends that appear at least five times on the list, which screams out that there are a ton of choices this year to mix and match for a solid pair of tight ends.

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

Now that we have 46 possible pairs that are better than Heath Miller, what exactly does that mean? Should Miller be the basis of our comparison? Of course not. Remember our goal - find a pair of tight ends that can combine for TE1-type fantasy production. To figure that out we need a better metric, so here are the projections for the Top 12 TEs in standard scoring:

Table 4: Projected Fantasy Points for Top 12+ ADP TEs

Based on Table 4, we see that the Top 10 tight ends are all going off of the draft board about how you would expect them to go, but then Heath Miller pops up ahead of both Josh Hill (ADP of TE11, but falling fast), Jordan Cameron (TE8) and Dwayne Allen (TE12).  Lastly, TE18, Austin Seferian-Jenkins is just behind Allen.  So picking a baseline of Julius Thomas (TE7, 148.6 points projected) or Jason Witten (TE8, 148.2) and adding 5-7 points for a bye week filler tells us that any tight end committee that produces 155 or more points is comparable to a solid mid-range TE1 this season.  Looking at our possible pairs in Table 2, we have over a dozen duos that are about even or slightly higher than 155 projected points.  This tells us that choosing the correct pair can give us the result we wanted - TE1 production on the cheap.

Considering all of the results, the committee recipe looks pretty simple - Get. Heath. Miller.  Ideally you snap up Austin Seferian-Jenkins no later than Round 12 (just to be safe with his ADP of TE18 / 148th pick overall) then come right back and scoop up Miller (ADP of 177, but do not wait until Round 15 because it is risky).  Grabbing both Miller and Seferian-Jenkins so late (Rounds 12 and 13 or 14) gives you the top pair on the board and comparable value to TE7 or TE8.  With this in mind, I am recommending Heath Miller and Austin Seferian-Jenkins as the TEBC for 2015.  

For thoroughness, Table 2 should be your guide on Fantasy Draft Day if you attempt to use TEBC.

Here is a final summary of the combined schedules for Heath Miller and Austin Seferian-Jenkins, and when the committee approach suggests starting each one: 

Table 5: Suggested TEBC Schedule Plan

The committee approach is not a perfect one, but having this knowledge prior to your fantasy draft can prove to be invaluable if you decide to adopt this approach.  If all the players on your starter list are gone, goiong with a committee can save your team and help you deal with the loss of bigger names.  The method is also a big help in "Best Ball" leagues, where lineup decisions are not necessary every week.  That's exactly where a committee can do the best, as either player can count for you each week.

Questions, suggestions and comments are always welcome to pasquino@footballguys.com.

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