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 RB and WR prospects to go after to build a great team. While there are a few studs at QB 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 QB 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-TE28 Based on PPR ADP

Great, 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 (especially in PPR leagues) 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 – nearly all of the tight ends on the list above have ADPs that are Round 10 or higher (later). Only Rob Gronkowski (111) and Brandon Pettigrew (114) are going on average in Round 10, so everyone else is Round 11 or later. 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 him 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: Top PPR Tight End Committee Pairs

As we can see from Table 2, we have some very good pairs to select from for TEBC. There are 19 pairs that are worth more than Rob Gronkowski (projected as TE8) by his lonesome, who is projected to come in with 153.1 points. Let's also take a look at how often some of these guys show up on the table:

Table 3: PPR Tight End Committee Pair Appearances by Player

As we can see from Table 3, the results are dominated by one guy – Rob Gronkowski. That is a significant result as it gives us the key player to target for the TEBC approach to the draft. There are six other tight ends, however, who appear at least three times – Dustin Keller (8), Jared Cook (5), Jermaine Gresham (4), Seattle’s Zach Miller (3), Greg Olsen (3) and Heath Miller (3). It is quite possible that a pair made up of these six guys could represent nearly the same fantasy value at a cheaper price.

Putting It All Together

Now that we have 27 possible pairs to consider, what exactly does that mean? Should Rob Gronkowski 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 18 TEs, using PPR:

Table 4: Projected Fantasy Points for Top ADP TEs (PPR)

Based on Table 4, we see that TEs beyond the Top 5 are really jumbled all over the place thanks to a good number of people sleeping on Kellen Winslow and several owners drafting Owen Daniels based on his phenomenal last few weeks of work last year. Looking at our possible pairs, the simple answer appears to be to draft Gronkowski and take a decent TE2 to pair with him – and I can agree with that philosophy. I do think that there is another option, and that would be to wait on your tight end beyond Gronkowski’s ADP of Round 9-10 (111 overall) and take a pair of almost the same fantasy value but available much later. Dustin Keller (ADP 142) and Jared Cook (ADP 145) should be both available in Rounds 11 and 12 each, affording patient drafters to get a top end TEBC on the cheap. It also helps that Keller and Cook are the clear top tight ends on their respective teams, while Gronkowski faces a challenge from Aaron Hernandez. This is why I recommend getting Dustin Keller in Round 11 and then Jared Cook quickly in Round 12.

For thoroughness Table 5 should be your guide on Fantasy Draft Day if you attempt to use TEBC.

Table 5: Top 27 PPR TEBC Options for 2011

Here is a final summary of the combined schedules for Dustin Keller and Jared Cook, and when the committee approach suggests starting each one:

Table 6: Suggested PPR TEBC Schedule Plan

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